93
Let’s hear the story of Nebraska, its communities, its number one industry Agriculture, and the people who make it happen. Sponsored by Nebraska's Law Firm® - Rembolt Ludtke.
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Jeff Yost - Nebraska Community Foundation
In this episode we welcome Jeff Yost, President and CEO of the Nebraska Community Foundation. The Nebraska Community Foundation has reinvested over $553 million in Nebraska communities. Listen and learn about Jeff's Nebraska roots and the great work the Nebraska Community Foundation is doing.
Nebraska, it's not just a place, but a way of life. It's 93 counties that are home to innovative individuals, caring community, and a spirit that runs deeper than its purple story. It's a story that should be told. Welcome to 93, the podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to 93, the podcast, where we talk about Nebraska, its communities, its number one industry agriculture, and the people who make it happen. I'm Mark Falson, your host for today's episode, brought to you by Nebraska's law firm, Rimbo Lutti. Today we're going to talk about Nebraska's communities. Our 93 counties are comprised of nearly 600 cities and villages where 1.9 million Nebraskans live. I've had a goal since I was in college to know someone, or at least know someone who knows someone, in each of those counties, cities, and villages just in case my car or truck broke down. Each of those counties and communities are filled with people who work hard and genuinely care for one another. It's in these communities where helping one another isn't just a gesture, but a cherished tradition. But how can we best preserve and promote the culture and spirit of those communities? Today we're going to find out. Our guest is Jeff Yost, president and CEO of the Nebraska Community Foundation. Jeff, thanks for taking the time to visit with us today. Of course, it's an honor to be here. Awesome. Our podcast is named 93, which comes from Nebraska's 93 counties. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Red Cloud. What county? It's Webster County. Okay, so you know the prefix on license plates. What is the prefix for Webster County? 45. I again we're going to keep doing this podcast until we get all 93 counties checked off. So you're our first Webster County uh guest. So thank you for coming in. Can you give our listeners a little background on yourself? Perhaps give us our your elevator speech.
SPEAKER_02:Sure. Grew up as a farm kid in Red Cloud, graduated from high school in 1986. Height of the farm crisis, the narrative for kids in those days was we're really proud of you. We love you. Your future is someplace else. We'll see you for the holidays. Which of course is is no way for communities to be sustained or survived. Did you grow up on a farm? I did. I did. Milking cows. Actually figured out that I could get a whole lot more money for brown eggs if I sold them in three by four cartons.
SPEAKER_00:You really could today.
SPEAKER_02:Horses, beef cattle, like I said, milk cows. Never had a curfew. Just got up milk cows. It's because you were working. Yeah. So the sixth of six children. So big family, big extended family. Always knew I was loved, but one of the things that always resonated with me in college and early adulthood was I knew I was loved, but I didn't know I was needed. And I think that's part of what we've tried to connect through the Nebraska Community Foundation is how do you connect those different emotions because we do live in a different day and age than 1986 was.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you know, you and I are roughly the same age and grew up in that same era, and you may know the story, but the only reason I went to law school, yeah, I was an ag major undergrad, is because I couldn't find a job. And so uh roommate was taking the law so entrance exam, so I thought, what the heck, I gotta find some way to make a living. And so uh, but for that ag crisis, I would not be a lawyer today. I would have found another occupation.
SPEAKER_02:Fascinating.
SPEAKER_00:So, Nebraska Community Foundation, what is it?
SPEAKER_02:The Nebraska Community Foundation is an organization intended to help communities build themselves. Uh so we really think of ourselves as a value-added partner. Uh foundations in the name, of course. So we help people raise money and manage money. Um, the important part for me is that communities can only be built and sustained by the people that live and work there. So, what are the things we can do with them to do that better, to go further faster? How do you, you know, how do you use technology? How do you use all of these relationships to help people do more than they think they could? So, our work is to empower community leaders to really envision the brightest future for their place. Our community economic development question has fundamentally changed over the years. For many, many decades, the community economic development question was jobs. Today, the community development question is place. Why do I want to live and work and raise my family in this place? COVID did in 20 months what I tried to work on for 20 years, which was proof of concept for remote work. So we are now in this era of you can live and work wherever you want to live and work. And the community work we do is to help communities become communities of choice. Why do young people say, this is where I want to raise my family, this is where I want to build my business, this is where I want to make my life?
SPEAKER_00:So, COVID, I mean, not many positive aspects, but you could argue that one positive aspect of COVID was re-emphasis on community, Nebraska communities, the values and what you get from a small town.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Powell I I think so. I've had the opportunity to do work all over the country, all over the world, and exactly this work. And every time I come home to Nebraska, I count my blessings. Um we have a level of civility, a level of neighborliness, a level of taking care of one another that we all take for granted that is not present in many places. Uh we work in dozens and dozens of Nebraska communities where every child graduates from high school. That's an amazing thing to say. I mean, kids don't fall through the cracks here the way they fall through the cracks in other places. Um our work of the Nebraska Community Foundation, and I've always thought of my work and where I need to be, is I need to have sort of one foot in today and one foot about a decade from now. Because we want to be skate, skating to where the puck's gonna be. So we're the we're the partner helping communities to focus on the future and envision that future that that celebrates our society. I mean, nobody's trying to create radical change here, but we all know we need to keep evolving because the economy's changing. The next generation is always different than the last generation. How do we embrace those things and really think of that within an asset-based abundance frame?
SPEAKER_00:What impact has uh broadband expansion in Nebraska had? Andy Pollack, and I know you know Andy from our firm was a leader of broadband expansion in Nebraska, especially for rural Nebraska, protecting rural Nebraska communities. Have you seen any impact of that? I'd realize it's not all in the ground yet, but have you seen any impact? Uh uh one, giving people the ability to now move back to rural Nebraska, giving them the ability to then still have access to high-speed internet to be able to do their jobs remotely.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, absolutely. Um and it's especially made a huge difference with a trailing spouse. So lots of people think about it in terms of primary ways. I've actually seen a bigger impact with the spouse that was like, okay, if I'm married to a physician that's going to come back to Albion, what am I gonna do? Because I want my career as well. You know. Um, the other one that was fascinating is um my brother, who you know and his husband live in New York City and have lived in New York City for many, many years, but they've restored an old Victorian mansion in Red Cloud, which is just spectacular. Of course, the early days of COVID in New York City were just harrowing. I mean, we can all remember those pictures. So a couple weeks into COVID, they're like, we're not, we're not doing COVID in New York City. Uh so they loaded up their car and they drove to Red Cloud. And they thought they would be in their home in Red Cloud for maybe two months or three months or something. Uh so 23 months later, they finally went back to New York. So they both have, and my brother's now retired, but they both have pretty important global jobs, and they were doing these really remarkable global jobs. My brother-in-law is actually the deputy general counsel for Sony Music Internationally. He was doing all of that work from his dining room table in Red Cloud, Nebraska for two years during COVID. Right? The world has changed.
SPEAKER_00:That's awesome.
SPEAKER_02:It it it's really awesome.
SPEAKER_00:So, how long have you been at the Nebraska Community Foundation?
SPEAKER_02:I've now been there almost 27 years, I've seen that.
SPEAKER_00:And how long have you been the president CEO? 23. So what if you could describe the mission in every good organization? Uh obviously Nebraska Community Foundation being one has a mission statement. How would you describe your mission statement?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Our mission is to unleash, inspire, and connect ambitious people to build hometowns that we dream of in a greater Nebraska.
SPEAKER_00:So looking at I I'm a fan of demographic data, and UNO has a center where they study the trends in Nebraska where things are headed. And the last time I looked at that data, it shows that I think by the year 2030, more than 80 percent of Nebraska's population will live in the Lincoln or Omaha metropolitan area or along the I-80 corridor. So that would all suggest that people are moving that this way along the metropolitan areas. What make the argument as to why, if that's where everyone's moving, why we should spend money, invest in the smaller communities, the smaller counties in Nebraska that aren't in those metropolitan areas.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, fair enough. Um and I'm not, you know, demographics or destiny. I'm trained as an economist. That all makes perfect sense to me. Um I do think we are in a new economic era. And I think we, and I think COVID was part of this. We actually have a different set of both societal and individual wants and desires. So nobody can make anybody do anything, and that's a hugely important part of the work we do. All we can do is motivate and inspire. Help people connect dots, help people to really do big things that maybe they thought they couldn't do. Um we're seeing lots and lots of young families move back to these places because they have economic opportunities, because they want to raise their children near their parents. Um of the things I'm always really um candid about with people is we're the Nebraska Community Foundation, and that name actually means something because we're helping people work on the future. We're not the Nebraska Community Saving Institute. Uh you talked about 600 cities and villages. Technically, there's there's 532 incorporated, and then there's lots of little hamlets that that that aren't incorporated. Um, many years ago there were nearly a thousand. Once upon a time we had over 900 school districts in this state. We now have 244. Nobody's saying that the future doesn't mean that things aren't going to change. But 70% of those 600 places are less than 500 people. Um, and what I've seen in other parts of America in particular is if we're not investing in those places, they go from being really nice, again, little places, but nice little places uh to little pockets of poverty. And that's that's kind of like low-income neighborhoods, right? I mean, there's different pockets of poverty, whether they be small towns or whether they be urban neighborhoods. Uh so my rationale for investing in all these places is one, because we love them in their home. Two, because we want every child to be able to do really well and have a great future. And three, I think lots and lots of people want to move toward things that are more connected. Um our society has had a fair bit of anonymity for a long time. And there's quite a few people, and again, it's not everybody, and I can't make the decisions for them, but there's quite a few people that are like, I want to be deeply involved in something. I want to be deeply involved in my community, I want to know my neighbors. So in the survey work that we've done with high school age kids in particular, we've uh now surveyed nearly 5,000 uh ninth to twelfth graders in about 50 different greater Nebraska schools over the past five years. Um over two-thirds of them say they want to live in a as after college, they want to live in a place in their hometown similar to their hometown or in something that is similarly sized. They also say, and this would be a huge difference from where uh you know the narrative when you and I grew up, very few of them say there is a negative stigma associated with remaining or returning to their hometown.
SPEAKER_00:Which there used to be. Oh, for sure.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, you were not considered a success, especially if you just stayed after after high school. If you just stayed in town after high school, you're like, well.
SPEAKER_00:There's Billy, he went to go work at the co-op.
SPEAKER_02:Yep, that's right. And and I've heard many, many, many stories over the years of uh somebody goes off to school, they actually go off and have a set of really wonderful global experiences, and for one reason or another decide they want to return home. And somebody on the street, I don't think they meant it maliciously, they were just sort of amazed, but it comes out of their mouth something like this. Um, Joe, it's nice to see you. Um what are you doing here? Couldn't make it in the big city?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Oh my goodness, if you're 27 years old, what a devastating thing to hear from somebody, especially if it's somebody you've known your whole life. And again, I'm not sure that somebody meant it maliciously, but from a community building standpoint, we spend a lot of time with a lot of people on this. It matters what we say, and it matters a lot what we say to young people.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, I was just uh, and I'd encourage everyone to do this, go on your website and take a look at your 2024 annual report. Boy, uh some amazing success. Uh 256 million in total assets, over 45,000 contributions in the past five years.$553 million invested in Nebraska Communities since you uh created the Nebraska Community Foundation. That report contains several inspiring vignettes of just great things that are happening in communities that uh in partnership with your organization. One of those vignettes is about your hometown of Red Cloud. Can you tell our listeners how the Nebraska Community Foundation has partnered and continues to invest in Red Cloud?
SPEAKER_02:The first thing I'll start with is that ideas don't change the world people do. So one of the things that we really lean into in the Nebraska Community Foundation is positive change happens along the lines of relationships at the speed of trust. So we're we're just, you know, there's all these amazing ideas out there. Um but the way they happen is because people talk to people they know and trust and say, I believe in this, I'd like you to really take a hard look at it too. And you just get the conversation started. And that's a big part of the Red Cloud story. Um so again, family of six, I'm the youngest. Uh, two sisters who have lived their their whole lives other than college. Um, my parents were always there. My folks have now passed away, but my sisters and their families are still there. My brother and his husband have a house in Red Cloud. We're all deeply connected. My kids know Red Cloud really well. And Red Cloud has always had this really special opportunity. Red Cloud's the childhood home of Willow Cather. So about 10,000 people a year come to a pilgrimage in Red Cloud, Nebraska to experience Cather. Uh, six of her 12 novels are actually based in Red Cloud. She typically used a pseudonym for Red Cloud and didn't really use people's real names either. Uh, but it was pretty easy to track all of those things. How many other places have a world-class cultural asset? But the community and economic development conversation at Red Cloud was never about the opportunities associated with all of those people that were taking this pilgrimage to this small prairie town. It was always about how might we use corn and cows and these other things to make this work. And I think this is a great story for Nebraska communities to think about because it's like, what's your special asset that's differentiated? And I think the 20th century was to a large extent about commodifying similar things. The 21st century is much more about what is my distinct regional economic competitive advantage to help that become a more diverse economy. And in and again, that's the thing we're we're working with so many places on corn, cows, production agriculture. It's a huge part of our economy. Nobody's saying it's not going to be a huge part of our economy. What have we talked about in Nebraska for a really long time? And it's diversifying that economic stream, creating different sorts of jobs, and that's why information technology for that trailing spouse becomes such an incredibly important part of this. So in 2014, a colleague and I did an economic impact study that asked the question: what if a certain portion of those 10,000 pilgrims to Red Cloud every year spent the weekend as opposed to spent the day? And what sort of infrastructure, services, entrepreneurial opportunities would that create? If in fact just 10% of those people spent the weekend as opposed to spent the day, that would be$3.5 million in new economic activity every year. And in a place of less than a thousand people, this is big money, right? And it really helps to diversify that income. And one of the things we're finding in terms of migration patterns is people actually want to live in places that people choose to visit. Again, very different than where we were 30 or 40 years ago. Um, so we're actually seeing that people that become real Catherine aficionados, they want to live in Red Cloud, they want to have a second home in Red Cloud. So again, with the Nebraska Community Foundation, and we're never doing things for people or two people, we're always doing things with people. Uh so we studied this opportunity, we helped them develop a plan, we started capitalizing this, we helped them uh figure out how they would have some long-term staff. So they've actually had a heritage tourism development directorate for nine years in Red Cloud now.
SPEAKER_00:In Red Cloud, Nebraska.
SPEAKER_02:Red Cloud, Nebraska. Uh and he's an alumni and he's done amazing work, and the the work of the Willa Cather Foundation is amazing in and of itself. Um but two or three pieces, there's been millions and millions invested in Red Cloud downtown and in these other Cather properties. I believe 56 new businesses have started in Red Cloud.
SPEAKER_00:Many of them are and remind our listeners again and me too uh what's the rough population or estimated population of Red Cloud?
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:They have a full-time uh director just handling tourism and full-time heritage tourism development director, um, and lots of other professionals, you know, some connected with the municipality, some connected with the school district, some connected with the Willie Cather Foundation that are that are doing this work together. And that's that's the big part of it is um investing in this heritage tourism opportunity. This isn't the antithesis of agriculture. Lots of these people actually want to come to Red Cloud, and they would love to have an ecotourism or an agritourism experience in addition to their Cather experience, right? It's like how do we connect all of these, all of these pieces? So lots and lots of new business startups, lots and lots of pieces, but we knew we needed to have better lodging, more and better food options, better retail options, all those things are coming along. In February or March of 2025, uh Red Cloud will be opening a 29-person boutique hotel in downtown Red Cloud that was um kind of a shell of a building, but it's right on the intersection of Highway 281 and 136. Uh, those amazing brick streets, this incredible downtown that really kind of transports you back several decades, if not generations. Um I'm just really excited and proud of Red Cloud for all it's done because it's not only invested millions in this, uh, that courage then became the courage for other people to pursue their passion of having a world-class early childhood development center. Uh so now for five years we've had the Valley Child Development Center in Red Cloud serving 80 kids with exactly what we need to do, which is world-class early childhood development, awesome teacher, you know, student-teacher ratios. There's this incredible edible schoolyard that goes along with this. Um, and now there's all these people from around the region that are bringing their children to Red Cloud for that early childhood development experience. And then earlier this year, and again, just one more testament to when you build out this idea of abundance, and in Red Cloud, they now have about a$2 million unrestricted endowment, which creates about$100,000 of discretionary payout every year. So they just have$100,000 to work on. Okay, what do we need to work on? So one of the things coming out of COVID is nursing homes have been under enormous economic pressure. Uh so in February, the longtime proprietor of the nursing home said on April 1st, the nursing home is is shutting down. You know, I mean there wasn't really a whole lot of so they had six weeks, so uh we were able to bring the right people together. Uh, lucky enough to have a local hospital administrator who has actually been through this process in other places. Uh, within a week, uh the Red Cloud Community Fund, the hospital uh foundation, some donors that both the Red Cloud folks and the Nebraska Community Foundation have had long-term relationships with. Uh, we were able to kick off and catalyze a$750,000 campaign, again, within just a few days, to assure everybody that we were gonna have a nursing home. Um, because what typically happens is once it's announced that a nursing home is closing, lots of people will say, Oh, my goodness, there's only a limited number of beds within a limited number of miles here. I'm gonna have to move my loved one sooner as opposed to later. So four of the 25 people in the nursing home were moved within the first four days. So you had to be really assertive about that particular change. Uh, the nursing home, at least for the moment, now has a much higher census count than it had. And it's actually running at about a break-even piece, but we had to use that philanthropic capital to give people assurance that this asset wasn't going to disappear. So, what started with a heritage tourism thing has now manifested itself into all these other sorts of arts and culture and education and health care, not just opportunities, but abundance.
SPEAKER_00:That's great. So our firm represents a number of municipalities throughout Nebraska, and several of those have established affiliated funds with the Nebraska Community Foundation. Can you explain to our listeners what an affiliated fund is and how it works?
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. So an affiliated fund, a community-based affiliated fund, is a group of volunteers that decide we want to have we want to have an independent operating unit within the Nebraska Community Foundation. So that's exactly what the Red Cloud Community Foundation fund is. It's eight volunteers in Red Cloud who serve as fund advisory committee members. So all of the financial, fiduciary, legal issues are handled by the Nebraska Community Foundation. We do also do lots of facilitation planning, storytelling, marketing to help these community volunteers really do what community volunteers are most needed to do, which is envision that brighter future and then mobilize themselves and their neighbors to help make that happen. And what's happened for so long in many places is we end up spending most of our time in any particular nonprofit on all of these other fiduciary matters, and the fiduciary matters end up consuming everybody's time and energy, and we don't really get around to mission fulfillment. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's the paperwork, it's the legal requirements, it's the red tape. And while you're messing with all that stuff, you aren't doing the fun stuff, which is actually envisioning projects, raising money, committing it, investing, building out. Yeah, that's the that's the same, you know. Several of our communities, you know, looked at starting their own foundation, and then when they looked at the cost and the expense and all the just all the headache of doing that and make sure that they're in compliance, that's why they went with you. And obviously they've those have all been tremendous success stories for them.
SPEAKER_02:Um can I say one more thing along those lines? So the great value add to me of the Nebraska Community Foundation, all of the back office stuff is awesome. I have incredible colleagues that are helping people with uh fiduciary and legal and compliance matters, and it's important we do all of that well. Um the thing that that is makes me most optimistic about the impact of the Nebraska Community Foundation is we've tried to create this culture of continuous learning. And that continuous learning isn't just happening community by community. We've actually connected all of these people. There's about 1,500 community volunteers that are advisors for these affiliated funds. And the amount of learning that's now happening between these communities, it helps them to recharge their batteries because being a change maker, especially in a small place, can be absolutely exhausting. Uh, but it also is a great way of not making the same mistakes twice. So so much of what we do is helping all of these community leaders to know one another. Um we have lots of times where we create peer learning clusters around a particular thing. Maybe you have a challenge grant for$250,000 and you need to raise$500,000 to help that become part of your unrestricted endowment. Many times we'll bring four communities together, and over a three-year period, they'll have multiple peer learning sessions where each of them are hosting their fellow fund advisory committee leaders so they get to show what they're proud of. More importantly, they're sharing with one another what they've learned, what they would do differently. Just, you know, it it makes a huge difference. And we talk about the importance of collaboration and regionalism in rural Nebraska, and I absolutely agree with all of that. But we actually want that to be community driven, not state driven.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:So part of what I've observed, for instance, in in school finance over time is we refer to them as school mergers. Uh usually they're actually an acquisition. You know, there's a there's a bigger district and a smaller district, and it's called a merger, but for all intents and purposes, somebody feels acquired. Um people don't forgive quickly when they feel acquired. So part of what we're trying to build out is the best way of doing collaboration, regionalism, really doing work together is helping people feel powerful. I mean, the the the essence of empowerment, right? And it's their choices to be willing to work together and to bring their assets and their goodness and their hopes and dreams to the table. Because then that's the stuff that actually has a tendency to fundamentally change the narrative in that place. And narrative is going to impact migration patterns as much as anything else today. So that's that's what we're doing, is we're trying to have communities begin to create a new self-fulfilling prophecy for themselves that's very different than when you and I were young men growing up in rural places. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00:Right. So uh our firm has a very, very robust estate planning practice. I'm pretty biased, but I tend to think it's the best in the state. Let's say a couple who maybe today is retired and lives in Lincoln or Omaha, but has they have a calling, a kind of a yearning to support the town they grew up in, let's say it's Seward. Uh how do they work with you? How do they work with their estate planners as far as we want to give back to Seward, we want to see cool things to happen, we want to continue to be the Fourth of July city in Nebraska and beyond. How do they work with their estate planning attorney and the Nebraska Community Foundation to make things like that happen?
SPEAKER_02:We do a lot of this work. Uh a big part of helping Nebraska to capture this massive intergenerational transfer of wealth, and if it's okay, I'll uh describe that real quickly. So one of the things we've always known is that if young people are moving away from their hometowns and mom and dad still live there, what happens when mom and dad pass away? Well, if most or all of the kids no longer leave there, most or all of the estate is likely to leave that community as well. So human capital was the leading indicator, financial capital is the lagging indicator. Uh and the abundance in Nebraska is just extraordinary. We think the transfer of wealth in Nebraska in the next 10 years is probably$100 billion from one generation to the next. And over a 50-year period it comes close to a trillion dollars. So we have a statewide campaign called Five to Thrive. And what we're asking all generous Nebraskans to do is to consider giving 5% of their estate back to their hometown or their favorite charitable cause. In certainly the places where that wealth was made and accumulated over time. I'm proud to say again, my parents have both passed away. My parents treated Red Cloud as the seventh child in their estate. So there's all these different ways to think about it. And then to your question, uh, we have full-time gift planning staff. We have people with absolute expertise around these sorts of things. The most important part of it is in philanthropy, we can't make anybody do anything. So we're we're active listeners, we're we're listening for people, and then trying to help them understand okay, what impact do you want to create? And in many cases, then we'll actually encourage people to think about their gift in maybe a more open-sourced way to their community as opposed to a particular way. Uh for a long time, people have been focused on scholarships, for instance. Uh in many respects, scholarships have actually had an unintended consequence, which was if there wasn't a deep connection with the place that you were providing you that scholarship, that was kind of a ticket out of town. Not a bad thing, but again, how do we live from that? How do we live from that experience and learn from it? How do we create uh learn and return scholarships? How do we create opportunities to help young people pursue particular things that we know we're going to need that professional experience in town? Healthcare professionals, educational professionals. Uh we actually have a dearth of attorneys in many of these places. I mean, there's there's all sorts of professions.
SPEAKER_00:Who would have thought that there would be a shortage of attorneys? And there actually is in many parts of Nebraska. There are counties in Nebraska that there are no attorneys. Right.
SPEAKER_02:And this is true with almost every professional class, as well as we could always use more electricians and plumbers and construction workers. And the key these days is if you and I didn't feel like we had options, this generation has options.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:So our narrative, our behavior, the way we are focusing different forms of financial assets have to be on attracting them. What are the things we can do to attract them and then help them feel a sense of belonging in this place? So these are, again, very, very different strategies and thinking than where we were 40 years ago associated with we just need to have jobs available. There's probably 50,000 jobs available in Nebraska right now that are unfilled, with an unemployment rate hovering around 2%. All of our efforts around people attraction and helping them sort of have their dreams fulfilled. Charitable giving can be a great big part of helping that to happen. How do you empower communities to think about what's next? And it's why we build out these unrestricted endowments in so many of these places. For example, uh there's now an unrestricted endowment in Keith County, Nebraska. That's Andy Pollock's hometown, that's Ogallala. Uh this unrestricted endowment now exceeds$12 million. So it creates about$550,000 of payout every year whose only purpose is to create greater quality of life and opportunity in Keith County. We're beginning to see lots and lots and lots of places have at least a million dollars in their unrestricted endowment or three million dollars in their unrestricted endowment. These community leaders, these fund advisory committee members are the decision makers on that. What a cool leadership development experience to be able to think about oh, I'm not only going to dream about the future, I'm actually gonna have resources that we can apply to it. And how do you really think of that as catalytic money? We think of it as how would you use the payout from that to create change that otherwise may not occur. So that might be early childhood development. It might be different sort of housing things. It certainly could be curriculum enhancement within the K-12 educational system. Might be curriculum enhancement for lifelong learning to help people who are currently working part-time service sector jobs go back to school so they can also be members of the middle class. I mean, all these things we can do. And that conversation across the kitchen table is where that all starts. So delighted to be a part of that conversation. The Rasca Community Foundation is very frequently a partner in those conversations with their attorney, with their accountant, with their investment advisor. And uh myself and my colleagues are many times another person sitting there just trying to help.
SPEAKER_00:Jeff, one thing uh we ask all of our guests, we ask them to choose one word, and just one word, that describes and explains this great place where you were raised and I was raised, and that we still call home Nebraska. What's your one word? My word is abundance. You want to get explained uh why you have chosen abundance?
SPEAKER_02:I grew up in a Nebraska that was primarily thinking about scarcity. And people don't want to be part of things that are scarce, people want to be part of things that are abundant. Our primary work is to help communities be successful. Communities are going to be successful because there's people in them and people that are engaged and love their place. That mindset of abundance creates all sorts of sets of opportunities. I mean, again, the 21st century is amazing, and all of the things we can do are within our reach, but abundance creates the opportunity for optimism, for teamwork, for courage, even for taking risk, so we can learn about how we do things better.
SPEAKER_00:Jeff, thanks for joining us today. If folks want to learn more about the Nebraska Community Foundation and its mission and how they can support their local communities, should we tell them to just go to your website and read the annual report and find out all that great information?
unknown:Nebraskahometown.org.
SPEAKER_00:That's a great website. That's fitting, right? Thanks for joining. Please keep listening to Nighty Three the Podcast as we release additional episodes on Nebraska, its great communities, Nebraska's number one industry, agriculture, and the folks who make it happen.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks. This has been Nighty Three, the Podcast, sponsored by Nebraska's law firm, Rembolt Ludkey.
