A rendering shows the vision for the new 11,000 square foot community hall in Elgin. The multipurpose building would include event and meeting spaces, commercial kitchen, wheelchair accessible restroom facility and a museum. 

ELGIN —The Elgin Stampeders received three grants totaling $117,500 due in part to assistance from Studio 6 Consulting, a grant writing and consulting firm. The Stampeders will put the funds toward the future construction of a new community hall and the installation of a digital community sign and bicycle repair kiosk.

The largest grant is $100,000, from AgWest Farm Credit. The Chandler Fund of Oregon Community Foundation granted $15,000 and The Roundhouse Foundation, of Sisters, provided a grant of $2,500.

“The Elgin Stampeders Association would like to express their gratitude to these three Oregon organizations for their support and are looking forward to completing these projects in a timely manner,” Stampeders President Kyle Evans said.

Kylie Evans, Stampeders’ secretary and Kyle Evans’ daughter-in-law, wrote the grant application for the AgWest Farm Credit grant and submitted it in February. The Stampeders received notice of the $100,000 grant award in May.

“In March 2024, we started working with Lori and Rick Roach of Studio 6 Consulting,” Kylie said. “With Lori’s help and new people on board, things started to come together.”

Outside help with local connection

Studio 6 Consulting is in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and has raised more than $2 million for Oregon clients to date. Co-owner Lori Roach is a 1985 graduate of Elgin High School and for years operated Kimble Trailers in Elgin. She also is a past member of the Elgin Chamber of Commerce and the Elgin Stampeders. She owned the Elgin Times for one year followed by the North East Oregon Business News. In 2021, she founded Studio 6 Consulting.

“Elgin is near and dear to my heart,” Lori Roach said.

Studio 6 Consulting helped the Stampeders create a strategic plan, including mission and vision statements and goals for the next two to three years.

“We talked with the Stampeders about their projects, the types of grants they are looking for and how they want to go about it,” Lori Roach said. “We helped them create a grant strategy and talked about which grants are coming up and what to apply for.”

The grant strategy Studio 6 Consulting recommended to the Stampeders addressed their projects in phases, one project at a time, as grant funding comes in.

“We will be building the new hall in phases, and it depends on how the funding comes together,” Kyle Evans said. “The grants are for specific things, but if we had the money today, we could get (the hall) done in six months.”

Studio 6 Consulting submitted its first grant application in late July for a new digital community sign and the bicycle repair kiosk.

“I wrote the grant application for the $15,000 Oregon Community Foundation award the Stampeders received,” Lori Roach said. “Roundhouse heard about us and sent us an email saying they saw the project and wanted to give the Stampeders a $2,500 award.”

Grants give impetus to fundraising

“I think getting three grants like this just builds the momentum and gets everybody excited about the possibilities of new facilities,” Kyle Evans said. “It gets the community talking more about the facilities because we have so many organizations, not only in Elgin but in all Union County, who use them.”

With the new 11,000-square-foot community hall coming on, possibly by mid-2027, the Stampeders are confident that more organizations will bring their events to the hall and the rodeo arena.

“It’s just a big asset to Elgin and all of Union County, Wallowa County and surrounding counties,” Kyle Evans said.

Another part of their grant strategy involved getting a SAM.gov number, a unique identifier required for organizations receiving federal funds.

“We now qualify for applying for federal funding through Department of Emergency Management, which broadens our opportunities for funding that way,” Kylie Evans said.

Each quarter the Stampeders receive an update from Studio 6 Consulting pertaining to recent initiatives Lori Roach is going after and what part of the project the funds would be applied to.

Between the substantial work the Stampeders’ building committee puts into fundraising and the work Studio 6 Consulting does, Kylie Evans said, “It’s a group effort.”

To donate

Members of the public can make a tax-deductible donation toward the new building hall project at the Stampede Rodeo grounds at the Elgin Community Bank. They also can mail their donations to the Stampeders or give their donation to the Stampeders account at the Old West Federal Credit Union in La Grande.