Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines President Kristi Knous and board Chair Franklin Codel speak during Wednesday’s ceremony celebrating the start of construction on the foundation’s new campus and C3 project. Watch the video here. Below: A participant signs a board that will be embedded in the construction of the Community Foundation’s new campus and C3 Center. Photos by Michael Crumb

The Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines’ new campus and C3 Center will serve as a central hub to the region’s nonprofit and charitable giving communities when it opens in early 2023, foundation President Kristi Knous said during a ceremony commemorating the start of construction on the project.

A group of about 50 people gathered under overcast skies in the parking lot behind the foundation’s headquarters in the Finkbine Mansion for the ceremony where Knous and foundation board Chair Franklin Codel discussed the project and what it will mean for the community.

The more than $4.3 million project, announced last fall, is being paid for entirely through donations, Codel said.

“This will not impact in any way, shape or form the grant-making capacity of the foundation,” he said. “In fact, I’d argue it’s going to enhance it and make it a better and stronger organization.”

Codel called the project a “wonderful next step in the evolution of the Community Foundation.”

“This building, when it’s finished, will be a wonderful place to collaborate, have charitable conversations, create a community so people around Des Moines and Central Iowa can come together to continue those charitable and philanthropic conversations,” he said.

The campus will include the foundation’s current home in the Finkbine Mansion, 1915 Grand Ave., with the addition of the former Tri-City Electric building directly to the north at 1910 Ingersoll Ave. An outdoor plaza will be built in the space between the two buildings, where a parking lot currently sits. When combined, the area will be known as the Community Foundation Campus and C3 Center. The C3 name is derived from the 501(c)(3) tax status of nonprofits, but also stands for connection, collaboration and community.

The foundation bought the former Tri-City Electric building for $760,000 in November 2020 after that business moved to another building across Ingersoll Avenue.

The plan is to add a second story to the former Tri-City Electric building, creating 12,456 square feet for meetings, training, office space for nonprofits, and more room for the Community Foundation’s accounting team, which performs accounting services for 35 nonprofit clients.

The first floor will feature a boardroom and community meeting space, and a training area that will seat 75 people. The second floor will feature a conference room and office space that will serve nonprofit tenants.

“I cannot wait to watch the doors open to the C3 Center because our nonprofit sector will have a home,” Knous said during Wednesday’s ceremony.

She said the foundation offers training for about 1,000 people from the community’s nonprofits each year, and the C3 Center will provide a centralized location to do that.

“For 20 years we have been space-hopping,” she said. “We’ve never had a location to have those trainings at consistently, and it will be such a blessing to have a training center here both for our nonprofit sector and for charitable giving intention.”

The ceremony featured a wooden board that participants could sign and extend their best wishes for the project. The board, Knous said, will be embedded into the construction of the C3 Center, helping to carry the foundation’s story forward.

“At the Community Foundation we often say, ‘If only these walls could talk, the stories they could tell,”’ she said. “The meetings we have with donors. Its experience as a clothing store, you just wouldn’t believe the stories that we hear, and literally we’ll be able to have our walls tell stories within the new center as well with your names and messages that you add today.”