Women’s Gift Alliance awards $135,000 to seven Kootenai County nonprofits
Four Kootenai County nonprofits each got $30,000, including a food bank market, survivor legal aid and warehouse upgrades, as Women’s Gift Alliance split $135,000.
The fastest impact from the Women’s Gift Alliance’s $135,000 grant round will show up in food access, survivor support and a larger warehouse in Kootenai County. Four nonprofits received $30,000 each, a level of funding that will immediately pay for equipment, staffing support and safer space as the money moves into daily operations.
3rd Avenue Marketplace will use its grant to replace a commercial oven and freezer for its Food Bank Market, equipment the organization says is essential to keeping the market running. Charity Reimagined will direct its award to Pathways to Prosperity, a 12-week trauma-informed financial empowerment and wellness program designed for ALICE households and other low-income adults in Kootenai County who are trying to build stability and move beyond scarcity thinking. Newby-Ginnings of North Idaho plans to use the grant to improve safety and access in its newly leased warehouse by buying movable, reconfigurable industrial shelving, a key upgrade as the nonprofit moves into a space more than twice the size of its current location.
Safe Passage also received $30,000 to expand integrated legal services for survivors of violence who are navigating family, civil or criminal court systems. That kind of support can be the difference between a person facing the courts alone and having help with the paperwork, timelines and legal steps that come with a protection order, divorce, custody fight or criminal case.
The remaining $15,000 was divided into three $5,000 grants for the Coeur d’Alene Symphony, the North Idaho Fair and Rodeo Foundation and Safe Start-NW Infant Survival and SIDS Alliance. Together, the seven grants reach food assistance, arts programming, youth and family services, anti-violence work and basic safety needs, the kind of community infrastructure that often determines whether families can get through a crisis or plan for the next month.
The Women’s Gift Alliance said it has now awarded $1.6 million to nonprofits since its grant program began, underscoring how long its pooled giving has been shaping local service providers. Founded in March 2004 by Janice Baldwin and seven other women, the alliance says its mission is to pool the talents and resources of women in Kootenai County to support charitable, cultural and educational projects and to increase women’s involvement in collective philanthropy.
That model has remained active through site visits and relationship-building with grantees, including a February 2026 visit to St. Vincent de Paul’s H.E.L.P. Center and a March 2025 visit to Lake City Playhouse. In 2025, the alliance awarded $100,000 to five local nonprofits, making this year’s $135,000 distribution a larger local investment as Kootenai County organizations continue to lean on private philanthropy for practical, immediate needs.
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?
