2016 Community Grants

Big Sandy’s Friends of the Library

Location: Big Sandy, MT
Grant Awarded: $1,000
Big Sandy has just finished the building phase of a new library on Main Street with nearly three times the space of their present library, located on the edge of town by the cemetery. Location is crucial for their small town’s center of information. Grant funding from the Red Ants Pants Foundation will be used for new educational toys, books, and some furnishings for the much larger Children’s Room.

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Broadwater FFA

Location: Townsend, MT
Grant Awarded: $700
Broadwater Agricultural Education Program’s mission is to prepare students for successful careers and a lifetime of informed choices in global agriculture, food, fiber, and natural resources systems. Grant funding from the Red Ants Pants Foundation will go toward the purchase of materials for a chicken coop that will be designed, built, and managed by students.

 

Claudia’s Mesa

Location: Bozeman, MT
Grant Awarded: $1,372
Claudia’s Mesa is a boutique food emporium bringing international flavors to Montana and working to educate Montanan’s on the use of pulse crops and other locally-grown, raised, and produced ingredients through cooking, classes and tastings. Grant funding from the Red Ants Pants Foundation will be used to host educational visits at four locations across the state.

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Dropstone Outfitting, LLC

Location: Choteau, MT
Grant Awarded: $4,190
Dropstone Outfitting, owned by Yve Bardwell and Maggie Carr, provides guided stock-supported hiking trips into Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness. Grant funds will go toward the purchase of a new mule (yee haw!), pack saddle, and set of YETI coolers. The new mule will allow Dropstone to retire an aging mule, and the YETI coolers will help them supply fresh food for the entire duration of multi-day trips.

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Girls Thrive

Location: Helena, MT
Grant Awarded: $500
Girls Thrive (GT) is a volunteer-operated nonprofit organization with a mission to inspire girls to empower themselves through mountain biking, running, and developmental activities designed to improve self-confidence, self-esteem, and positive body image. Grant funding from the Red Ants Pants Foundation will be used to purchase a new, high-quality mountain bike for a girl in need to use during the GT sessions.

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Hardin Garden

Location: Hardin, MT
Grant Awarded: $500
Hardin Garden’s mission is to provide garden plots for community members who otherwise wouldn’t have the space or resources to have a garden. Montana State University Extension Service and the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service will also use this space as an educational resource. Grant funding from the Red Ants Pants Foundation will go toward construction costs for raised beds, water lines, and fencing at the garden site.

 

Helena Flats School

Location: Kalispell, MT
Grant Awarded: $1,000
Helena Flats School is one of the many K-8 rural schools in the Flathead Valley, which serves many farming families. The school has built an on-property garden which serves as an outdoor learning center, in addition to providing fresh produce for the students. Grant funds from the Red Ants Pants Foundation will be used to purchase a lockable shed and garden tools.

 

Hindu Hillbilly Farm & Rivulet Apiaries

Location: Alberton, MT
Grant Awarded: $863
Hindu Hillbilly Farm is a small, family-run operation that raises bees in an environmentally sustainable manner, providing pollination services and selling honey and value-added products around the state, online, and in stores across the Pacific Northwest. Grant funding from the Red Ants Pants Foundation will be used to purchase new production equipment and increase capacity.

 

Homestead Organics

Location: Hamilton, MT
Grant Awarded: $2,600
Homestead Organics Farm in Hamilton, MT, aims to play an engaged role in the creation of a positive, sustainable community through authentic agriculture and educational opportunities that build connection, encourage healthy lifestyles, and add to the happiness of society.  The Red Ants Pants Foundation Grant will be used to improve the farm as a learning and gathering venue by building a porta-potty shelter and a multi-purpose platform in the farm to be used for performances, yoga, potlucks, and hardening off plants.

 

Leadership Montana

Location: Statewide, MT
Grant Awarded: $1,500
Leadership Montana exists to develop leaders committed to building a better Montana through knowledge, collaboration, and civility. Grant funding from the Red Ants Pants Foundation will be used to provide scholarship funding for one women to attend the Leadership Montana Class of 2017.

 

Montana Conservation Corps

Location: Statewide, MT
Grant Awarded: $2,000
MCC teaches leadership skills that are essential to lifelong success while inspiring a love of the outdoors, a commitment to public service, and an appreciation for public lands. In turn, MCC members help care for and protect the lands we all love. Grant funding from the Red Ants Pants Foundation will be used to develop program innovations that support the recruitment, success, and retention of girls and young women in outdoor field experiences.

 

Products of the Prairie

Location: Baker, MT
Grant Awarded: $1,000
The goals of Products of the Prairie are to create opportunities to strengthen the local economy and encourage healthy lifestyles, increase knowledge and understanding of local agriculture, and inspire small locally-owned businesses. The long term goal is to run a sustainable non-profit and offer Farmers’ and Crafters’ Markets and educational workshops throughout the year in partnership with other organizations and agencies.

 

Stillwater County 4-H

Location: Absarokee, MT
Grant Awarded: $1,000
The 4-H youth agricultural program teaches life skills to the next generation of farmers, ranchers, and others in the agricultural industry. The teen leadership project teaches teens to plan, organize, and execute their own project that benefits the larger community as a whole. Funds from the Red Ants Pants Foundation will be used to make improvements to the local fairgrounds handling facility.

 

Southwest Montana Farm to Food Bank

Location: Bozeman, MT
Grant Awarded: $500

Southwest Montana Farm to Food Bank works to supply area food banks with locally-grown food. The program helps provide an additional market for local farmers, while helping ensure food banks clients have access to healthy, fresh food. Grant funds from the Red Ants Pants Foundation will be used to increase the monthly budget for nutritious, locally-grown food.

 

Sunburst Unlimited, Inc.

Location: Great Falls, MT
Grant Awarded: $500
Sunburst Unlimited’s (aka Gardens from Garbage) mission is about local food sustainability and teaching youth and adults how to grow food and connect with others who are doing the same.  Grant funding from the Red Ants Pants Foundation will support a new 5-week program called WIG WOG – Women in the Garden at the Westside Orchard Garden, teaching women how to build raised beds, grow their own food, use sustainable gardening practices and build relationships around common interests.

 

Twodot Land & Livestock

Location: Harlowton, MT
Grant Awarded: $775
Twodot Land and Livestock South (TDLL) is a 5th generation ranch located just south of Harlowton, MT that raises cattle for Yellowstone Grassfed Beef. For over 30 years TDLL has practiced a form of regenerative agriculture known as Holistic Management – simultaneously embracing ecological, social, and financial resilience, short and long term. Grant funding from Red Ants Pants Foundation will facilitate a community field day and riparian re-vegetation project to establish willows and cottonwoods along a stretch of a spring creek that flows through the property.