FNB accepting applications for community-development grants

Fort Collins-based First National Bank is accepting applications for its upcoming community-development grant cycle that is focused on programs related to educated workforce initiatives run by nonprofits. The bank’s second grant cycle opened June 5 and will run through July 3. It is for educated workforce programs, aimed at strengthening individual core competencies that will improve personal economic self-sufficiency, including adult basic education, and vocational and employability training. Programs must be implemented for the benefit of low- or moderate-income individuals, families and/or communities within the First National Bank footprint, which includes Nebraska, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota and Texas, including 24 branches along the Front Range, including multiple locations in Boulder, Broomfield, Fort Collins, Greeley, Loveland and Longmont. First National Bank also awarded $140,000 in community-development grants to 11 organizations that serve the Boulder Valley and Northern Colorado. The grants are part of the bank’s $834,000 grant program to aid 47 organizations in Colorado, Nebraska, Illinois, Kansas and South Dakota. Grants for affordable housing and neighborhood-revitalization programs in Colorado will enable the bank’s community partners to build, rehabilitate or finance 342 homes and provide 106 individuals with home-ownership education and foreclosure prevention services. Grants of $10,000 each went to the Fort Collins-based Mile High Community Loan Fund, Small Business Development Centers in Greeley and Larimer County and Habitat for Humanity chapters in Longmont, Fort Collins, Loveland, Boulder and Greeley. A $40,000 grant went to Fort Collins-based Rocky Mountain Innosphere.