ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
The Meade County Community Foundation was founded in 2019 to help communities by granting funds, and while the foundation was initially started with funds collected from the Meade County Sheriff’s Department, keeping funding in place to help those communities is a constant need.
This month, MCCF is getting some help from Hat Creek Butchery, a beef and pork processor based in Plains, with a retail store in Liberal. The butchery recently announced an initiative to commit 10 percent of its sales from the Liberal store in May will be donated directly to the foundation.
“Every purchase helps strengthen non-profit organizations serving our local communities – simply by buying high-quality, locally processed meats,” a press release from Hat Creek said.
Foundation Director Cheyenne Federau said MCCF is incredibly excited and honored to partner with the butchery this month.
“Is there a better way to give back than by purchasing great quality local products you already use and love, processed right here in our county?” she said. “We can’t think of anything. The need is extremely high right now to keep our non-profits running, and your support will make a huge impact.”
Mark West, one of the owners of the butchery, emphasized the importance of the partnership.
“Meade County is where Hat Creek Butchery began, and we’re proud to give back to the communities that supported us from the start,” he said. “Supporting the Meade County Community Foundation means helping non-profits across both Meade County and parts of Seward County, where our retail location sits. We’re honored to be part of this effort.”
Federau said she found out about the initiative from a recent call from Hat Creek asking if the butchery could do anything to help the foundation.
“I told them with our last grant cycle, we had 32 applicants who requested $117,000,” she said. “We do two grant cycles a year, so that was basically half of what the need is for this year. We were able to meet that, and we’re trying to help everybody as best we can.”
This is when Federau was asked about having Hat Creek donate 10 percent of May sales to MCCF.
“It’s pretty neat, and we’re very thankful for that,” she said.
In its short existence, Federau said the foundation has not a partnership like this.
“We’re relatively new,” she said. “It’s awesome from the donation standpoint, but also to help us get our name out there, what we’re doing, who we’re helping and get some PR for our non-profits as well. It’s a win-win for everybody.”
Federau said the partnership with Hat Creek provides a great means to keep the foundation’s growth moving forward.
“We’ve grown a lot over the last year, and I think it’ll propel us to do more,” she said. “I think we have a lot of Meade County people who live in Seward County and work in Seward County and in Liberal who don’t know who we are. I think it’ll be a good full circle thing.”
Federau said MCCF does much work in Seward County, as well as Meade County.
“I met with the library in Plains last week, and they have all kinds of stuff that is open all the way from Fowler to Kismet,” she said. “A lot of our non-profits don’t work specifically in the town where we give them a grant, but it’s really through both counties and sometimes even goes further out into other counties.”
Federau said with area events attracting those from cities and counties in the region, this could make the Hat Creek initiative even bigger.
“If somebody has an event, it’s not just people from that town who are coming,” she said. “It’s people from all over our little area of the state and sometimes Oklahoma too. We had an event, and we had a lot of people who came up from the Beaver County area.”
Federau said MCCF thus far has given $60,000 to more than 50 non-profits, and she said though that is a big number, at the same time, it is an unduplicated number.
“If we were duplicating them, we have about five to 10 non-profits we’ve given grants to multiple times,” she said. “The 50 is an unduplicated number, and we’ve given out $60,000 in total. My biggest goal is it will be able to help us with the ones we weren’t able to help in January, and we’ll be able to help them in our next upcoming grant cycle in July. It was really tough.”
This means, Federau said, the foundation was not able to fund agencies recently as much as they have in the past because of a greater need.
“It wasn’t that we had less funding. It was that usually we get an ask of $10,000 to $15,000 total for a grant cycle, and this one was $117,000,” she said.
Federau said many of the agencies that did not receive funding from MCCF did get grants from the Western Kansas Community Foundation, which funds all of Southwest Kansas, and she told many agency leaders they could get funding from WKCF.
“Two of our non-profits we weren’t able to help, they were, so maybe this will help us fill in the gaps between the ones that weren’t able be helped from our last grant cycle or theirs, and we can get everybody what they need,” she said.
Agencies likewise can get help from local United Way agencies, though Federau said the thought process is somewhat different there.
“We’re all trying to do the same thing,” she said. “United Way thinks of it as a checking account, and a community foundation think of it as a savings account. We grant out most of the money we get, but we also invest some. If there’s anything else that needs to happen in the future, we always have a reserve fund. With United Way, they grant out everything that comes in. It’s a little different, but we’re both trying to do the same thing and both have the same mission. We appreciate them and are thankful to have them as well.”
As for the remainder of 2025, Federau said the foundation is primarily seeking donations at this time for its next grant cycle.
“We were short,” she said. “Usually, we just do one in December, but we thought we’d try to do one this spring.”
Federau said the Hat Creek partnership was not planned in conjunction with the foundation’s latest fundraising cycle, but it simply worked out that way. Early fall will see MCCF’s big non-profit day.
“I think we’ll do it in October, maybe September,” she said. “We’re excited to be able to do that again.”
Federau said her excitement level could not be any higher for the Hat Creek partnership.
“10 out of 10,” she said. “My board is also thrilled about it. I put on the agenda. I didn’t even get to the meeting, and I had somebody say, ‘You need to tell me more about this.’ They thought it was something I had set up. I was excited they thought I did it, but I said, ‘No it all came from them.’ We’re honored, excited and happy that they would want to do this with this.”
Federau said the partnership was not something foundation leaders called or asked for in any way.
“They approached us, and I think that makes it even more special that they’re really wanting to give back and do something that really is going to make a big impact,” she said. “We’re at the point where a lot of our non-profits are not getting the donations they’ve got in the past, and they’re starting to rely on grants from not just us, but we’re a big part of that, and if we can grow and help and have these partners, it’s just everybody trying to make everything better. It’s a really cool deal.”
