This past May, the ten-member Rotary Charities Board sat around the table at a conference center in Lake Ann. The group had gathered for an off-site retreat, a big decision about the future of the group that has invested $52 million into the community before them.

“We presented a choice,” recalls Rotary Charities Executive Director Marsha Smith. “We could continue to be a philanthropic charity organization, or we could become a community change agent. It was a big proposed change.”

Ultimately the board voted unanimously to virtually reinvent itself again, taking yet another risk in its endless pursuit of positive change in the Grand Traverse region.

Founded after oil was found on land owned by the local Rotary Club in 1977, Rotary Charities has been an economic powerhouse ever since. Its vision through the decades has always been about the greater good and big ideas, from virtually rescuing the Park Place Hotel, helping create the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy and the Community Foundation and later preserving the State Theatre.

Then over the last several years, Smith led a change in what Rotary funded and why; the group became largely focused on helping local nonprofits “build capacity” by hiring fundraisers or helping find or train new board members. NorthSky Nonprofit Network was created to help provide consulting to those nonprofits Rotary had helped incubate or grow.

Now, following that May Board vote, Rotary Charities is changing again, choosing to leverage more of its investment portfolio to hopefully do even more good.

In recent years, the organization has spent or granted 4.5 percent of the rolling five-year average of its portfolio. Now it will tap its account in two additional ways: an extra half percent for program-related loans, and up to another 5 full percent on impact investments.

Infusing those extra dollars each year into the community, Rotary hopes, will spur action on key issues facing the region (housing and entrepreneurship are two such issues). And those investments won’t just be limited to nonprofits; short-term, low-interest loans or working capital for businesses are also on the table.

“We’re asking ‘what role can our money play?.’ We’re using it as a leverage point to make things happen in a cross-section of our community, in both business and nonprofits,” says Smith.

Those local investments will also likely yield returns, albeit perhaps lower than if the dollars remained in Rotary’s investment portfolio. But Smith adds that the group is looking at “both financial and social returns” on their outlays.

On the nonprofit side, Rotary’s focus will shift from supporting organizations to supporting “connected communities” and more collaboration. Smith hopes the power of the purse will force area nonprofits to look beyond themselves.

“We hope we can ask organizations ‘where do you see yourself fitting in overall? Who else is out there?.’ We want to force organizations to work together” toward a common goal.

She cites a current example of four local nonprofits all working on the same social issue. Rotary could bring them together to potentially divide responsibilities but also to work together to tap federal funding sources – or even in some cases consolidate the organizations into one.

“Again, it’s about ‘how do you make something happen?’.”

The most immediate impact will be that Rotary will not conduct its traditional spring grants in 2017 and will focus instead on annual fall grants, though Smith says Rotary “might or might not go back to twice per year.”

Pulling more money out of safer investments, pushing nonprofits to collaborate, and investing in businesses – they’re big risks. But Smith says she and the Rotary Charities Board are on the same page: “The real risk was continuing what we were doing. We were doing good stuff, but we learned that we were limiting our impact.”