The City of Cassville received a $20,000 grant from the Community Foundation of the Ozarks, in partnership with the Louis L. and Julia Dorothy Coover Charitable Foundation and Commerce Trust, on April 30.
The grant will allow the city to resurface and repurpose the city park’s tennis courts into four pickleball courts.
“We’ve realized that bridging the gap between recreation and some of our generational differences [is important],” said Richard Asbill, Cassville’s incoming city administrator. “We’ve really reached an opportunity with pickleball to engage youth and middle and senior adults and bring them together in a recreational capacity.”
A total of $220,000 was granted to 14 nonprofits through the Coover Regional Vibrant Communities Grant Program to address the epidemic of loneliness and social isolation by creating meaningful ways to connect people with their communities. For a complete list of recipients, people may go to cfozarks.org/coover24.
“We’re grateful to fund these grants that will bring residents of rural communities closer together,” said Jill Reynolds, senior vice president at Commerce Trust and chair of the Coover Foundation grant selection committee. “We congratulate these agencies for their innovative approaches to building community.”
Julia Dorothy Coover, a 30-year Commerce employee, founded the Louis L. and Julia Dorothy Coover Charitable Foundation in 1992 to honor her husband’s memory. The private foundation, managed by Commerce Trust, has funded about $8 million in grants to benefit rural communities across the CFO’s service area since the partnership began in 2001. Earlier in April, the Coover Foundation, Commerce Trust and the CFO granted $80,000 to 18 rural school districts in the Coover/ Rural Schools Partnership Grant Program.
The Community Foundation of the Ozarks is the region’s largest public charitable foundation serving donors, nonprofit partners and more than 50 regional affiliate foundations – including the Cassville Community Foundation – with assets totaling $427 million as of June 30, 2023. The CFO’s mission is to improve the quality of life for everyone in central and southern Missouri through resource development, community grantmaking, collaboration and public leadership.
