Our history

The Community Foundation for Tumut Region began with discussions between the local community and the Pratt Foundation in 1999 when Visy was in the planning stage of building the Pulp and Paper Mill in the Gilmore Valley .Tony Gray, the Pratt Foundation representative helped in providing advice to Tumut Shire Council and the community and introduced Sylvia Admans CEO of  Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal (FRRR) and Heather O’Connor of the recently formed Mumbulla Community Foundation based in Bega. From all the discussions a steering committee was formed  of local interested residents including Tumut Shire Council and the Blakeney Millar Foundation.

The Community Foundation for Tumut Region was formed and registered in 2003 .  Since then the foundation has provided significant community support in many ways .Three years of Visy small community grants provided community groups across the Tumut shire with opportunities to grow and implement programs that were others wise very difficult to fund

During the subsequent years the CFTR has provided scholarships and small one off grants and supported community projects in non-financial ways with advice on charities and letters of support for many diverse projects

CFTR was able to respond quickly to the floods of 2010/12 and fires of 2019/20 by launching special appeals to provide significant financial support to individuals who had been directly impacted by these disasters. In so doing gift cards were donated to be used specifically at local business and service providers who were also effected by the disasters.

The fires provided CFTR the opportunity to change the constitution to serve the entire Snowy Valleys area and not just the boundary of what was Tumut Shire reaching out to approximately 11,000 residents across the area in some way

Since the significant activity of the bush fire recovery there is now time to reconsider the direction of CFTR and renew our aims and objectives and the area we serve.