For Montana's nonprofit sector, the influx of wealthy people, especially part-time residents, is a blade that cuts both ways.

Having them here can carve access into new funding, expertise and opportunity. But their presence also can chop away at the underpinnings that make communities and ecosystems work.

"They're a double-edged sword," said Lill Erickson, executive director of the Corporation for the Northern Rockies, a Livingston nonprofit organization that aims to reduce human impacts and make local economies vital and sustainable. "They can bring all kinds of new ideas and resources. Or they can be unconscious about what they do, how it affects resources and the people around them. And there are plenty on both sides."

The influx of new wealth also raises housing costs and other expenses for the entire community, while many long-time residents see their wages failing to keep up.

In Bozeman, the overall cost of living is 4 percent above the national average, yet the average wage is 30 percent below the national average.

And the poverty rate in Gallatin County was 13.6 percent in 2004, higher than the statewide average of 12.7 percent, according to the most recent data available from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Heather Grenier, program director at the Gallatin Valley Food Bank, said her organization just keeps getting busier.

"It's expanding into a higher-income bracket," she said of the food bank's clientele. "People are making too much for any kind of public assistance, but they're not making" enough to afford the cost of living in the Gallatin Valley. More than half of the food bank's clients are working folks "whose income isn't matching up to expenses."

The elderly, the disabled and the low skilled also struggle to make ends meet.

And government is picking up a smaller share for food, shelter and medical care.

"Federal dollars, especially for human services, are going down," said Carol Townsend, executive director of the Greater Gallatin United Way. That group serves as a funnel, delivering money to groups that do things like deliver hot meals to shut-ins and provide quality child care and after-school programs for couples working two jobs just to stay afloat.

"Childcare is incredibly expensive and hard to find," Townsend said. "We don't live in a world where there's a stay-at-home mom in almost every household. That's just today's economics."

And that's where United Way-funded programs step in, working with a $900,000 annual budget that comes mostly from long-term residents who work for wages, she said.

"The ones who invest in human services are the ones who have the least," Townsend said. "It happens over and over again."

She and others working in human services said that the new money in southwest Montana hasn't been showing up in their budgets. The new arrivals might be generous - particularly for environmental and educational groups - but their priorities often lie elsewhere.

"Human services aren't on their radar," Townsend said of wealthy new arrivals. "It's been harder for us to be introduced to each other."

There are exceptions however.

BIG BENEFACTORS

One of those exceptions is Klein Gilhousen, one of the founders of the cell-phone giant Qualcomm and a Gallatin Valley resident since the 1990s.

"The Gilhousen Family Foundation is behaving differently from the typical foundation," Townsend said. "They're actually giving away more in human services than the United Way is. And that's maybe the only case of that in the nation."

That foundation has given $8.8 million since 2001, according to Internal Revenue Service records, and most of that landed in the Gallatin Valley, including $2.3 million just in 2006.

Over the years, major gifts included $1.3 million for the First Baptist Church in Bozeman, $1 million for Montana State University, $510,000 for a theater renovation by Montana Theater Works, and $400,000 for a therapy pool for REACH.

Beyond that, Gilhousen's money has fed and housed the poor or homeless, tended to unwed mothers and abandoned pets, helped preserve local history, sponsored Shakespeare in the Parks and fought methamphetamine addiction.

"He's a very, very generous person," said Bill Bryan, co-owner of Off the Beaten Path, a Bozeman company that arranges ecologically sensitive tourism in North and South America. He's also active with local nonprofits. "They don't have their name on it, but they've been wonderful supporters of things in this town."

Another major foundation in the area is the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, funded by Home Depot cofounder Arthur Blank, who owns the Mountain Sky Guest Ranch in Paradise Valley. That foundation gave $455,000 to Montana nonprofits in 2007, mostly for educational and youth-oriented causes.

Bryan, who said he has raised between $20 million and $25 million for various Montana nonprofits in his 35 years in the state, said many of the wealthy newcomers are generous, but often have little awareness of local needs, especially because Montana doesn't have a highly visible underclass.

"Some of these people are coming in here and they don't have a clue," Bryan said. "But whether we like it or not, people with a lot of money are coming into this community and they're going to keep on coming. We've got to help them understand what it's like living in our community."

Many newcomers are attracted to the state by its amenities: the sweeping vistas, the hiking and hunting and fishing, the skiing and wildlife and national parks and wilderness areas. And many of them seek to protect those things, often through donations to environmental groups, of which Bozeman has a plethora.

"It's not by accident that a number of national (environmental) organizations have opened regional offices in the Bozeman area," said Mike Schechtman, executive director of the Big Sky Institute for the Advancement of Nonprofits and a man with 34 years of experience in many facets of nonprofit groups.

"Their offices are out here for a reason," Bryan agreed. "Not just for the environment, but because of the philanthropic interests out here."

In 1972, he noted, environmental groups in all of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho employed a total of two individuals. Today, scores of people earn their living working for environmental groups in Bozeman alone.

MAKING CONNECTIONS

The nonprofit sector is a growing part of Montana's economy. It accounted for $2.8 billion in spending in 2004, according to the Montana Nonprofit Association, though about 60 percent of that money was spent by nonprofit hospitals, which are financed largely by fees charged to patients.

Many human services groups traditionally relied on government grants or contracts, but that funding source has been shrinking over the past 10 years "and they're not getting enough money for what they're doing," Schechtman said.

"It's not that newcomers don't care or aren't giving," he said, but some groups either aren't approaching them, or they aren't approaching in the right way.

"Some of it is sophistication" on the part of money raisers, he said. "And part of it is just starch."

Mark Ledger provides an example. He is a successful real estate consultant from Philadelphia who owns a second home in Livingston, where he spends several weeks a year.

"I had no interest in having land outside of town," he said. "And I certainly had no interest in developing land."

In Philadelphia, he donates time and money to homeless care and antipoverty groups.

"I spend a lot of time in the trenches with those people," he said. "What I care about (in Philadelphia), is the inner-city poor."

In Montana, he donates to Erickson's group and recently became its board president.

His main interests are urban poverty and Montana conservation, but he said he writes "lots and lots of checks" for $50 to $500 to other groups. Sometimes it's because he believes in the cause. Sometimes, it's because "some friend of ours is soliciting us."

"Where we step up a little is when we really know the organization well, and where we can also volunteer," he added.

He's typical of many part-time residents.

Jim Barrett, executive director of the Park County Environmental Council, said his group relies to a large degree on donations of $250 and up. Of those donors, "probably the vast majority" are part-time residents, he said.

For nonprofits in Montana, the key to fundraising can be making connections with people who, even if they don't live here, still care about the place and its people.

But that could mean changing how they do things.

"My suspicion is that lots of organizations need to take a hard look at what is their approach to engage this new group of giver," Schechtman said.

Some groups are already figuring that out.

INVESTING IN THE FUTURE

Bryan is part of a team raising $16 million for the Museum of the Rockies. That effort is succeeding, he said, because the museum, like the landscape, is "preeminent." Most of that money came from out-of-state residents, he said, "but all of them have some connection to Montana."

Montana has a cachet unmatched in the West, he maintained.

"What other Western state is mentioned more often in the New York Times?" he asked. "None."

People come to visit. They decide to buy a place. They invite friends. Some of them buy or build places of their own.

Erickson calls them "pods." There's a Philadelphia pod based in the Red Lodge area, she said. There's a Wall Street pod in Paradise Valley.

"Philanthropy comes along with that," Bryan said.

But, with a few exceptions, the donations come in a relative trickle.

Montana foundation grants worked out to $28 per capita in 2005, Schechtman said. The national average was $117 per capita.

That reflects, in part, Montana's history. Since the earliest European settlement, the state has exported wealth, whether it was in the form of furs, cattle, wool, timber, minerals or its educated and ambitious young people. Over generations, that wealth tended to aggregate in urban centers, often in charitable foundations that tended to spend their money near foundation headquarters.

Today, some of the wealth is coming back, in the form of people buying and building in Montana. Unlike the traditional extractive industries, the new economy brings its own money. And as the new money builds relationships with Montana's nonprofit sector, numerous groups, and the people and causes they serve, could stand to benefit, Bryan said.

He noted that charitable donations of $10 million to $20 million are not uncommon around the country. "They're not giving that kind of money here - at least not yet," Bryan said. "They're giving that money in San Francisco. They're giving it in Los Angeles and New York."

The origins of all the new money in Montana is impossible to track fully. But the sales office at The Yellowstone Club, which admits only millionaires, offers some insight. There, colored pins adorn a wall map, each signifying the home town of the 340 members (so far) of that private resort, all of whom bought property there within the past decade.

Owners come from 35 states and seven countries, but the vast majority of the pins cluster tightly around urban areas: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis, New York, Boston and Washington D.C. None of those people are Montana residents, according to Hank Kashiwa, vice president of marketing at the club.

Club members donate to local charities: A golf tournament raised $80,000 in one day for the Montana Hope Project, a dinner raised $26,000 for the Montana Meth Project, and a wine auction, in which donors bid on things like donated yacht trips, raised $200,000 for a wide variety of causes.

Club owner Tim Blixseth has donated $1 million to build a high school at Big Sky and $2 million for Hurricane Katrina relief.

Other wealthy people scattered around the region give generously as well. One of the most noteworthy is Thomas Siebel, who spent $5.6 million to launch the Montana Meth Project's vivid advertisements.

But there remains what Bryan calls "an urban-rural divide" that he said is becoming "greater and greater." Locals often fail to understand the newcomers, who in turn often don't grasp the needs of a local culture and economy that can feel swamped by new money.

"I think this is the issue," he said. "There's a divide where there needs to be a partnership."

The United Way's Townsend said philanthropy shouldn't be seen as a handout. Local human-services organizations give food, for example, but they also teach nutrition and budgeting classes. Helping with daycare and medical care reduces the chances of a family becoming homeless. That keeps the parents working, which decreases the odds that today's children will still need help in 20 years.

"Look at the reality of what is, and focus on building a better community," she said. "We're hoping that philanthropy will see the economic benefit of that. The children they're helping now are going to be their employees in 20 years."

Scott McMillion can be reached at scottm@dailychronicle.com.

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