It could probably go without saying at this point, but local nonprofits have had a tough year.

While some have seen unprecedented demand for their services, others, like the Lake Dillon Theatre Co., have had to constantly adapt in order to serve the community and keep in business.

“We actually closed on opening night of our spring show,” said Shawnna Dodd, the company’s director of development. “We thought, ‘Well, we’ll be back in two weeks.’”

Since then, she said “Plan B turned to Plan M,” and the theater company, which relies on ticket revenue, has had to rely on community support to keep afloat and continue providing programming, including virtual events, outdoor performances, and classes and camps for children.

Dodd said the help from The Summit Foundation “has been wonderful for us.”

Lake Dillon Theatre Co. is far from the only local nonprofit that continues to be affected by the ongoing pandemic, which is why The Summit Foundation decided to open up an additional round of grant funding, said Brian Balok, the foundation’s marketing and events manager.

“We typically do two grant cycles, but knowing the need of the community, we said, ‘Hey, let’s pull out some money,’” Balok said. “So we took it upon ourselves to do a special round of grants.”

When it opened applications for the additional round of grants in the middle of December, The Summit Foundation already had distributed close to $2 million dollars last year through previous grants, distributions and the Summit County Cares fund.

The latest round of community grants ended up distributing an additional $667,000 to 56 nonprofits based in Summit County and the surrounding area.

Balok said the foundation wanted to make more money available for local nonprofits that might not have been on the front lines but have still been affected by the pandemic.

“They provide a huge value to the community, and they’ve all been affected,” he said. “ … They need support, and we recognized that.”

While both Summit Youth Baseball and the Summit Tigers American Legion Baseball programs were able to put on summer programming last year, they missed out on most of their major fundraisers.

Todd Taylor, who sits on the Summit Youth Baseball board and serves as the board president for the legion baseball organization, said without the grant, both organizations would have had to drastically raise their costs for youths to participate in the programs.

“It helps us not increase player fees and pay coaches — to maintaining programming at the level we want to have it at,” Taylor said. “We know what the program costs, and we don’t want to pass a fee increase when families are having a tough enough time already.”

The Keystone Science School is putting their grant funds toward the Coordinated Approach to Child Health program, which typically runs after-school and summer programs for local school-age children, though the program hasn’t been able to run during the 2020-21 school year.

“This is a program which requires multiple points of support from our community,” said Ellen Reid, the school’s executive director. “Without their funding, we would be in a much less stable position.”

Balok said the foundation has been put in a great position to provide help as organizations like the Katz Amsterdam Foundation have stepped up to provide extra money, but ultimately he’s been incredibly impressed by how much the local community has done to help.

“The support of the community was really unbelievable,” he said. “To see that level of support was really overwhelming, that was just amazing, especially because everyone in the community was going through their own situation.”

Taylor agreed with Balok’s assessment, saying he has been impressed with how well the community supports organizations that serve the community.

“This was unexpected and so appreciated,” Taylor said. “It’s amazing to see the support that The Summit Foundation provides and the support the community provides to The Summit Foundation.”