24 25 Annual Report
2024-2025 Annual Report
Walking Alongside Changemakers
This year reminded us that resilience grows through relationships. Across the region, changemakers worked to meet urgent needs while building conditions for long-term impact, facing hard truths together, and finding strength in shared purpose.
At Rotary Charities, we continue to learn what it means to walk alongside changemakers. Our role is to listen, connect, and invest in the people and partnerships that strengthen communities.
Explore our 2024-2025 Annual Report below to see how collaboration, adaptability, and shared leadership are shaping our region.
Dear Friends,
This past year has challenged us to stand into our belief that the strength of our region lies in our willingness to face hard truths together.
From rising housing insecurity and nonprofit workforce strain to mounting uncertainty in federal support, it has been a time of reckoning for many across Northern Michigan. These challenges are not abstract. Actual and proposed cuts to programs like Medicaid, SNAP, rural development, and youth development programs threaten the basic infrastructure of wellbeing for tens of thousands of our neighbors.
And yet, even in these times, we are guided by a powerful understanding that community-led collaboration remains one of our greatest tools for resilience.
Throughout the year, we’ve witnessed and supported courageous efforts to respond to urgent needs while staying rooted in long-term vision. One example: the coalition working to address the needs of our growing unsheltered community and chronic homelessness through a cross-sector response coordinated by the Housing and Homelessness Taskforce. Bringing together representatives from government, homeless and social service providers, healthcare, housing development, law enforcement, and other key sectors, the Taskforce efforts maximize resources and drive long-term solutions for safe and stable housing.
This is what Rotary Charities stands for. Not only funding solutions, but supporting conditions rooted in trust, shared learning, and mutual accountability that allow new solutions to emerge.
Across all our programs, we’ve continued to prioritize community-centered collaboration, adaptive strategy, and systemic thinking. Whether through coaching for teams shifting how they work, grants that support learning and exploration, or convenings that cultivate belonging, our role remains steady: to walk alongside those transforming systems from the inside out.
As we look ahead, we know the path won’t be easy. Federal rescissions and regulatory shifts continue to destabilize local safety nets. But we also know this: communities in Northern Michigan are not passive in the face of hardship. We are interconnected, informed, and innovative. And we are willing to do the slow, steady work of change—not alone, but with one another.
To everyone who has contributed ideas, energy, or time to this work—thank you. Your leadership, formal or informal, is what sustains this vision. We are grateful to be in community with you.
With hope and determination,
Sakura Takano, CEO
Lorraine Beers, Chair, Board of Trustees
Kalkaska's Community-Driven Transformation
Since the 1800s, Kalkaska has been the crossroads of northern Michigan, a place many travelers simply passed through. Today, locals are writing a different story grounded in belonging, possibility, and pride.
After nearly a decade of community-led visioning and collaboration, the village is becoming a destination in its own right. “We are becoming a thriving community,” says Gayenell Gentelia, associate director of the Downtown Development Authority.
With early support from Rotary Charities, residents’ vision for a lively community hub transformed a vacant lumber yard into Railroad Square. Now, the downtown pavilion hosts concerts and outdoor movie nights, food trucks, and a thriving farmers market most weekends from spring through fall. “When people feel heard, they take ownership,” Gentelia observes.
Progress here rarely comes from a single grant. Village leaders knit together state, foundation, and local dollars —“maybe ten grants” for one project, Gentelia laughs — to keep momentum building. That resourcefulness recently delivered a trailhead for the 4,800-mile North Country Trail and is fueling an ambitious Downtown Safety & Mobility Plan designed to make it safer to walk, roll, and ride across U.S.-131.
Kalkaska’s lesson for other small towns? Build a broad network and listen well. With patience, persistence, and a clear plan, the impossible starts to feel achievable.
"Build your network. You can't do it alone.
And listen to your community—engagement is key to any project's success."
— Gayenell Gentelia, Associate Director, Kalkaska DDA
CREATING COMMUNITIES WITH OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL
We believe pursuing equity in our communities is not a separate initiative. It’s a guiding principle that benefits everyone. It’s how we create communities where everyone can access opportunity, contribute fully, and feel a sense of belonging. That’s why we support efforts that lower barriers, elevate local leadership, and ensure solutions are shaped by those most impacted.
One powerful example is the Kchi Wiikwedong Anishinaabe History Project, a collaboration between the Traverse Area Historical Society, the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and regional partners. This initiative marks ancestral footpaths in the region with interpretive signage, art, and QR codes that share Anishinaabek language, stories, and history. By making Indigenous knowledge visible and accessible, this work invites the entire region to learn, reflect, and grow in relationship.
Our role is to walk alongside efforts like these with humility and trust. In addition to project funding, this year, we worked to increase our accessibility for grassroots and community-led initiatives by reducing administrative burdens, supporting long-term goals, and investing in relationships that foster equity, community voice, and shared stewardship.
“The Anishinaabe wisdom reflected in our language and cultural teachings is filled with beauty and meaning.
The stories and words of our ancestors are alive in our homeland, listen to their voices carried on the wind. They speak to all who respectfully listen.”
— Eva Petoskey, Grand Traverse Band Tribal Elder
Stories of Change: Deepening Impact Through Collaboration
Two years after sharing Stories of Change: How a Systems Approach is Transforming a Region, we returned to two initiatives to see what had unfolded since. What we found was not just sustained momentum, but deepened impact through shared leadership and bold collaboration.
In the effort to end homelessness, the coalition that reached “functional zero” for youth is now applying what they’ve learned to address chronic homelessness. They are centering lived experience, aligning new partners, and securing historic public investments.
In the emergency food system, a trusted partnership grew stronger through Tribal leadership and federal support. Together, they are transforming how local food is grown, shared, and chosen, with dignity and culture at the center.
These stories remind us that systems change is a long game that is shaped by trust, learning, and the willingness to keep showing up when the path forward is uncertain.
Empowering Changemakers through Learning and Connections
Last year our learning programs supported changemakers in growing the skills and knowledge needed to navigate complexity and lead with clarity and purpose.
We support this growth through learning grants, expert coaching, workshops, and peer learning, each designed to connect and build on one another. This past year, the Capacity Advisory Pool (CAP) provided coaching to several organizations facing technical challenges, which led to deeper team trainings funded by the Learning Fund. We also expanded access to CAP to Leadership Learning Lab participants throughout Michigan, reaching rural communities where support is not easily accessed.
By paying attention to patterns and staying responsive to evolving needs, we’ve learned that meaningful learning support must be dynamic: timely, relevant, and grounded in local context and the real conditions changemakers face.
Investing in Community-Based Solutions to Urgent Challenges
We believe in leveraging every tool we have to meet our region’s challenges. That’s why, in addition to grantmaking, we invest in efforts that create lasting solutions to urgent challenges like housing affordability, workforce retention, and small business resiliency.
We increased our investment with IFF, a Community Development Financial Institution, to help close our region’s housing gaps, including projects like HomeStretch’s developments in Frankfort and Elk Rapids. Goodwill Northern Michigan’s East Bay Flats, which will create 64 units of permanent supportive housing, is a powerful contribution to ending homelessness in Grand Traverse County. And last but not least, we supported NorthEd’s Educator Housing Initiative, a first-of-its-kind partnership between regional educational institutions, which will address educator shortages through access to affordable housing in f ive school districts.
Meanwhile, our long-standing investment in Venture North continues to support rural economies. Annually, Venture North deploys about $1.5 million in low-interest loans to small businesses in Northern Michigan.
This is how we extend our impact: by trusting local leaders, bringing new capital and expertise to the region, and working together to shape a more resilient future.
"What we do is more than lending. It's about nurturing entrepreneurs and strengthening the fabric of rural communities."
— Laura Galbraith, Executive Director, Venture North Funding and Development