Tools & Techniques
Nebraskans have a strong ethic of giving back. NCF teaches community and organizational leaders how to build on this ethic and use charitable giving to make rural communities better places to live and work. To this end, NCF is not a grantmaker itself. All grantmaking occurs at the local level through our affiliated funds.
By inspiring charitable giving and building permanent endowments, communities and organizations become more self-reliant, more in control of their own destinies and better places for families to enjoy the good life.
Materials in this section will help your affiliated fund achieve a high level of success through planning, leadership development, governance, grantmaking, marketing and fundraising.
“Newcomer” Becomes First Founding Member
Why would a man born in Lincoln and raised in Chicago want to come to Verdigre, Nebraska, a place he had never heard of before he saw it?
Pat McCarron tells the story of checking out different ZCBJ* lodges—Czech fraternal organizations—in communities west of the Missouri River. When coming over the hill from Center, Nebraska, he can still see the little village “all laid out there.” He said he and Donna Zimmerman, a good friend who also resides in Verdigre now, stopped at Frank’s Food Mart, located next to the ZCBJ Bila Hora Hall at the time. They wanted to find out the meaning of “Bila Hora.”
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