Frontier Communications awards Growth Dimensions with check

By Kathryn Menue

Editor

BELVIDERE – Frontier Communications awarded Growth Dimensions with a $5,000 check on Wednesday, July 29 at 11:30 a.m. at Belvidere City Hall in front of the mural in the Council Chambers.

The check came as a nice surprise for Growth Dimensions who applied for the Best Community Grant with Frontier Communications, but lost out in the first round of the competition.

“We don’t feel bad that we didn’t get it [the grant],” Growth Dimensions Executive Director Jarid Funderburg said. “A lot of good communities didn’t get it.”

However, Frontier Communications presented Growth Dimensions with a $5,000 check anyway for their efforts with the grant and with the Belvidere/Boone County community.

Frontier General Manager Thomas Kuschman said that since Frontier is the “largest rural telephone company in America” that they want to give back to the small rural communities.

“We want to help school districts and communities,” Kuschman said. “It’s the right thing to do” since “not everyone can be New York or Pittsburg.”

Funderburg said that Growth Dimensions is very excited about the donation and indicated that the money Growth Dimensions received will go to building a relationship with the Chicago area to help promote economic growth within the Belvidere/Boone County Community.

The Best Community Grant is for improvement and quality of life for small town communities. Even though Boone County did not win the grant, Growth Dimensions will still work with the smaller donation to improve the community.

“Belvidere and Boone County has a good story we want to tell,” Funderburg said.

Frontier Communications would love to help with that mission.  Although Kuschman is the general manager of 55 communities, he still makes time to help each one.

Kuschman said that he would be available to come and speak with the community, if they would like to find out all about Frontier and their mission.

Kuschman wants to “broker a relationship” with each community to know that customers are satisfied with the service they offer. To help build that relationship, Frontier Communications will be at the Boone County Fair all week to hand out free stuff and answer questions and concerns.

Frontier Communications would like to “broker” relationships with their customers throughout the U.S., which is why they started the Best Community Grant.

Over 400 communities from 28 states entered to receive the Best Community Grant. From that, the entries were narrowed down to 50 with only 3 communities in Illinois making it past the first round: Carbondale, Monmouth, and DeKalb.

Now, the entries have been narrowed down to 18 where each of these communities can receive $100,000 to improve their area.

DeKalb was the only community to make it into the quarter finals from Illinois. In hopes of winning the whole competition, DeKalb, like the other communities in the quarter finals, received a mentor, ESPN, to help them improve their economy in hopes of winning one of the top three prizes: first place, $3 million; second place, $2 million; or third place, $1 million.

Even though not every community could receive the millions of dollars they desire to improve their communities, Frontier wanted to give each community a chance to improve the “economy and the quality of life.”

Kuschman said that even with only $5,000 areas can “go do something with the money so the community can see you do something transformative.”