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Businesses profit from donating

Businesses of every size give generously in La Plata County, whether it is cash toward a program or capital campaign or in-kind goods for a silent auction.

Among the biggest givers are:

The Southern Ute Indian Tribe, which gives both as a tribe and through its business entities such as Red Willow Production Co. and the Growth Fund.

Chevron and BP – While their headquarters are far from La Plata County, they consistently have supported local efforts ranging from the arts to human-services causes.

Purgatory at Durango Mountain Resort gives two significant in-kind contributions each year, to Music in the Mountains and Durango Adaptive Sports Association. DMR also donates numerous season passes and single-day lift tickets to many causes for auctions and prizes, not to mention its Benefit Day program, which donates the proceeds from one Sunday a month during the ski season to four selected nonprofits each year. For the 2013-14 ski season, Medicine Horse Center, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southwest Colorado, Sexual Assault Services Organization and Annie’s Orphans Dog Shelter split $16,720 from the designated days.

All of the banks, particularly First National Bank of Durango and Alpine Bank, both of which sponsor a number of events and participate in even more.

Mercury, through its MercuryGives program, donates 1 percent of each employee’s time for volunteer work as well as encouraging people to donate in their free time. In the last three years, Mercury employees have given more than 20,000 hours to good causes in Durango and Denver. The value of those hours, plus the $650,000 the company has donated in cash, make it a $1 million donor.

Coca-Cola of Durango/Farmington not only supplies countless cases of nonalcoholic beverages to even more countless events in town, the Mapel family has always been one of the first to give.

Durango Motor Co., because while the Aus family is relatively new in town, the family began immediately supporting local causes on its arrival.

First National Bank, founded in 1881, has one of the longest histories of giving, and it has it down to an art form.

On a recent Monday, every level of the bank was in donation mode.

In the lobby, bids were being accepted for an art print to benefit Ducks Unlimited, and a bin was filling with food for backpack programs to carry local kids through the summer and weekends, when free and reduced lunches are not available at school.

On the second floor, Jeanne Brako and a colleague were packing the bank’s collection of rare rock samples to add to the collection at Center of Southwest Studies.

President Mark Daigle sat down with Karla Kempfert, community liaison and special-projects coordinator, as they do every Monday, to review the requests that have come in.

“There are just so many good causes,” Daigle said. “You’ll find virtually every bank in the community supporting nonprofits, but as Durango’s oldest and largest in the market, it’s easy for us to focus. It’s not only high profile things, either. Everyone on our staff volunteers and gives dollars.”

Recent examples include employees holding a burrito sale to help bring Chef Arnold “Safari” Ngumbao’s family safely out of Kenya and their soup contest for United Way that grows bigger every year.

“We gave to 120 nonprofits last year,” Daigle said, “with everything from Beethoven (Music in the Mountains) to the Wild West (True West Rodeo). We respond to the needs of the breadth of the community.”

Daigle particularly likes giving matching funds. At Soup for the Soul, when people began making donations for the new Hospice of Mercy Experience facility, he already knew he planned to make another donation for $5,000 – the bank gave $10,000 the previous year – but he set it up so that people would be inspired to make a gift that night to get the matching funds.

“We do have a budget process for the year, based somewhat on what we’ve spent historically, but we always want to do more,” Daigle said. “In each of the last three years, we’ve gone over. Something comes up, a nonprofit calls that a sponsor dropped out or something new is forming. We like this Salute to Veterans group because we have a lot of veterans services, but we needed a clearinghouse. We already saw the need, and they were filling it. So before their kickoff event, I told them I’d be there with a check for $1,000, and we also offered them office space at our bank in Bodo Park to get started.”

Daigle went from being the funder to being the foundation creator at his last bank in Las Vegas.

“I was at a charity golf tournament in Cabo (Mexico) and was telling the men at my table that someday I was going to found the Mary Daigle For the Love of Children Foundation in honor of my mother, who worked with children who were neglected or abused,” he said. “The man down at the end of the table, someone I didn’t really know, told me he’d give me a check for $20,000 if I started it now. So I did.”

abutler@durangoherald.com

This article has been changed to reflect the correct spelling of Karla Kempfert’s name.

Aug 24, 2014
‘A moral responsibility’


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