2022 Year in Review: Grants and Distributions

As 2022 winds down, it’s only natural to look back at the year behind us, see how far we’ve come, what we’ve accomplished, and what lies ahead. At our Annual Meeting in December, NCHT staff presented a Year in Review report to our Board of Directors. We wanted to share this presentation with our community and nonprofit partners in a series of year-in-review blogs.

In addition to the programmatic costs for the initiatives described in our year-in-review milestones, such as the Imagination Library, grant writing assistance, SIM case manager position, etc., the Trust distributed over $12.8 million to the Natrona County community in 2022.

As part of our annual commitment to Banner Wyoming Medical Center, the Trust distributed over $9.5 million to the hospital in June. This support is part of the transaction agreement established when Banner Health acquired WMC in October of 2020. The funds stay in Natrona County, and the hospital uses this annual funding for capital and programmatic needs, assuring the best equipment and services for our community. According to Banner WMC CEO Lance Porter, this year’s contribution was used for expenses such as the purchase of new ambulances and for the construction of an interventional radiology lab. The hospital also plans to use funds for the addition of an electrophysiology lab to advance the hospital’s cardiac service capabilities, allowing more patients to remain in Wyoming for treatment.

Also this year, NCHT awarded $2.77 million to nonprofit partners qualifying for multi-year general operating grants. These are 2-year grants, and this year’s distributions included the second installments for our 2021 grant recipients and the first installments for our Fall 2022 recipients. A full list of these partners can be found on the grantmaking page of our website.

NCHT partnered with Wyoming Community Foundation (WCF) this year in an effort to help our community recover from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our healthcare heroes were some of the hardest hit by the pandemic, so WCF will be working with healthcare workers to distribute $200,000 in grant money from NCHT for healthcare worker support. Another $350,000 is being used to support the community as a whole, including resources for long-Covid sufferers and suicide prevention efforts.

And finally, our board and staff have personally given to the Natrona County nonprofits closest to their hearts, and those donations were matched by the Trust as part of our Board and Staff Matching Donation program. Annually, the Trust will match contributions made by each board member up to $2,000 and each employee up to $1,000. As of December 1, our team had contributed over $22,000 to our community this year through the program.

Watch for more year-in-review posts throughout the rest of December on our website and Facebook page.