Big Gift Brings North Valley Music School Fundraising Campaign to a Big Finish
If everything remains on schedule, the school anticipates construction on its new Smith Fields facility will wrap up in July
By Mike Kordenbrock
Amid ongoing construction of a new music school, and after roughly four years of public fundraising and gifts from more than than 650 donors, a surprise donation of $500,000 in the last weeks of 2024 brought North Valley Music School’s “Be Instrumental” capital campaign to its goal of $7.5 million.
The gift, provided by Jim and Lisa Stack of Whitefish in mid-December of 2024, came on the heels of another $100,000 from Joe Guerra, in honor of his wife Julie Lovern. Momentum had already been building for the capital campaign in 2024 before the strong close to the year. The combined $600,000 from those two donations was just four months removed from an announcement that North Valley Music School had received a $500,000 grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, a Vancouver-based nonprofit which specializes in partnering with nonprofits serving the Pacific Northwest.
Christine Rossi, who has been involved with the music school for more than a decade and currently serves as the president of its board of directors, called it “a pretty incredible act of generosity.” From the perspective of the Stacks, who own the Whitefish-based financial planning business Stack Financial Management, it was a chance to join in the effort that hundreds of other people had supported, and to show their gratitude to the local music community.
The Stacks said they’ve made other gifts in the past to various causes but that this is their largest. Lisa, who grew up in Kalispell, and Jim, who grew up in Cut Bank and learned to ski in Whitefish (he says he has the dubious honor of being the first person to fall off a chairlift at the mountain), both grew up playing music, including at their respective high schools. Although they no longer play, and Jim joked that they could clear out a karaoke club if they picked up a microphone, the Stacks remain lifelong music lovers and said they especially love to go out dancing when there’s live music.
Prior to their donation, the couple had been aware of the NVMS fundraising effort, and that it was nearing completion. In conversations between themselves, the Stacks started talking about the many ways in which music can impact a life, and the idea of the gift being a legacy that will continue on after them. It began to feel like a chance to do something deeply meaningful. Around Thanksgiving they started to get more serious about the idea, and eventually talked with Alan Davis at the Whitefish Community Foundation about whether or not they might be able to help close out the capital campaign for the music school.
For Deidre Corson, the executive director of the music school, the donation came as a shock, albeit a “fabulous” one. “I ran around the music school clicking my heels,” Corson said of her reaction when she first heard that a donor wanted to help finish the campaign with $500,000 remaining.
When it came time to present a check to the music school, Lisa said that they arrived on the site of the school’s new campus and between meeting the people involved, and touring the construction site, she was moved to tears more than once.
“I never expected it to be so emotional, for me personally, and for the people who were there,” Stack said.
If everything remains on schedule, the school anticipates construction on its new Smith Fields facility will wrap up in July, and a ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place in August. Meanwhile, the school’s location inside a home at 432 Spokane Ave. remains on the market for sale.
The effort to fund, construct and move to a new campus was brought on primarily by the need for more space. Rossi said the school has been “bursting at the seams” to fit the hundreds of students it sees each week. Back in 2022, Corson told the Beacon that the school was stuffing instruments into closets for storage when they could find room in the roughly 100-year-old home where classes are currently taught.
The new ADA-compliant building will have 15 private studios, a large group classroom, a multi-purpose recital space that can fit 100 seats, additional instrument storage, staff offices, a faculty lounge, and increased parking.
The initial funding to get the campaign off the ground came from the Jack and Gloria Kramer Foundation, and since then, gifts have come in a range of sizes and forms, from students chipping in a few dollars from their own piggy banks to big checks representing big commitments. Part of the “Be Instrumental” campaign will go towards the school’s endowment, in addition to covering construction costs, but there is still some additional fundraising to be done for the fund which will sustain the school into the future.
In the meantime though, there’s still excitement about the strong finish to 2024, and for the future ahead.
“What this does,” Rossi said, “Is it helps this community to continue bringing music education and the transformative power of music education to the valley.”