Washington-Area Donors Support Struggling Wisconsin Towns

Most of Gilbert D. and Jaylee M. Mead’s giving is in the arts. Just last year, the couple pledged $35-million to a Washington theater. But their love of

music and performing arts also proved to be the genesis of a very different type of giving: helping to spur economic development in the region where their fortune was made.

Seven years ago, the couple was in Wisconsin Rapids, Wis., to attend the annual meeting of Consolidated Papers, the company that Mr. Mead’s grandfather founded there in 1894, and they decided to attend the annual meeting of the Community Foundation of South Wood County, which took place the day before.

One project, in particular, piqued the couple’s interest — a new community performing-arts center at the local high school.

When the Meads heard that the recently completed facility didn’t have a performance-quality piano, they offered to buy a grand piano — and to send a small group from the school to the Steinway showroom in New York to select the instrument for the new arts center.

From that first introduction, the Meads’ relationship with the community foundation grew. In 2004, the couple, together with Ruth B. and Hartley B. Barker, Mr. Mead’s cousin and her husband, who live in Scottsdale, Ariz., set up a $3.1-million fund at the foundation to help the region grapple with the significant economic challenges it faces.

The fund provided critical start-up money to a leadership and business-development project that is encouraging local residents to imagine — and participate in — shaping the region’s future.

A Double Bind

For generations, Wisconsin Rapids had been a comfortable, even prosperous, company town.

“The paper industry paid well, whether you were in middle management or the ranks of labor,” says Fred Siemers, executive vice president of River Cities Bank, in Wisconsin Rapids. “Things kind of took care of themselves here.”

But when Consolidated Papers was sold in 2000 and changes in the global paper industry led to widespread layoffs, Wisconsin Rapids and the surrounding villages were in a double bind, says Kelly Lucas, chief executive officer of the Community Foundation of South Wood County.

Not only was the region reeling from the job losses, she says, but it also faced the consequences of depending for so long on one company and its executives for civic leadership.

“We had not done a good job of cultivating, educating, creating new leaders,” says Ms. Lucas. “So in a short period of time, we had a vacuum of leadership, and we had a community that had always looked to our future as defined by Consolidated Papers.”

So three years ago, with money from the Barker Mead Fund, the community foundation and Heart of Wisconsin Business & Economic Alliance started the Community Progress Initiative. The project’s goal is to create a more vibrant, entrepreneurial business culture, foster civic leadership, and encourage residents to get more involved in civic affairs.

Last February, the Ford Foundation, in New York, awarded a $240,000 grant to the Community Progress Initiative, and announced an additional, two-year grant of $500,000 last month. The project has also won state and federal dollars.

“All of that happened because the Barkers and the Meads were willing to be the early investors, and say, ‘Yes, we believe this community has the capacity to reinvent itself, to thrive and grow,’” says Ms. Lucas.

‘Where Our Roots Are’

Wisconsin Rapids has always been home, says Mrs. Barker, who notes that she and her husband plan to be buried there.

“It’s where our roots are,” she says. “I didn’t want to see it just disintegrate.”

Local residents involved in the Community Progress Initiative say that by and large, there is little ill will against the Barkers and the Meads because of the sale of the company. Some note that because of global competition, the layoffs probably still would have been necessary, even if the family had retained control. Most people in the area, they say, are grateful that the couples chose to get involved.

“They certainly wouldn’t have had to do it,” says Mr. Siemers, of the River Cities Bank. “No one would have criticized them if they had not.”

Mr. Mead, who says he opposed his family’s sale of the company, joined the community foundation’s board of directors three years ago and has taken a personal interest in the economic-development project. When organizers were still trying to figure out exactly what the initiative would entail, a small group went to visit a rural revitalization project in Omaha. Ms. Lucas recalls that she mentioned the trip briefly in a telephone call with Mr. Mead.

“But much to our surprise,” she says, “when we arrived in Nebraska, Gilbert flew in that evening and spent two days with us.”

The Meads and the Barkers have also provided financial support to the foundation, which has allowed it to add employees, increase professional-development training, and create a resource center for nonprofit organizations. The couples also paid for the renovation of the foundation’s building, which Mr. Mead had purchased and is leaving to the foundation in his will.

Changing the outlook of the people in Wisconsin Rapids and the surrounding towns is a tall order, say people who are participating in the Community Progress Initiative. But they also say they are beginning to see signs of a shift.

Local business leaders and other residents are meeting with people in their own industries to identify and pursue economic-development opportunities in agriculture, telecommunications, tourism, and other areas.

A Business Boot Camp

The group focused on promoting the creation of new small businesses has started a four-day training program, Entrepreneurial Boot Camp, for people who are thinking about starting a new business. The sessions are available several times a year.

Before the Community Progress Initiative, for every 100 people who requested information from the Heart of Wisconsin Business & Economic Alliance about starting a new business, only five actually did. But nearly half of the 100 people who have been through Entrepreneurial Boot Camp so far have gone on to start a new venture.

To promote community-improvement projects — and to encourage local leadership in carrying out those projects — the initiative set up funds in Wisconsin Rapids and six surrounding communities.

The Barker Mead Fund gave each fund $5,000 for grant making in 2005, and then in 2006 issued a fund-raising challenge to the committees overseeing the funds. If they could raise $20,000 for endowment by the end of the year, the Barker Mead Fund would contribute an equal sum.

Six funds met the target, largely through grass-roots fund raising. For Vesper, population 540, that meant a letter-writing campaign, a plant sale, rummage sales, and an outdoor party. A steak dinner on New Year’s Eve — volunteer firefighters grilled outside in the frosty Wisconsin night — finally put Vesper over the $20,000 mark.

The ties that were forged or strengthened by people working together to raise the money might be just as important as the money itself, according to Ruth Cline, chairwoman of the Vesper Progress Fund committee.

“I saw a lot of collaboration between groups, like the fire department and the library or the fire department and the churches and the Lions group,” she says.

The changes in the business culture and in people’s thinking that the Community Progress Initiative is trying to bring about will take many years, but residents are taking steps in the right direction, says Dale Arendt, a volunteer with the initiative who runs a consulting business in Nekoosa, Wis.

“We have begun taking ownership of creating our future,” he says, “as opposed to passively sitting back and watching a thriving community have a slow death.”