The Chase Grant
November 5, 2010 – 7:07 PM CDT
On Wednesday, we heard from administrators at Chase Community Giving. This evening, we emailed them the following message that they will probably get on Monday.
Dear Dana and Delilah,
We are deeply grateful for J P Morgan Chase’s willingness to help community efforts like ours through the Chase Community Giving Program. We are also thankful for the thousands of people who went to great lengths to vote support for the North American Bear Center. Their dedication and your generosity will never be forgotten.
The North American Bear Center, located near Ely, MN, is a relatively new organization dedicated to promoting the long-term survival of black bear populations through education. We opened in May 2007. An unexpected mushrooming of worldwide interest has given the North American Bear Center an unforeseen opportunity to educate. This past year, supporters/followers grew from a few thousand to over 200,000 (117,000 on Facebook), while visits to bear.org increased from less than a half million per year to over 11 million per year. Volunteer committees are forming around the world to help spread the Bear Center’s educational message. Others are working to reduce our start-up debt and fund our developing educational outreach program.
Your $100,000 grant will jump-start the above, including the items below.
- Reduce principal and interest payments so more funds can be diverted to educational outreach.
- Develop online lesson plans that meet state requirements for teaching about bears in schools and libraries across America.
- Build an Education Building with classrooms, library, office space, and room to store educational materials being developed for circulation to classrooms and libraries across America.
- Expand exhibits at the North American Bear Center
- Expand our website information and upgrade its servers.
- Place web cams in dens.
- Upgrade the Bear Center’s interpretive nature trails.
We will initially apply your grant to debt reduction to reduce interest payments but will borrow it back as needed to make progress on items 2-7. We will progress as rapidly and frugally as possible using volunteers, donated materials, fundraisers, and unforeseen donations wherever we can. We look forward to sending you a report in about a year detailing all that your generous grant has helped make possible.
Sincerely, Lynn Rogers, Chairman
To all Lily fans, thank you again for your unbelievable efforts that made this possible. We anticipate that they will soon send the money so we can post it on the thermometer and celebrate.
And, in just a week, the Ely Schools contest ends. At this point, you have Ely Schools in the lead 3032 to 1394 (2nd place). So it looks like we will be celebrating that, too.
Engineers are working on den cams for Lily and Hope and for Ted and Lucky. The picture is of Honey emerging from her den of a couple years ago. Her chances of having cubs this winter are about nil, but if she did, we’d switch Ted and Lucky’s den cam to her.
Meanwhile, groups of you are working on new things across the nation and now around the world. More on that as things develop. You are a growing force for bears.
The Bear Center is now accepting orders for the 2011 Shadow's Clan calendar. You can order yours at http://www.bear.org/website/gift-shop.html?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage_images.tpl&product_id=558.
Thank you for your donations and all you do.
Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center