Innovia Foundation earns national award for collaborative philanthropy

Innovia Foundation’s collaborative model just earned national recognition, and in Kootenai County the clearest example is the crisis fund it helped launch after the Canfield Mountain shooting. The foundation put $10,000 into the Kootenai County/Canfield Mountain Crisis Relief Fund to help victims’ families, survivors and others affected after two firefighters were killed and a third was seriously injured.

The Council on Foundations presented Innovia with its first Building Together Award during its Building Together conference in Seattle, which the Council describes as a three-day leadership-development event for philanthropy professionals held May 4-7. The awards program recognizes excellence in philanthropy and leaders who advance the common good with creative solutions. Innovia was selected for deep, sustained community investment, not for a single headline grant.

That approach has been part of Innovia’s work in Kootenai County since 1974. The foundation says its competitive grants serve a 20-county region in Eastern Washington and North Idaho, including Kootenai County, and it invests about $10 million each year into communities through grants and scholarships. In its most recent grant cycle, Innovia awarded $1,250,414 to 113 organizations across Eastern Washington and North Idaho, after awarding $1,011,665 to 124 organizations in the prior Community Grant Program cycle.

The local money trail matters because it reaches far beyond one emergency response. Innovia’s grantmaking and scholarship work touches education, youth development, health and wellbeing, arts and culture, economic opportunity and quality of life, the same priorities the foundation says guide its broader mission across the Inland Northwest. For the 2025-2026 school year, Innovia also awarded $436,089 in scholarships to students throughout Eastern Washington and North Idaho and now manages more than 30 scholarship programs on behalf of donors.

Council on Foundations leaders said CEO Shelly O’Quinn has more than 20 years of leadership experience in nonprofit, philanthropic and public sectors and has helped move Innovia from traditional, transactional grantmaking toward community transformation. For Kootenai County nonprofits, that national recognition could strengthen the foundation’s hand when it convenes partners, seeks matching dollars or backs long-term projects. The award also underscores a larger point for North Idaho: in smaller and rural communities, sustained philanthropic relationships can shape what gets built, funded and protected when local need is at its highest.