Strengthening Our Community: HCCF 2025 Grantmaking Impact

In 2025, the Huron County Community Foundation was proud to invest nearly $190,000 back into our communities through grants that support Huron County. While each grant individually has a positive impact, together they demonstrate how we can strengthen our community through generosity, partnership, and local vision.

Guided by our Strategic Priority Areas, this grantmaking recap highlights how HCCF grants turned into real impact in our community. 

Retaining and Attracting a Talented, Trained Workforce

A strong community depends on people who are prepared and able to learn, work, and build their lives in Huron County. In 2025, continued to invest in education, workforce readiness, and supportive services to help retain and attract talent.

These efforts included funding career and college exploration activities, agricultural education and experiences, continuing education for healthcare professionals, childcare workforce sustainability, and increased postsecondary opportunities.

Grant Highlight: Degree Forward – Building Local Talent Pipelines

Degree Forward’s work in the Thumb region exemplifies how targeted investment can strengthen the local workforce and talent pipeline. By supporting students through degree completion and helping them navigate barriers to postsecondary success, the program directly contributes to retaining and attracting educated talent in Huron County.

Degree Forward is an online, at your own pace, project based program that provides pathways to Associates and Bachelors degrees in addition to workforce certificate programs. Each student enrolled in Degree Forward receives one-to-one mentorship and coaching from a local coach. The program currently serves over 20 individuals across the Thumb Region. Four students have already graduated with degrees and two others have received certificates, immediately gaining local employment. This program is in its second year serving Huron County and already helping residents level up their education without needing to leave the area. In 2025, HCCF’s Community Impact Fund and the Pointe Aux Barques Donor Advised Fund provided grant support to purchase technology and equipment for the Thumb Region program.

By investing in programs like Degree Forward alongside broader education and support services, HCCF is creating an environment where local talent can thrive and stay!

Creating Vibrant and Dynamic Communities

Vibrant communities are defined not only by economic opportunity, but by connection, creativity, and quality of life. In 2025, HCCF grantmaking supported the places and programs that bring people together. 

This included support for arts programming for residents of all ages, youth sports, community gardens, libraries, historic and maritime preservation organizations, and placemaking and beautification efforts.

Grant Highlight: Sebewaing Township Library – Creating a Community Room

The Sebewaing Township Library plays a vital role in community life by providing a welcoming, accessible space for learning, gathering, and connection. A role it has played since its founding in 1859. Support for improvements to the library’s community room expanded its ability to host programs, meetings, and events that serve residents of all ages. The space was underutilized and now hosts daily events, like exercise classes, community coffee hours, and arts and educational events and activities. Grants from the Education, Reading and Literacy Fund and the HCCF Community Impact Fund helped kick off the project to create more spaces where the community can gather. 

Investments like this show how community spaces and activities play a meaningful role in building connections. When people feel welcomed, they are more likely to stay, return, and invest in the places they call home.

Cultivating an Environment for Business Development

A strong local economy depends on more than individual businesses; it requires reliable infrastructure, essential services, and collaborative solutions to shared challenges. In 2025, HCCF grants supported elements that help businesses operate and grow, while improving overall community stability.

These investments included childcare sustainability, workforce supports, public safety services, and support for attractions that drive tourism, like placemaking and museums. 

Grant Highlight: Child Care Network – Supporting the Workforce Behind the Workforce

Access to stable, affordable childcare is essential for both employees and employers. The Child Care Network’s Sustainable Wage Pilot Program addresses a critical workforce challenge by supporting childcare providers and strengthening the system families rely on. The grant provided to the Child Care Network ensured Huron County’s inclusion in a state supported grant program to support local providers. Huron County, like many counties in Michigan, currently does not have enough childcare options for working families. 

By investing in solutions like childcare sustainability, HCCF helps remove barriers to employment and creates an environment where businesses and workers can succeed together.

Responding to Urgent Needs

Alongside strategic investments, HCCF also responded to immediate challenges facing local families. Emergency Food Pantry Assistance grants ensured that food pantries across Huron County could meet increased demand when SNAP benefit payments were delayed in early November. HCCF deployed $13,000 in grants in less than three weeks to support our local pantries providing critical support to some of our most vulnerable populations.

This balance, addressing urgent needs while investing in strategic opportunities, remains central to our approach to community impact.

Powered by Generosity, Guided by Community

Our 2025 grantmaking was made possible by the generosity of donors who believe in Huron County and by nonprofit partners who turn grants into results. Whether through donor advised funds, designated funds, competitive grants, or emergency assistance, each investment reflects a shared commitment to strengthening our community.

As we look ahead, the Community Impact Fund remains a powerful way to support future grantmaking and respond to emerging needs. Together, we can continue investing in people, places, and possibilities that move Huron County forward.