BFO grants $137,500 for Huntingburg fitness court, mental health projects
Huntingburg got $10,000 for a free ADA-accessible fitness court as BFO split $137,500 among 11 projects, including school mental health and mentoring.
Huntingburg picked up $10,000 for an ADA-accessible Outdoor Fitness Court at Charles C. Niehaus Memorial Park as Being For Others Health and Wellness Foundation spread $137,500 across 11 organizations in its first 2026 project grant round. The city’s award adds momentum to a public recreation project that would bring a free, inclusive exercise space to the 43-acre park at 403 West 6th Street, where residents already have access to a golf driving range, disc golf course and walking path.
The foundation’s latest round drew 50 applications from 48 organizations across its eight-county region, with requests topping $1.2 million. That gap shows how much more demand there is for local health and wellness dollars than the grant pool can cover. BFO says its project grants are one-year awards ranging from $1,000 to $40,000, which puts Huntingburg’s $10,000 award squarely in the middle of the kind of practical, mid-sized support the foundation is built to provide.
Other winners included Barr-Reeve Community Schools, which will use its grant for school-based mental health support and safety, and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southwestern Indiana, which received funding for an expanded high-school mentoring program. Together, those projects point to the same public health logic behind the round: keep problems from growing by investing early in students, support and connection, not just treatment after a crisis. In Dubois County and across the region, those are the kinds of services families tend to notice in everyday life, in classrooms, in relationships and on the walking paths and park grounds where wellness becomes part of the routine.
Being For Others serves Crawford, Daviess, Dubois, Martin, Orange, Perry, Pike and Spencer counties, and it has tied its grantmaking to the conditions that shape health long before anyone enters a clinic. The foundation began operating in Dubois County on Feb. 1, 2024 after a $20 million endowment from Deaconess Health System. Its inaugural 2025 grant cycle awarded $172,022.81 to 11 organizations, and a second 2025 round sent $291,227 to 11 more. BFO has also said its Community Collaboration Grants program is meant to back longer-term, locally led solutions, with plans to fund up to $2 million over five years and at least six collaborations.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
