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Leadership Notes

Welcome to the Iowa West Foundation. The purpose of this website is to share ideas as we work together to transform our community. Through this blog I’ll share my thoughts and ideas and invite your feedback. Please check back frequently. Your thoughts are important to me, and to creating the community we all envision.

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A Community Responds to COVID-19

A Community Responds to COVID-19

January 28, 2021

It’s never a good idea to declare victory prematurely, but as we head into a new stage of COVID-19 – the vaccination and recovery phase – let’s take a minute to thank those who helped our community pull through the overwhelming challenges of 2020. Last March, the Iowa West Foundation announced we would commit $1 […]

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New CEO is back at home in Council Bluffs

New CEO is back at home in Council Bluffs

October 8, 2020

“Welcome home.” I have been hearing those words a lot lately, and every time I hear them it warms my heart. Coming home to Council Bluffs was not a matter of convenience or luck. It was a longstanding goal. When I graduated from A.L. and headed off to the University of Iowa, I didn’t expect […]

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CORE Transparency Badge

From Ivory Tower to Open Book

July 6, 2020

Iowa West Foundation Earns National Transparency Designation An ivory tower. These are the words people used when referring to the Iowa West Foundation in a survey conducted by an outside vendor nearly a decade ago. The phrase references a metaphorical place where people are cut off from the rest of the world. Looking back, I […]

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COVID stock image

How Iowa West is Navigating the COVID-19 Crisis

April 28, 2020

It’s been one month since the COVID-19 crisis began. While sometimes it seems like the world we once knew was a lifetime ago, on a positive note it’s truly inspiring to see how our community has come together. Still, so much changed for the Iowa West Foundation in just the past 30 days. First, we […]

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Iowa West Foundation wall art

Iowa West Foundation is more than just a funder

March 11, 2020

PACE showcases what IWF can make possible More than eight years ago in my first few months as the President and CEO of Iowa West Foundation – I started to hear the same story repeated over and over: the arts were in trouble in Council Bluffs and Pottawattamie County. Providers were operating on shoestring budgets, […]

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Advisory Committees

Advisory Committees: What They Do and Why It’s Important

February 13, 2020

A Leadership Note Blog Post by Pete Tulipana In January of this year we welcomed five new members to the Iowa West Foundation Advisory Committees. There are three committees total, each one with expertise in one of our focus areas: Education, Healthy Families and Placemaking. In an effort to uphold our standards for transparency, we […]

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Pace groundbreaking

The Iowa West Foundation’s efforts in placemaking

December 22, 2019

To all of us at the Iowa West Foundation, it is important that the community understand our perspective on how the investments of the Iowa West Foundation are dramatically transforming our community. We want to invite the community to examine our efforts based on facts. In the past three editorials I have talked about the […]

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FAMILY, Inc.

The Iowa West Foundation’s efforts in healthy families

December 15, 2019

To all of us at the Iowa West Foundation it is important for the community understand how the investments of the Foundation are instrumental in transforming our community.   We want you to examine our efforts and our impact on facts. In the past two editorials I have discussed the $237 million dollars that has been […]

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Preschool kids with teacher

The Iowa West Foundation’s efforts in education

November 12, 2019

The response that I have received from the first guest editorial I wrote Partnership with City of Council Bluffs is the Linchpin of Transformation and published in The Nonpareil on Oct. 23, has been gratifying and enlightening. The most common response I have heard has been “I had no idea.” Most people had no idea […]

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OUR VISION is a community where families choose to live, and businesses choose to locate, because of its quality of life and standard of living.

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