Dear Friends,

Jeffers Foundation commenced business in May 2005, when the residuary assets (including some real estate holdings) of the Estate of Robert W. Jeffers were transferred to it. We then began to sell the real estate. These sales of appreciated assets resulted in large taxable gains.

In the beginning, Jeffers funded the environmental education program in the Prior Lake – Savage schools. In addition to the substantial cost of this program, Jeffers had considerable funds to distribute, and offered a grant program for individual organization/school projects and activities. These grants came to an abrupt end when the bulk of the Jeffers real estate had been sold and the income from the other assets was reduced to almost zero by the recent recession.

At that time, we evaluated our grant programs for individual schools. and decided to use funds previously available for small grant requests to develop programs and materials for the benefit of all schools – with the idea of getting more “bang for the bucks” available to us. The general grant programs were discontinued at that time, and have not been resumed.

While grant programs for individual projects have been suspended, Jeffers is always willing to consider programs of high merit which serve large segments of the community. As always, no grants are made which do not include a contribution in monies or in kind by the applicant; and grants are made only to those who agree to freely share the benefits realized from their grant with others.

At Jeffers we are optimistic about the future and look forward to continuing to further the goal of environmental stewardship through education with productive partnerships and synergistic relationships.