About
Copper Shores Community Health Foundation is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization serving Michigan’s Copper Country, which includes Baraga, Houghton, Keweenaw and Ontonagon counties.
Below you’ll find our mission, vision, values, success factors, strategic goals and outcomes, and history. This information shapes everything we do.
Mission Statement
To positively influence a more healthful community through enhanced philanthropy and collaboration
Vision Statement
Values
- Integrity – We will be open, honest, and transparent in our administration and stewardship of the community assets entrusted to us.
- Commitment to the Community – We shall administer Copper Shores in a way that is objective, responsible, and focused on long-term sustainability and impact.
- Collaboration – We will work to bring perspective and experience together to fulfill our potential as we work as a broader group that represents the interests of the community we serve. This shall be done to ensure that we strive to identify, foster and maintain partnership-relations as we work to improve the health of our community.
- Creative Solutions – We will work towards that which we aspire to be and will find creative, innovate and sustainable solutions to the systematic challenges that face our community’s overall condition of health.
Success Factors
- People – We will employ, engage, develop, and retain high-caliber employees and board directors.
- Processes – We will work to ensure our administrative processes provide effective administration.
- Financial Performance – We recognize that we must achieve financial goals and investment returns in order to effectively and perpetually reinvest in our community.
- Communication – We will be transparent and honest in our promotion of the foundation and efforts to engage our donor community and cultivate overall public support.
- Community – We recognize and acknowledge the vitally important role our community partners, donors, and various stakeholders play in making this a more vibrant and healthful community and our success is found in their success and support.
Strategic Goals
Our work is intended to improve physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being by addressing the following long-term sustainability goals.
- To influence safe and healthful communities
- To help improve access to care for mental and physical health services
- To increase the number of well-nourished individuals in our community
- To increase the number of mentally, emotionally and physically-well and resilient people in our community
- To empower individuals to achieve family-sustaining financial stability, and
- To help make education accessible and affordable
Copper Shores History
Copper Shores Community Health Foundation is the re-envisioning of three long-standing nonprofit organizations in Michigan's Copper Country.The rebrand to Copper Shores Community Health Foundation was the result of Portage Health Foundation taking ownership of and merging with Copper Country Senior Meals and Dial Help, Inc. It was decided that the resulting acquisition and merger of the two organizations with Portage Health Foundation would best be conveyed in a name that better represented the entirety of the newly reformed organization and the region is serves - Copper Shores Community Health Foundation.
In 1971 “Dial Drug '' was established by volunteers to address addiction in Houghton, but by 1974 the name was officially changed to Dial Help, and youth focused prevention began in the Copper Country. Throughout the decades they added other programs such as prevention, victim services and the well-known crisis line. In early 2023, Dial Help also reincorporated into Portage Health Foundation to continue support for their operations.
On November 19, 1990 the Portage Health Foundation was first established with the purpose of supporting charitable and philanthropic activities within the Portage Health Hospital system. When Portage Health Hospital was sold to LifePoint Health, the hospital foundation converted to an independent 501(c)3 charitable organization with the purpose of addressing the charitable health needs of Baraga, Houghton, Keweenaw and Ontonagon counties. This resulted in the newly formed Portage Health Foundation in December of 2013, with a $32 million endowment.
In 1992, Keweenaw Health Resources, Inc. was officially established as a meals program for seniors in Keweenaw and Houghton County. Two years later, in 1994, Keweenaw Health Resources, Inc. officially changed its name to Portage Health Resources, Inc., and started the Portage Senior Nutrition Program. In 2009, Portage Health Resources, Inc. changed its name to Copper Country Senior Meals. As operational costs continued to rise and funding could not keep pace, Copper Country Senior Meals nonprofit dissolved and reincorporated under Portage Health Foundation to continue providing their services to local seniors.