Building a Better Community

What can our co-op do to give back to the communities we live and work in?

The Challenge

Roosevelt County Electric Cooperative is in rural New Mexico, and the electricity it provides is essential to help its members through the hot desert days. But like a lot of co-ops, Roosevelt sees itself as a long-term partner with its communities. It wants to help build a foundation that can sustain them far into the future. One way to do that is to promote higher education; according to Census Bureau’s 2021 American Community Survey, less than 30% of New Mexicans 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree.

The Partnership

Homestead Funds wants to help cooperatives achieve their mission and reach their financial goals. When cooperatives choose Homestead, we strive to understand these goals. To address the question posed above for Roosevelt, Homestead representatives engaged closely with the co-op’s leadership to better understand its community’s needs and available sources of funding.

Roosevelt decided it wanted to offer college scholarships to students in its communities. Doing so would help create opportunities for neighborhood families, and it would also help bring technical skills back to the communities to sustain the work of the cooperative.

Once Roosevelt determined the terms of the scholarship, the cooperative established a trust account with assets invested in a mix of Homestead Funds. The portfolio was designed to provide long-term growth with a moderate degree of risk. To Roosevelt, Homestead was an easy choice, as our representatives regularly work with cooperatives to tackle common financial challenges.

The Solution

Roosevelt elected to set up a scholarship fund and open a trust account with Homestead Funds.

• Roosevelt uses a combination of unclaimed capital credits and private donations to fund the trust. Most but not all states allow unclaimed capital credits to be used for charitable purposes. Check your state’s statutes.
• Roosevelt set criteria for the scholarships and created a committee to review applications.
• Homestead representatives provide guidance in establishing the mix of funds in the portfolio based on Roosevelt’s defined investment objectives.
• Homestead continues to work with Roosevelt to provide performance metrics and regular check-ins that allow the scholarship committee to make appropriate choices about the amount of scholarships to award.

The Results

Since 1996, Roosevelt has helped numerous New Mexico students pay for a portion of their college education costs. The scholarship program has been invested with Homestead since 1996 and has helped numerous New Mexico students pay for a portion of the costs of a college education.