New allocations process separates budget by community priorities, improves collaboration between nonprofits
By Jack Reaney ASSOCIATE EDITOR
The Big Sky Resort Area District held a full-day session Tuesday to discuss grant allocations for local nonprofits and organizations.
The annual event can impact nonprofits’ budgets significantly, but participants say Tuesday felt more relaxing and collaborative, and less competitive and tense than previous years.
Eighteen organizations submitted 33 total applications for projects amounting to roughly $8.1 million. The BSRAD board entered Tuesday with $7.86 million available, after allocating almost $7.87 million this spring to fund government service districts including school, water and sewer, fire and sheriff to offset residents’ property taxes.
In Tuesday’s work session, board members decided tentatively on award amounts for fiscal year 2025 nonprofit grant requests. All awards will be finalized in a public meeting on Thursday from 4 to 6 p.m. at The Wilson Hotel.
“We’re not all leaving here feeling like we’ve all gone to battle, we’re all leaving here feeling like we’ve done something great together.”
David O’Connor, Big Sky Community Housing Trust
In total, nonprofit requests only exceeded BSRAD’s budget by $200,000, and most requests were tentatively funded in full on Tuesday.
Leaders believe the relative ease is due to a new process.
“It allows you to not feel like you’re competing against everybody,” BSRAD Board Chair Sarah Blechta told EBS after the meeting. “You’re competing in your own impact area—you might compete against yourself for different projects… It was just kind of a free-for-all for so long.”
Blechta and David O’Connor, executive director of the Big Sky Community Housing Trust, believe the new process creates goodwill between community partners.
“This is a hard process… This is democracy at its purest, and it’s one of the strongest points of our community,” O’Connor said during public comment at the end of Tuesday’s session.
“We’re not all leaving here feeling like we’ve all gone to battle, we’re all leaving here feeling like we’ve done something great together,” O’Connor added.
Dealing in buckets
This past fall, the BSRAD board made a resolution to categorize allocations by eight impact areas, two more than last year: arts and culture, conservation, economic development, education and child care, health and safety, housing, public works, and recreation.
The total allocations budget would be divided into slices of varying size for each impact area.
Seeing the size of each slice, applicants likely had a better sense of reasonable and conservative grant requests, according to Daniel Bierschwale, BSRAD executive director.
He said the new process fosters intentionality and fair support across all community priorities.
Another shift this year is the board’s increased emphasis on the “project score” out of 100, which grades each request using a rubric meant to add objectivity.
Although decisions will not be final until Thursday, the board made the following preliminary decisions Tuesday.
Detailed applications and full descriptions of each project are available online.
Arts and culture
The Warren Miller Performing Arts Center’s 2024-25 cultural programming, a $227,500 request, was funded in full.
John Zirkle, recently elected to the BSRAD board in addition to his role as WMPAC executive director, abstained from discussion and voting on the topic.
The Arts Council of Big Sky’s 2025 Music in the Mountains series, a $245,000 request, was also funded in full.
Conservation
Gallatin River Task Force applied with five projects for a total of $683,922. They were all funded in full: water planning, coordination and outreach, for $190,000; West Fork restoration, for $165,000; Gallatin River access restoration, for $195,778; water conservation, for $75,909; and water monitoring, for $57,235.
Big Sky Sustainability Network Organization (SNO) submitted four projects, totaling $120,000 in requests, all funded in full: community energy efficiency and conservation engagement, for $55,000; climate action plan implementation, for $65,000; “One Less Car” commuter incentive, for $45,000; and recycling and composting education and outreach, for $35,000.
Both of Grow Wild’s projects were also funded in full, totaling $174,943: wildlife habitat conservation, for $76,204 and land stewardship for $98,739.
Economic development
Before Tuesday’s allocations session, Visit Big Sky reduced its requests for visitor marketing, and a destination research and stewardship plan, by $61,382 and $20,000, respectively.
The BSRAD board fully funded visitor marketing at $253, 618, and destination research and stewardship at $130,000. Visit Big Sky operations were also funded in full, for $215,000.
The Big Sky Chamber of Commerce requested $87,000 for development of business skills programming, and $140,000 for chamber operation programming. The board met both requests.
Education and child care
The Friends of the Big Sky Community Library requested $119,809 for operations. BSRAD funded the request, but asked the library board to pursue information about how other libraries in Gallatin County are funded.
Both schools requesting funding, Discovery Academy and Morningstar Learning Center, faced questioning from the BSRAD board about the details for tuition assistance for early childhood care. Both programs would ultimately be funded in full.
Discovery Academy requested $150,000 for its need-based early childhood student tuition assistance program.
Scott Poloff, head of schools for Discovery, explained the process by which parents qualify for need-based assistance. In Discovery’s program of roughly 32 kids, Poloff confirmed that about half of families qualify, and the other half pay full tuition.
Morningstar Learning Center requested $750,000 for early childhood education and tuition assistance. Board members expressed concern that the tuition assistance appears to be a subsidy across the board, not necessarily assistance for families with the greatest need.
Mariel Butan, MLC executive director, explained the roughly 60% gap between the school’s tuition revenue and overall operating cost, and noted that BSRAD has historically supported both tuition assistance and operations.
“At $35,000 a year—what it costs us on average to care for children—we know that families would have to make over $500,000 a year for that to be affordable, and that is not the income base of anyone currently attending Morningstar,” Butan said.
She acknowledged the need to somehow align tuition with the cost of running the school, but in a way that won’t shock parents.
BSRAD Board Chair Sarah Blechta emphasized her support of MLC and described her background as a previous MLC board member, adding that some difficult discussions might be needed to help cut operational costs—the school pays four administrator salaries, for example.
“Those are really hard, awful conversations that nobody wants to have,” Blechta said. “But we’re also running a business, right… and as it stands, it is not a business that is going to work operationally, continuing at this loss. So I want to sit down and really have some hard conversations about—do you need four administrators? …Your board may have to start stepping up in some other ways.”
The BSRAD board voted 3-1 in favor funding MLC’s $750,000 request in full, with the contingency that MLC leadership schedules a meeting with BSRAD in the next fiscal quarter to work on reducing dependence on Resort Tax funds.
“The need is always going to be there,” Zirkle said. “The subsidy that’s going to be required for child care is a national problem that Mariel pointed out in her application. And I think how we structure it is gonna be useful in conversations and collaboration with Morningstar and perhaps other child care providers… The number, I don’t think is going to get smaller.”
Health and safety
The Big Sky Community Food Bank requested $75,000 for workforce and community food security. It was funded in full.
Wellness in Action requested $90,000 for affordable counseling for improved mental health. It was also funded in full.
Requests outpaced available funding by $106,000 in the health and safety category. Board members knew at least one project would not be fully funded.
Riley’s Urgent Fund for Friends, a nonprofit focused on removing cost barriers for pets’ medical care, requested $250,000 for an animal shelter as part of a larger, planned facility upgrade.
“I can’t see how else to get a shelter into this town, brick and mortar, because it would be really expensive,” said RUFF’s leader, local veterinarian Dr. Stephanie “Syd” Desmarais. She explained the connection between the shelter and overall facility, proposed to include deed-restricted workforce housing and a veterinary hospital.
Ultimately, the board awarded RUFF partial funding of $143,583. Despite an outpouring of support for the effort and for Dr. Syd’s role in the community, board members needed to balance the health and safety budget.
“I just don’t feel like I can take $90,000 from Wellness in Action. This dollar amount is how I’m able to balance this bucket,” said board member Grace Young, explaining her motion for partial funding.
“I love this project. I fully support funding this with as much as we can… whatever we can do to support Syd, we should do it,” added board member Ashley Wilson.
Housing
The Big Sky Community Housing Trust was the only entity to request funds for housing. Seemingly aware that $2 million would be allocated to nonprofits in the housing category, the housing trust submitted requests for exactly that amount.
BSCHT requested $1.75 million for community housing conversion and preservation, which was fully funded, and $250,000 for operations and administration, also fully funded.
“For reference, last year, $1.1 million was invested in housing. This is a pretty significant increase,” Bierschwale noted as the housing discussion wrapped up.
Public works
Requests in public works outpaced available funds by $65,426.
The Big Sky Community Organization requested $101,250 for additional parking and public restrooms at Big Sky Community Park. It was fully funded.
Ashley Wilson, recently appointed to the BSRAD board in addition to her role as BSCO director of finance and administration, abstained from discussion and voting on all BSCO requests.
The Big Sky Owners Association requested $47,000 to aid in the construction of speed tables—similar to speed bumps—to slow through-traffic speed on Little Coyote Road.
Board members discussed the precedent and potential future obligations of contributing funding to a homeowners association. Most board members agreed that the Little Coyote Road situation is unique, and after hearing from BSOA leadership that the full $47,000 will be necessary for implementation, the board voted 3-1 to fund the project in full.
The remaining three projects received partial funding.
Visit Big Sky requested $200,000 for a wayfinding signage project to help visitors navigate the sprawling community. The project was awarded $175,000.
The Center for Large Landscape Conservation is working on two related projects to eventually gain state and federal funding to construct wildlife crossings on U.S. Highway 191 and Montana Highway 64 (Lone Mountain Trail).
CLLC requested $65,000 to implement an action plan for its U.S. 191/MT-64 Assessment. The nonprofit also requested $204,360 for an engineering study that will assess feasibility of two wildlife crossings between Big Sky and Bozeman. Time is running out to apply for a federal pilot program that could provide significant funding.
“We want to make sure that we do not miss this round,” Abigail Breuer, CLLC conservation project specialist, said about the federal pilot program.
With a balanced budget in mind, the board asked CLLC representatives if they would be able to accomplish their timely goals with a smaller award for each category. Breuer and Deb Kmon Davidson, Chief Strategy Officer, said it would be possible.
Action plan implementation received $50,000 of its $65,000 request, and the engineering feasibility study received $179,000 of its $204,360 request.
Recreation
The recreation category had the largest gap, with requests totaling $700,521 more than available funds.
The Gallatin Valley Snowmobile Association requested $30,000 for grooming of the Buck Ridge snowmobile trail, and it was funded in full.
The only other recreation request is a big one.
The Big Sky Community Organization requested just over $1.6 million for the renovation of athletic fields and riverside pavilion at Big Sky Community Park.
To balance the recreation budget, BSRAD would need to award BSCO a partial amount, shy of its request by at least $670,521. However, Zirkle pointed out that with surpluses in other categories—totaling over $703,000 before Tuesday’s session—it’s worth considering an exception, with a possible budget reduction for the recreation category next year.
Zirkle pointed out that BSCO’s application earned the only perfect score of 100, and garnered “incredible” public support with less opposition, and “excellent” philanthropy and matching dollars.
Whitney Montgomery, CEO of BSCO, said it would be a challenge to ask the Big Sky School District for funding, and emphasized Big Sky’s growing baseball program—the multi-purpose turf field would serve as a home field for Lone Peak High School’s emerging baseball program.
Addressing environmental concerns about rubber turf pellets, Montgomery said the field would instead use organic coconut material—approved and used for other projects by the Gallatin River Task Force.
Board member Kevin Germain discussed BSRAD’s surplus of roughly $800,000.
“We just want to remind this community that Resort Tax committed $10 million to buy this corner parcel… we have a massive capital improvements plan… We certainly have money that we can move around from bucket to bucket, I’m just looking at some pretty looming capital needs that we need to fund,” Germain said.
The board voted 3-1 to fund BSCO’s field renovation at $906,388, balancing the recreation budget.
Final nonprofit allocations for all impact areas will be determined on Thursday evening from 4 to 6 p.m.
Bierschwale emphasized that allocations is a 12-month process, including forecasting, budgeting and allocating funds for government services. This year, BSRAD budgeted to grant more than $15.7 million to government services as a direct property tax offset, and to nonprofits.
“Final decisions will be made on Thursday,” Bierschwale told EBS. “We look forward to engaging the public in our new fiscal year coming in July, and really taking a more long-range forecast for how we’re going to [invest] in the capital improvement plan.”
