Fair participants and others using the buildings at the Bourbon County Fairgrounds will soon benefit from improvements to roofing and HVAC systems made possible in part by a grant from Heartland Rural Electric Cooperative.
Heartland recently awarded Bourbon County Fair Association a $5,000 grant through its Concern for Community program.
“I often say that we’re not in the business of selling electricity, we’re in the business of powering rural lifestyles,” said Mark Scheibe, Heartland CEO. “Part of that is supporting the communities our consumer-members live in and around. This grant program is a great way to do just that.”
The Concern for Community program provides grants of up to $5,000 for capital improvement projects throughout the Heartland service area, which covers parts of 12 counties in eastern Kansas.
As a non-profit, member-owned cooperative, Heartland issues capital credits to members each year, but sometimes those capital credits go unclaimed. Because those monies were intended to be returned to the communities from which they came, Heartland’s Board of Directors decided to use those unclaimed funds for community grants and started the Concern for Community program in 2019.
Nine applications out of 25 received were approved for funding by the Heartland board. In total, Heartland distributed around $36,000 in Concern for Community grants this year.