Curt Detjen, President and CEO

Last month I shared a message of support for our nonprofit partners. Your community foundation and our region are supported by a strong and knowledgeable team that is always paying close attention to evolving community needs. In the coming months, you will hear more from this team as part of our commitment to keep you informed of what we are hearing from our nonprofit partners. This communication comes from one of my teammates, Carolyn Desrosiers, our Director of Community Engagement, who will share some insights with you about the critical role nonprofits play in our region. 

The Invisible Backbone: Nonprofits in the Fox Valley Region 

By Carolyn Desrosiers 

Carolyn Desrosiers, Director of Community Engagement

In my role as Director of Community Engagement, I have the great privilege of working with our nonprofit partners daily, witnessing their innovative and inspiring work firsthand. As we continue to share what we hear from our partners, I wanted to explore some fundamental questions: What is a nonprofit? What roles do nonprofits play in our region? And how do they impact the lives of the people who live here? 

As a community foundation that makes grants to over 1,500 nonprofits each year, we see the local nonprofit sector through both a wide lens—recognizing system-wide needs and trends—and a close-up focus on the passionate, service-driven staff and volunteers who comprise the invisible backbone of our community. 

What is a nonprofit? 

When people hear the word ‘nonprofit,’ they sometimes assume it means a business that is not supposed to make a profit—but that is a misconception. Nonprofits are mission-driven organizations that must generate profit to achieve their goals and to make an impact on the communities they serve. The key difference is where the profit goes: for-profit businesses return it to owners or shareholders, while nonprofits reinvest it into the community and are typically governed by a volunteer board of directors, held accountable to the public they serve. 

Nonprofits are often started by small groups of caring people who want to make their community better or solve a problem. In our service regions of Calumet, Outagamie, Shawano, and Waupaca counties and the Neenah-Menasha area of Winnebago county, there are 1,600 registered nonprofits. Think of your local food pantry, homeless shelter, church, nature center, art museum, community choir, or after-school program – most likely, all of those organizations are nonprofits, started by volunteers.  

Most nonprofits remain relatively small – in fact 88% of nonprofit organizations have budgets of less than $500,000 a year (according to the National Council of Nonprofits) – while a smaller number grow to develop new services or expand their footprint to reach more people.  

What roles do nonprofits play in our region?  

Nonprofits often fill in the gaps where government and for-profit agencies cannot—responding to urgent needs, strengthening communities, and bringing people together. In times of crisis, they mobilize people and resources to meet urgent needs. In daily life, they bring joy and connection through the arts, youth sports, nature programs, and places of worship.  

But their role goes even deeper: nonprofits help communities collaborate to identify root causes of challenges and design solutions that are grounded in local values and lived experiences. They are how we organize to make our lives better—and sometimes, to save them. Every year, thousands of residents in our region engage with nonprofits as volunteers, donors, and participants. In doing so, they not only give back to their communities but also strengthen the social fabric that holds us all together.  

The nonprofit sector also plays a critical role in our state’s economy, employing 12% of the state’s workforce and generating more than $67 billion in annual revenue (according to the Wisconsin Gives Report).  

Local Impact 

The difference nonprofits in our region make is both far-reaching and deeply rooted—some efforts spark community-wide shifts, while others touch individual lives in immediate, meaningful ways, like a low-income single mother having a little more cash in the bank to meet expenses thanks to free diapers from our local diaper bank. 

CFFVR staff lending a helping hand at Feeding America

One example of a far-reaching change comes from the Northeast Wisconsin Mental Health Connection, a collective impact nonprofit that started a youth mental health initiative – Healthy Teen Minds – almost a decade ago. After eight years of deeply collaborative, innovative work that centered on the voices of local youth, anxiety among local teens dropped from 47% to 45% (while Wisconsin’s rate increased to 52%), and suicide attempts dropped from 9% to 6%. Even considering what local youth experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it comes to mental health, youth in the Fox Valley region are better off than they were a decade ago and faring better than peers around the state. 

Another example comes from Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, a local environmental nonprofit which protects and restores the water resources of the Fox-Wolf River basin. Here in the Fox Valley Region, we take pride in our waterways, but issues like pollution, runoff, invasive species, and erosion threaten this precious resource. After a decade of focused work, in 2024, the Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance celebrated the complete eradication of the invasive Water Hyacinth from the Winnebago System.  

You can find many more stories of local nonprofit impact in The Loop. 

Nonprofits are deeply woven into the fabric of our daily lives—often in ways we do not even notice. They lift up those in need, preserve the beauty of our region, inspire creativity, and bring people together. As we continue to listen to and support our nonprofit partners, we invite you to join us in recognizing their value and ensuring they have the resources to keep doing their vital work. 

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I hope you have found Carolyn’s message to be insightful as a brief look into the work she and our Community Engagement team do to support and work closely with our nonprofit partners. Our team of dedicated professionals is committed to doing our part to meet the needs of all people living in our Fox Valley region. Please contact us if you would like to talk more about this communication or the opportunities with your community foundation to make a difference today and in the future.