About
Investing in people to improve the quality of their lives.
Foundation Areas of Focus
To help those in our communities that need it most, the Foundation has selected four areas of focus for grant allocation:
The Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation supports organizations that have accurately identified needs and have successfully and consistently worked to provide life-changing opportunities within these focus areas. We place a special emphasis on organizations primarily serving youth and those that exhibit strong community support.
Education taps the immeasurable potential of the mind. Reaching children through early childhood education, after-school learning programs, post-secondary scholarships and graduate fellowships help our young people get the start they deserve. Providing college scholarships and even advanced-degree scholarships helps build a strong educational foundation for future leaders. Past grant recipients in this area include:
Greater Gallatin United Way
The Greater Gallatin United Way provides early childhood education to parents throughout the greater Gallatin area, helping to ensure that all children are ready for school. Laminated cards that provide tips to parents on their child's development are distributed yearly, as well as additional early childhood information for the families of over 1200 newborns at Bozeman Deaconess each year. The kidsLINK initiative, school-based after-school programs from White Sulphur to Three Forks, serves nearly 600 children regularly. These after-school programs not only provide children with a place to play games and do homework, but also give them a chance to do things they normally wouldn't have a chance to, such as visiting museums and other attractions.
Big Horn County Library
The Big Horn County Library Summer Reading Program is joining the statewide reading theme of "Catch the Reading Bug" this summer. Nine weeks of programs will be broken down into three age groups: pre-school through kindergarten on Wednesday, kindergarten through second grade on Tuesday, and third through sixth grade on Monday. The Big Horn County Library is hoping that this project will bring children into the library and keep them interested in reading and books throughout the summer, providing the children of Hardin a safe, fun, and educational experience and keep them out of trouble.
Hopa Mountain
Hopa Mountain's early language/literacy initiative, StoryMakers, provides tribal communities on seven reservations with the information and resources parents need to create and sustain healthy language environments for their babies/toddlers/preschoolers in their homes. Local educators and StoryMakers' Community Teams promote more “home talk” by encouraging parents to tell or read stories each day to their preschool children, starting from the first day of life. Recently, a grant from the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation allowed StoryMakers to purchase 5,000 age-appropriate books.
Montana Historical Society
The Montana Historical Society collects, preserves, and interprets fine art, historical, archaeological, and ethnological artifacts that pertain to Montana and its adjoining geographic region. Grants from the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation provide scholarships for award-winning university and tribal college students who present original research at the Historical Society's annual Montana History Conference.
Jobs for Montana's Graduates Foundation
Jobs for Montana's Graduates Foundation provides curriculum reform and skills training for teachers who work with an average of 750 at-risk students in approximately thirty Montana towns, including schools on or near Indian reservations, alternative schools and Youth Challenge.
Health and Human Services ensures the vitality of the human body and the human spirit. We target health care programs that ensure access to basic health care services to the most vulnerable members of our communities. Groups that successfully provide physical or psychological care for those in need have garnered our support. So too have experiential programs that offer disabled or disadvantaged people the chance to do something they may not have otherwise. Past grant recipients in this area include:
Montana Primary Care Association
The Montana Primary Care Association (MPCA) will outreach to low income children in Montana to improve access to dental health services. The project will utilize a network of dental clinics in Missoula, Helena, Bozeman, Great Falls, Butte and Libby to increase oral health care awareness, screen children to identify children with oral health needs or who are at risk for oral health problems, provide preventive dental services such as sealants, provide dental services or referrals for those in immediate need, and educate children, parents and the community on the importance of good oral hygiene and dental services.
Montana Special Olympics
During the 2008 Summer Games, more than 1,000 athletes from 75 teams will visit Great Falls as they compete in eleven different Olympic-type sports. Events include track and field, bowling, equestrian, bocce, gymnastics, cycling, golf, powerlifting, soccer, aquatics, triathlon and motor activities training. In addition to competition, the Games will include numerous special events, such as the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, Olympic Village, Wellness Park, Victory Dance and Carnival, Families Hospitality and Barbecue, VIP Reception, Dine Out Night and the Law Enforcement Torch Run. Washington Company employees also volunteer to help with the track and field competition.
Montana Hope Project
The Montana Hope Project exists to give Montana's critically and chronically ill children the opportunity to have a special dream come true and to offer families an opportunity for an annual no-cost weekend reunion. Wishes granted include shopping sprees, camping trips, hot tubs, restoring a '34 Ford, Caribbean cruise, horse buggy, meeting celebrities, entertainment centers, video games, computer systems, professional athletic events, dream bedrooms and trips to DisneyWorld and Disneyland. Children who are granted wishes have life-threatening illnesses that require medical treatments and interventions -- conditions that physically, emotionally, and financially drain the children and their families.
Red Cross of Montana
In partnership with rural and Tribal governments, the American Red Cross will expand volunteer recruitment, disaster training and response capabilities in underserved rural communities and on Montana's reservations. The goal of this expanded emergency outreach is to train local and Tribal volunteers to respond to disasters and provide shelter, clothing, food and resources to those on Montana reservations and tribal lands.
Camp Mak-A-Dream
Camp Mak-A-Dream is a medically supervised, cost-free camp for children, teens and young adults with cancer, as well as siblings who have a brother or sister with cancer. The camp offers a variety of activities including swimming, ropes course, archery, outdoor games, hiking, fishing, crafts, and group cabin chat. Camp Mak-A-Dream also hosts retreats for adults with cancer each fall: the Ovarian Cancer Survivor's Retreat in September and the Women's Cancer Retreat in October.
Big Sky Kids of Eagle Mount
The Big Sky Kids program at Eagle Mount brings young cancer patients, age 5 to 23, to Southwestern Montana for outdoor recreation camps. We provide a positive environment and give children, teens, and their parents emotional support, a sense of normalcy, and a network of friends who share similar experiences. Our focus is on wellness instead of illness, and strengths rather than limitations.
Arts and Culture represents the innovation and creativity of a society. Through cultural endeavors we help bring people together from all walks of life to share their creative talents, intellects, passions, customs and bold initiatives to explore new ways of doing things. In the areas of theatre, art, and music Washington Foundation grants have helped organizations reach a broader audience, infused new life into programs and created long-lasting cultural traditions within our communities. Past grant recipients in this area include:
Butte Symphony Association
In July of 2008, the Butte Symphony Association will provide a free outdoor educational activity and Summer Pops Concert at Stodden Park in Butte, MT. The concert, which will feature a movie theme, will perform for an underserved area of Southwestern Montana and help to bring cultural opportunities to youth and families.
Missoula Children's Theatre
MCT's professional actor/directors tour throughout Montana in pairs, driving trucks that also carry costumes, sets, scripts, and technical equipment. The actor/directors visit a different community each week and cast 55-65 local children in an original MCT musical. The weeklong experience also includes three art enrichment workshops for the schools. The residency culminates with public performances of the show. This season, ROBINSON CRUSOE is our brand new show.
Sanders County Arts Council
The Montana Baroque Music Festival, established in 2003 by Sanders County Arts Council in collaboration with Quinn's Hot Springs Resort, brings to rural Montana lively baroque music, the music of our roots, to fill an educational and cultural musical gap that exists in our state. The '08 Festival will include collaboration with Corky Clairmont, Director of Arts Program at Salish Kootenai College, to form a music/cultural exchange.
Young Musicians
The Young Musicians Club is a non-profit organization which enhances music education in Butte. Formed in 1988, the club offers music lessons in woodwinds, percussion, brass, and string instruments. The club provides three, fifteen lesson semesters per year: fall, spring and summer. One of the club's goals is to provide music education to any student who wants to learn, regardless of their financial resources. Foundation funds are directed toward providing scholarships to needy families.
The Piatigorsky Foundation
The Piatigorsky Foundation will present ten concerts in Montana communities in May of 2008; the hour-long concerts will take place in familiar settings – schools, hospitals, libraries, retirement communities, workplaces, and community centers – virtually anywhere people gather. The primary goals of these events are to make live classical music accessible in diverse Montana communities, and to create a broader base for the art form by developing new audiences.
Community Service touches the lives of everyone where they work, play and live. Despite our individual differences, we are linked by common interests to do more for the places we call home. The Foundation invests in organizations that fortify this connection. When everyone is involved one way or another in the improvement of their community, the community progresses in a positive direction. Past grant recipients in this area include:
Domestic and Sexual Violence Services of Carbon County (DSVS)
DSVS has completed four years of violence prevention programming in Carbon County, with the goals of helping young people in crisis and breaking the devastating cycle of violence that exists within families in Montana. In the fall of 2008, high school students from Red Lodge will team up with students from Yellowstone County for a series of learning activities, including student-led Teen Dating Violence Prevention clubs and an annual Violence Prevention summit. Adults from Carbon County will also work with Yellowstone community members to reduce the use and acceptability of physical, sexual and psychological bullying and violence.
SAVES
SAVES is a domestic violence/sexual assault agency based in Lewiston and covers the Montana counties of Fergus, Wheatland, Golden Valley, Musselshell, Garfield, Petroleum, and Judith Basin. SAVES helps approximately 575 new victims per year as well as 300 secondary victims, mostly children. The rural setting in which SAVES operates addresses problems not found in the urban areas, such as isolation, transportation, and lack of other services. SAVES focuses on educational outreach to our rural communities, training for law enforcement on a regular basis, short term shelter and meals, and utilizing long-term shelters by transportation to Great Falls or Billings.
Missoula Food Bank
Missoula Food Bank believes that addressing the needs of children in poverty should be one of America's first priorities; the food bank tries to do its part through programs like Kids Café. Launched in August of 2001, the Kids Café program provides lunches to children who might otherwise go hungry during the summer and school breaks, when they are unable to access school lunch programs, as well as providing meals for homeless children all year long. At Kids Café, the Missoula Food Bank provides a safe location where children can have a nutritious meal and enjoy a variety of fun activities.
The Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club of Helena
The Salvation Army of Helena and the Boys & Girls Club of Helena have recently teamed up to offer a free after-school program for children ages 6 to 18 years old. The Club's after-school program is open Monday - Friday from 2:30PM to 6:00 PM, serving over 60 children daily and providing activities from homework help to physical fitness.
The Boys & Girls Club of the Northern Cheyenne Nation
The Boys & Girls Club of the Northern Cheyenne Nation's program offers opportunities including: tutoring, youth leadership groups, teen mentoring, recreation, physical education, arts and crafts, prevention classes. In addition, the Club serves just under two thousand meals each month to children who come from homes where basic food security is lacking; about two-thirds of households on the reservation experience food insecurity.
Chouteau County Sheriff's Office
Each spring brings a “Bicycle Safety Day” which provides safety rules, obstacle courses, bike registration and a helmet for every participant. This day long experience brings kids and public safety into an arena where friendships are formed and lives are potentially saved. The Chouteau County Sheriff's Office will provide helmets, certificates, reflective stickers, tire reflectors, bicycle safety tip bookmarks and guides, which will be delivered during the exercises along with hands on instruction.
News
06.17.10 - DPW Foundation Helps Expand South Billings Bike Clinic
From The Billings Gazette - Boxes of bicycle tubes and colorful bicycle helmets sit on chairs inside the sanctuary of Living Water Church on the city’s South Side.....Read Story
06.09.10 - Washington Foundation Donates $50,000 to Missoula County Public Schools
From The Missoulian - Mike Halligan has to love his job. Although he previously served as a state legislator and thus wasn't universally loved, everybody likes to see him these days....Read Story
06.03.10 - Missoula Children Climb Aboard for a Train Ride, Dental Checkup
From The Missoulian - There was no bribing or pleading involved to get dozens of Missoula children to see the dentist on Wednesday.....Read Story
05.11.10 - Pay it Forward 2010 - Your Stories!
240 employees were randomly selected to receive a $250 giving card which could be used to donate to any charitable cause....Read the stories
