On May 31, South Cumberland Community Fund hosted its annual “Celebrate the Plateau” event, recognizing organizations across the Plateau that are building hope and prosperity. “Celebrate the Plateau” serves as an event where grants are awarded in the Fund’s spring grant round.

This spring, South Cumberland Community Fund (SCCF) received a record 27 grant applications, with total requests in excess of $250,000. Following close analysis of the proposals, interviews with some of applicants, and even some site visits, the grants committee recommended to the Fund’s board of directors a grant slate of $108,200, which was $8,200 over the amount budgeted for Spring Grants.

“The projects were so impressive and so needed, we felt it important to ask the board to stretch beyond what was originally budgeted,” said Betty Carpenter, chair of the grants committee.

SCCF’s strategic direction is to fund projects that promote health (56 percent of 2025 awards), community and economic development (20 percent), and education (24 percent). Over its history, SCCF has awarded over $1.8 million in grants to 77 local community partners.

The Community Fund has three competitive grant rounds: spring grants, a grant for collaborative projects in the summer, and a fall grant round. The next deadline for seeking a competitive grant is July 1, where organizations seeking a collaborative grant can submit a letter of intent. Final proposals are due on August 1.

Visit <southcumberlandcommunityfund.org> for more information. Grant seekers are also encouraged to attend the “Designing for Health” summit on June 10, 2025 at the UT Extension facility at Coalmont Elementary School. The event will be held from 5-7 p.m., and a simple meal is provided.

The Altamont Volunteer Fire and Rescue will use a grant of $10,000 to purchase ‘electric portable extrication gear’ for the main Altamont fire truck. The department’s current equipment, purchased in 1981, is gas operated, with dangerous hydraulic lines, and is bulky, heavy, and cumbersome to work with. This gear will provide us with a faster response in a life saving situation. This is the first grant to the Altamont Fire and Rescue organization, which has a long history of public service, both as an organization and in its members’ civic activities.

Beersheba Springs Medical Clinic is the original free medical clinic to serve people on the Plateau who have no medical insurance and are thus limited in their access to medical care. South Cumberland Community Fund has long been a partner with the clinic, which just discovered major structural issues which must be addressed in order for the medical professionals to continue their service to the community. A $10,000 grant will help the organization address maintenance and repair to a building that has served patients for over 25 years.

BetterFi, which is on a mission to help people build credit worthiness and escape from predatory lending, will use a $7,000 grant to deploy a low-friction financial coaching program called "Cash/Flow" to make financial coaching resources and programming more accessible to clients and potential clients. BetterFi’s current financial coaching programming is usually deployed in group workshops with partners since it requires a relatively large time commitment, the collection and preparation of materials, and incentives for participation. Cash/Flow will utilize a tool called Plaid to enable BetterFi to share nearly-instantaneous income and spending insights with clients. The grant will help BetterFi set up the program and pay for initial licensing. The program will not only help clients but it will also allow the organization to serve more people with less time, ensuring sustainability for this vital service to economically vulnerable people.

With a grant of $5,000, the Crow Creek Valley Community Center will be able to improve access and beautify the entrance to a new facility in Sherwood. The Crow Creek Valley Community Center performs a vital service to the Sherwood Community, which is relatively isolated from the rest of Franklin County. The center is a vibrant social focal point providing the social connections that allow people to thrive. This is the first grant to this organization. Epiphany Mission in Sherwood will act as the fiscal agent for this grant.

Discover Together has been serving the Plateau for over a decade, with a Co-op pre-K program for families and an asset-based educational program, Camp Discover, for older children. Throughout their programs, they encourage participants to understand their personal stories as a path toward success and well being. With a grant of $10,000, Discover Together will expand its summer Camp Discover program to Monteagle and Palmer, working with community partners in those locations.

Early Literacy Ambassadors (ELA) was founded to assist struggling readers in the community. Some students need more support than they are able to receive at school, and many of these students are not able to afford private tutors. ELA offers free, evidence-based reading interventions to children in Franklin and Grundy counties in order to break the cycle of poverty through literacy. A new policy for South Cumberland Community Fund is that partners may apply for funding to cover general operations if they have a Guidestar seal of transparency, which documents basic facts about an organization’s governance and practices. ELA has achieved a Gold Seal of Transparency and is awarded a grant of $2,500.

Friends of the Parks: South Cumberland, Savage Gulf, and Head of the Crow. Friends of the Parks, which works side by side with the state parks on the South Cumberland Plateau to engage the public with the educational, recreational, and spiritual benefits of these resources, received $5,000 to purchase a secure, lockable storage shed and miscellaneous rescue and medical equipment for the Fiery Gizzard Trail, with trailheads in Tracy City and at Foster Falls. The Fiery Gizzard trail has been ranked as one of the top trails in the Southeast, and the park has experienced an explosion of visitors, which makes public safety an emergent concern. Relocating this equipment, which is currently stored at the park’s visitor center on Hwy 41, will reduce medical/rescue response time by as much as 30-60 minutes, which can significantly affect outcomes of the patient.

The Grundy County Swiss Historical Society is working hard to preserve the Swiss heritage in the Gruetli-Laager community both for preservation and educational purposes and as a potential source of economic development. The organization is located at Stocker-Stampfli Farm, one of the original 19th Century Swiss settlements. A $5,000 grant will allow the organization to restore an original log building that has in recent years fallen into disrepair.

Grundy EMS, which provides superb services to the South Cumberland Plateau, will apply a grant of $6,200 toward the purchase of video laryngoscopes in its ambulance fleet. This equipment will be vital in improving outcomes for patients experiencing breathing difficulty due to obstructions or injury. Grundy EMS will measure the impact of this grant in lives saved.

Housing Hub, a new nonprofit organization on the Plateau, which is providing housing, potential homeowner services, and workforce development, will apply a $10,000 grant to a collaborative project with Mountain T.O.P., a legacy organization that has a housing ministry focusing on youth development and home repair. The grant will transform largely unused 60’ by 40’ warehouse on the Mountain T.O.P campus by bringing electricity to the building for greater capacity for multiple uses, creating a separate 10’ by 16’ Housing Hub storage area for tools and building materials, and creating a permanent indoor workspace for a variety of purposes for both organizations, potentially including Housing Hub’s Workforce development mission for instruction and training of those exploring construction trades as a career.

Mosaic Recovery Center, a residential recovery center in Pelham, is on a mission to see men experience the fullness of freedom from addiction. That fullness includes allowing them to feel like they are home when they enter Mosaic facilities. Mosaic will use a $7,000 grant to purchase new appliances, beds and linens, dressers, and living room furniture that foster a sense of being at home and, for some, providing their first clean and safe place to call home.

For recovery organizations, transportation is one of the most daunting challenges. The work of these organizations to restore men and women to full participation in civic life means taking men (in the case of Recovery Soldiers Ministry) to therapy, to court dates, to employment, and to medical appointments. Recovery Soldiers Ministry will use a grant of $5,000 toward the purchase of a van for this critical work.

Rise Up Grundy is an anchor community organization in the Town of Palmer at the edge of South Cumberland Community Fund’s service area. Deb and Loren Frost, and Deb’s daughter, Kristen Ton, are committed to building better lives for the youth of the eastern end of Grundy County. Through tutoring, nature education, music, and just general all around support of youth they do their best to serve people who are left behind. They will apply their $3,500 grant to launch a hospitality education program centered around a practice coffee shop. Youth will learn the soft skills necessary to thrive in a retail environment.

South Cumberland Community Clinic, formerly known as the Tracy City Free Medical Clinic is one of two free clinics (for patients without health insurance) on the Plateau. With a $7,500 grant, SCCC will help fund laboratory testing costs for Women’s Health and specialty Rheumatology services. To provide comprehensive screening for women (cancer and sexually transmitted diseases), the Clinic needs to order laboratory panels which are more expensive. The Clinic offers a monthly Rheumatology clinic which requires more expensive diagnostic laboratory testing.

TN’s South Cumberland’s tourism development program, also known as Mountains of Adventure, supports the development of tourism as an economic driver on the South Cumberland Plateau. In years past, the organization has focused on building brand identity and awareness, and tourism has expanded dramatically. To take the next step of encouraging longer stays by visitors means building more businesses, and with a grant of $4,500, the organization will launch a business education program.

United for Literacy (UFL) emerged from a shared concern among Monteagle Elementary (MES) educators, local businesses, and community members regarding the persistent literacy challenges faced by Monteagle students. Observing statewide data indicating that only approximately 32 percent of Tennessee students achieve proficiency on state reading assessments, MES educators recognized a critical need for targeted intervention. UFL provides every MES classroom with free, curriculum-aligned literacy experiences, including admission and transportation to enriching events. These experiences are designed to directly extend and reinforce the school’s Ready Curriculum, augmenting classroom learning with engaging, real-world experiences. With a grant of $10,000, UFL will fund transportation for a field trip program, which directly enhances the school’s reading curriculum by connecting material covered in the reading assignments with their lived experience.