Nonprofit Hub
In June 2024, a large chunk of earth slid off Teton Pass, bringing a section of the roadway down the mountain and severing a vital artery between Teton Valley and Jackson Hole. Commuters were left in the lurch, facing four or more hours of driving a day, along with the financial load of suddenly becoming supercommuters. To ease the burden on valley residents, the Community Foundation of Teton Valley provided emergency grant funding to the Community Resource Center of Teton Valley (CRCTV) to purchase gas cards for commuters in need.
Meeting such emergent needs of local nonprofits is just one of many ways the Community Foundation benefits organizations in Teton Valley.
“We think of ourselves as the hub of local nonprofits, and our mission is to elevate philanthropy, build community, and promote collaboration,” says Bonnie Self, executive director of the Community Foundation of Teton Valley.
The foundation provides an array of grant opportunities, training, workshops, and resources like a conference room space for meetings and rentable event equipment, and it organizes the Tin Cup Challenge fundraiser each year. The organization also assists donors in meeting their philanthropic interests, and it holds agency funds for nonprofits that may not have the infrastructure to invest their own dollars in capital campaigns and endowments.
Established in 2007 as an affiliate of the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole, the foundation has been working to become an independent entity for some time. The transition was completed in spring 2026.
“We’re really excited about being autonomous and being able to be really responsive to Teton Valley needs,” Bonnie says, adding that the two foundations will continue to work together.
Teton Valley’s needs include not only headline-making emergencies like the Teton Pass closure, but also everyday prob-lems like those CRCTV works to solve.
“Everything that we do is in service of ensuring that community members are able to access and secure their most basic needs,” says Alex Bontecou, executive director of CRCTV. The organization has received funding and assistance from the Community Foundation in a variety of ways, from a competitive grant to assist with a housing security deposit program to helping find and fund storage for free firewood they distribute to residents for winter heating. Alex says she sees the nonprofit as a robust support system for all the other organizations in the valley.
The Community Foundation’s competitive grant program funds a wide array of nonprofit programming each year. In 2025, the Family Safety Network received funding for their emergency housing expansion project and Teton County Idaho Search and Rescue was awarded a grant for swiftwater rescue training.
The Youth Philanthropy program brings the Community Foundation into Teton High School, where staff members talk with the students about the organization’s mission and let the teens decide how to allocate $10,000 to local nonprofits. Last year, students opted to fund a variety of initiatives, including the purchase of a rugged, trail-worthy wheelchair for Seniors West of the Tetons, support for a program that helps new high school students, donations for the Teton Valley Food Pantry, and a contribution to Subs for Santa—the final a program where the high schoolers helped with shopping for fellow teens in need.
“Our [youth program] really is an amazing experience, because they not only learn about the impact of local nonprofits— they often connect with them, too,” Bonnie says, noting that students create a relationship with the nonprofits and sometimes even volunteer with the groups they fund.
The annual Tin Cup Challenge is the foundation’s largest opportunity for connection and is the flagship event, similar to Jackson Hole’s very popular Old Bill’s Fun Run, coordinated by the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole. The collaborative fundraiser, which involves a six-week-long giving period, is wildly successful, with one-third of valley households donating. On the third Saturday of July each year, around a thousand participants come out to enjoy the festivities, which include a fun run and roughly fifty nonprofit booths serving up friendly information and activities.
“It’s a really impressive feat of philanthropy in action,” says Claire Vitucci, who works in marketing and communications for the foundation.
Since its inception in 2008, the Tin Cup Challenge has brought in $30.8 million for area nonprofits, with $3.88 million raised in 2025 alone. The funds must be spent in the valley within eighteen months. It is unrestricted funding that can go toward operating costs, which are often difficult for nonprofits to raise. The Community Foundation’s board also works year-round to build up the Challenger Fund, to create a match pool to incentivize community giving.
“I think it’s Teton Valley at its finest,” Alex says.
Beyond funding opportunities, the Community Foundation also provides nonprofits with resources and support, including a listserv to share information like event dates and job and volunteer boards. Since many local organizations have limited office space and cannot easily accommodate meetings, the foundation offers a free meeting room, which was reserved more than 160 times last year alone. It also has a lending library of equipment like tents, tables, chairs, and projectors.
Additionally, the Community Foundation provides learning opportunities and ways for nonprofits to exchange business knowledge with one another. Workshops, as well as “pocket talks,” bring in local experts like certified public accountants to share advice on such topics as how to classify staff versus contractors.
Alex appreciates the training she has received in communications, finance, and presentation skills. “It’s not the caliber of training I feel like would have been accessible to me or to most small nonprofit directors otherwise,” she says.
With its newfound independence, the organization is looking ahead to continue making spectacular improvements in Teton Valley. “We’ve seen incredible growth,” Bonnie says, “but we’ve also seen incredible need, and so we want to continue to have the impact to keep up with that.”
