By Carli Johnson SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR
Big Sky Thrift awarded its largest-ever annual grant of $150,000 to help build the first animal shelter in Big Sky. Local nonprofit Riley’s Urgent Fund for Friends (RUFF) is responsible for building the animal shelter within Lone Peak Veterinary Hospital’s new facility.
Lone Peak Veterinary Hospital plans to build the 7,600 square foot facility on a vacant parcel behind Caliber Coffee. It will be the only veterinary hospital and animal shelter facility in Big Sky, West Yellowstone and Ennis. Additionally, the two-story building will have five residential units on the second floor. These residences are slated to be deed-restricted and leased or sold to Big Sky locals.
“We are excited to take this next step in serving the Big Sky community,” Dr. Stephanie “Syd” Desmarais, owner of LPVH and RUFF, stated in a Jan. 31 press release. “Our new facility will enable us to better meet the growing demand for veterinary services in our community while ensuring we continue to provide compassionate, high quality care that our clients and their pets have come to expect.”
Big Sky Thrift, a nonprofit thrift store operated by the Yellowstone Club Community Foundation in retail space donated by Lone Mountain Land Company, is in its third year of annual grant giving, a process that allocates profits from the sale of used goods in the store to benefit local community groups. The grant selection process is led by the Thrift Store Grants Committee and the shop’s dedicated volunteers.
Historically, the annual grants have been distributed among multiple recipients. However, this year’s shift to a project-based grant model enables larger investments in impactful, community centered initiatives, according to the release.
“In our third year of granting, we realized that the bigger grants make a larger impact in the community,” Emily Burke, associate director of Big Sky Thrift, told EBS. “When we talked to Sydney, we were so impressed at how well she had it all planned out that the thrift committee truly felt that this was the best place to give the grant to this year.”
