Fair Grove Senior Center

Great news! Fair Grove Senior Center’s Neighborhood Assistance Program project application has been approved. This is a $350,000 tax credit project. What that means to us is that certain Missouri taxpayers can donate up to $500,000 (in total) to Fair Grove Senior Center and they in turn will receive up to $350,000 in tax credits. If those taxpayers itemize their income tax returns, those donations can be used to further reduce their tax bills by claiming their donation as a charitable deduction. In fact, as I understand it, at a certain marginal federal income tax rate, donations can be made with no out of pocket cost to a donor.

Making the assumption that we sell all $350,000 of the tax credits and receive $500,000 in donations, we can add that and the $250,000 Community Development Block grant previously approved to our $53,000 building fund held by Community Foundation of the Ozarks. That will bring the total building fund to just over $800,000.

But there is a problem with these numbers. Before we can touch any of the $250,000 Community Development Block Grant money, we must spend $668,872, with that money coming from our building fund at Community Foundation of the Ozarks ($53,000) along with the $500,000 Neighborhood Assistance (NAP) funds and any other money might  have—for example. our checking account, etc. To date, we are about $116,000 short of $668,872, so we must somehow raise that amount in the next year or so. The difference between $668,872 and the combined total we will have in NAP and CFO ($116,000) is needed to cover administrative, engineering, architectural and related fees. Reducing those fees is helpful in cutting the overall cost of the project, but does not relieve us of the obligation to raise the $116,000.

We will continue to have fundraisers such as the cash raffle going on this summer, along with other local events to follow to help offset this shortfall. Aside from the cost of prizes, every penny earned goes into the building fund. In past years we have raffled off various items. Those items have not appealed to everyone, so this summer the raffle will consist of cash prizes. Winners can spend their prize money anyway they want.

The grand prize in our raffle is $1,000. As with the gun raffles we held the last two years, winning tickets will be placed back in the ticket box for the next drawing round, so you could win more than once.

Click on the photo below for details about the cash raffle:

Double click to enlarge