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Community Foundation Talks Generosity

The Garage, Rapid City

The Nonprofit sector is a large employer in South Dakota. Organizations work on causes from education to mental illness. A woman who connects philanthropists to nonprofits spoke at the Garage in Rapid City.

Stephanie Judson is the President of the South Dakota Community Foundation. For transparency, they donate money to SDPB.

She says the nonprofit sector in the state employs almost as many people as the manufacturing.

“Our nonprofit sector, all the folks that work in that area, are over 14 percent of this state’s work force. And we’re doing important work. We’re investing a lot of money. We’re providing a lot of services. And that takes a lot of pressure off of resources that haven’t been available or aren’t currently from either state of federal sources.”

Judson says overall, the state has a low unemployment rate. But there are individual counties here that have the some of the highest unemployment rates in the country. One focus of the Foundation is finding useful ways to support these areas.

“Those assets are important but to the problems that some of those most impoverished communities are facing, they’re not transformative. The gifts that we’re making can’t be transformative. But when we compare those opportunities with the partners that we have, the other 850 funds that we manage. And some of those funds have been designated specifically by the donors to address needs in our most communities and counties in South Dakota. Those opportunities can truly be transformative.”

Judson says the foundation’s goal is to combine generosity and people with philanthropic means. She says people don’t need money to give. Generosity can be as simple as helping someone take care of household chores or drive to work.

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