Roundup, MT

The Community Library has been struggling for years to save enough funds to put in an electric door for the handicap patrons. Even though the Library is one level, the manuel door has been a major problem for wheel chair access. After one patron got a wheelchair stuck in the door frame and had to be manually pulled out by the Librian, the Library Board decided to put their used book sale money towards buying and wiring a new door. They found this to be a very slow and frustrating process. The Board then approached the three government entities (County, City, School) that fund the Library to see if they could help. Due to fiscal constraints, none of the entities had funds for the project. The Board then decided to look into grants to boost their meager savings. Two members of the Library Board attended the Mike Vogel grant workshop through the Horizons Program. They then pursued some of the resources given to them through Mike and another Grant attendee that had knowledge for handicap access. The Friends of the Library offered to help with the project as well. All this networking brought about a successful grant application to fund the new Library door, which will be installed this summer.

The Roundup Memorial Hospital and Medical Center has developed a grant committee to assist with ongoing needs of the facility. Two employees from the hospital attended a grant writing workshop that was held in Roundup. This workshop inspired the formation of the grant writing committee. The committee consists of staff, administration, and hospital board members.

The group has already submitted a proposal for a new autoclave. The existing autoclave is 60 years old. The committee is currently working on several other proposals as well.

Sarah Earwood, the chair of the committee, stated “we know that we can not run a hospital on grant funds alone, but anything we can do to improve the facility and the quality of service provided to the patients will have a huge impact to the community.”

A grant writing workshop was identified as a need through the Horizons program. MSU Extension and the Horizon program brought Mike Vogel to teach the all day class.

Mike Vogel was a guest in Roundup to present a work shop on grant writing through the fiscal support of Horizons. Again, the city, county, schools, library, hospital and other groups were present to learn how to write effective grant applications. Mike did an overview of grant language, avoiding review process pitfalls, potential grant sources and grant accoutablity. Numerous groups left armed with the knowledge and ability to pursue grants/funds to enhance and/or fund projects that otherwise would not happen.

Paul taught a class on serving on local government boards, districts and commisions. His day long presentation saw representatives from the the county, schools, city, conservation district, library board and various other groups. Attendees left with a better understanding of open meeting law, codes of ethics and parliamentary procedure practices. They also participated in a question and answer forum. Many of these participants take their new hand book with them to reference during their meetings and have commented that they feel better equiped to manage their duties during their meetings.

The Web page continues to grow and has now added the option for the Local Government Entities to post their minutes. The County Commissioners were the first Board to use the site. They have stepped to the plate to promote Community Communication for the needs and development of the County and to promote local citizen understanding of how County Government works.

Through the Horizon Process a Committee was formed to work through the Extension Office to form a Community Web Page to promote knowledge and awareness of the Roundup area for community and economic growth. This web site was designed to put out pictures of the actual physical appearance of the Roundup landscape and to promote tourism and out door hunting, fishing, horse sports and any other activities that Roundup could host to enhance the Community’s growth and economy. This web site has under gone several revisions to make it user friendly and offers the option to post additional information by web site users through a review process.

The Horizons Group set up a Brochure Committee that has researched the old brochures and the current status of the Roundup Community to develop a new attractive brochure to promote community and economic growth. The distribution of the brochure is to help encourage tourism, realty sales, out door sports and recreational opportunities. The brochure is currently in draft stage. The committee and the community are now in the review process to go to print.

One very major concern kept surfacing as we traversed through the steps of the Horizons Project, which was a continual conflict of multiple activities/meetings on the same date. These over laps of dates and activities have limited the communities resources, spreading them so thin that most of the activities were not successful. Years ago the community had a CORE group that met to coordindate dates to prevent this. The current group taking part in the Horizon Program felt that we should develop a communication process similar to the old one, but functional in this day and age of advanced technology. Since the Web Page was already in process as a promotional to the very existence of Roundup, the group felt that the Web Page could also serve as the host for the Calendar of events. After serveral meetings with the web page committee, the Group came up with a process to enter dates and activities on the site. The Web Page was noticed to the local churches, businesses, clubs and schools to post their activity dates. The churches have responded 100%, the school linked their web site, and many of the clubs have listed their activities and meeting dates.

In addition to using the web page listings for Community Communication, the group also started a monthly Share Meeting at which local groups can do a brief presentation of their upcoming activities and or needs. At the April Share Meeting the school presented a promotional on their school levy for building repairs and new technology, the Mason announced the free shoe distribution for needy children, the Museum announced their pancake breakfast to earn maintenance money, the Library talked about getting support for a handicap access. These meetings have proven vialble to motivate the communty to take part in these activities to donate help or funds or to just help spread the word to communicate to those who could benefit.

REPORT INFORMATION FOR VISIONING PHASE  Name of Community:  ________Roundup_______________________________________ 
# of Participants in Community Visioning Total population:                                                                              __1800________ # of people that participated in the visioning process:              _400_________   (threshold= at least 15% of total population)  

Explain briefly how this information was collected or calculated: Collected information from the public on the need of the community.

Strategic Action:Please list 5 Strategic Actions items the community will be addressing as a result of the Horizons Vision.  These actions should also be reflected as individual blog entries under “Action” in the areas of Poverty, Leadership or Community (

Boxes 3,7 & 11).  

1. Community Foundation

2. Youth Activities

3. 100 yr. of Roundup recognition

4. Roundup Memorial Hospital survival

5. Market Roundup
 

Structural Change:Please describe the structural or organizational changes that have or will be manifest in your community as a result of Horizons.  In what ways is your community planning to sustain the community vision and implement thriving community strategies over time?  Please list five entries that you think are the most powerful examples and make sure these examples are listed on the community blog under “Sustaining Action/Creating Structural Change” under Poverty, Leadership or Community (
Boxes 4, 8 & 12). 

1. A continued dialog with the stack holders of the community

2. Learn about grant writing and maintaining grants for community growth.

3. An increased knowledge of boards and comities of the community. This will better enable these members to help are community to grow.

4. Work on the negative perceptions that surround the community.

5. Work on ways to unify the new and old members of the community. New= moved in Old = home town

Poverty Reduction Plan with targets:Please attach a copy of the community vision and action plan which resulted from the visioning process. Comments?