PPL Montana is giving a total of $100,000 in Community Fund grant money this spring to 18 Montana organizations that provide services and programs ranging from energy efficiency in the home to family health care.

“Supporting Montana communities — that’s what these grants are all about,” said Lisa Perry, manager of community affairs for PPL Montana.

“Since the Community Fund began in 2005, we’ve awarded a total of $700,000 to 115 Montana organizations that really care about education, the environment and economic development,” she said. “When we give money to groups like this, we help touch the lives of thousands of Montanans and improve the quality of life for all of us.”

The Community Fund received 140 applications for this spring’s grants.

An 18-member statewide advisory board, which includes civic and business leaders as well as PPL Montana employees, helps determine how best to distribute the funds.

“The board meets twice a year to select the grant recipients,” Perry said. “It’s always a challenge, because there are so many organizations in our state that support beneficial programs. Every application is carefully considered.”

PPL Montana will donate another $100,000 through its Community Fund this fall. The deadline for applications will be July 31. Applications are only accepted online. The application will be available beginning May 15 at www.pplmontana.com. Awards will be announced in October.

This spring’s PPL Montana Community Fund grant recipients are:

• Billings Catholic Schools, Billings, $7,000 — To upgrade and automate the library’s catalog to give students access to the Montana Shared Catalog, an electronic network of library reference materials.
   
• Boys & Girls Club of the Northern Cheyenne Nation, Lame Deer, $9,092 — To support the club’s Healthy Habits Program, which is aimed at improving physical activity and nutrition to prevent diabetes in children.
   
• Cascade Elementary School, Cascade, $3,000 — To help the library restock its outdated book collection to help children improve their reading and writing proficiency and complete research projects.
   
• Court Appointed Special Advocates of Missoula, $10,000 — To train 15 volunteers to act as guardians in the court system for abused and neglected children.
   
• Eastern Montana Mental Health Center, Glasgow, $1,500 — To purchase audiovideo equipment, enabling the center to deliver its services to clients, many of whom live on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation and don’t have the resources to come in to the clinic.
   
• Educational Opportunities for Central Montana, Lewistown, $10,000 — To purchase tools for a program that teaches vocational skills to students from 13 surrounding rural communities. By year’s end they will have built a modular home.
   
• Equinox Theatre Co., Bozeman, $4,620 — To expand an outreach program that takes “Science Theatre,” an innovative program about environmental awareness, to rural communities.
   
• Golden Triangle Gymnastics Club, Conrad, $4,225 — To match a grant to purchase gymnastics equipment for a new physical education program for young girls in Conrad, Shelby, Choteau, Valier and the surrounding rural areas.
   
• Great Falls Community Ice Foundation, Great Falls, $10,000 — To construct a skate rental shop at a new nonprofit ice arena for youth and adult physical education.
   
• Habitat for Humanity, Billings, $3,000 — To provide exterior lighting and signage and purchase storage bins and shelving at the new location of Re-Store, the organization’s retail store of surplus
  materials.
   
• homeWORD, Missoula, $1,500 — To support the “Sustainability Tour,” a forum of environmentally friendly green building practices in up to 10 homes where homeowners share what they learned during construction and remodeling.
   
• Margaret Leary Elementary School, Butte, $9,888 — To install Smart Boards, an interactive tool that allows teachers to project computer images on a white board that’s visible to an entire class.
   
• Miles City Elementary School District, Miles City, $10,000 — To install Smart Boards, an interactive tool that allows teachers to project computer images on a white board that’s visible to an entire class.
   
• Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, Bozeman, $4,600 — To fully fund one Shakespeare performance in Great Falls this summer.
   
• Montana Water Trust, Missoula, $3,375 — To purchase five TruTracks, water monitoring equipment to be used in four streams with the endangered bull trout.
   
• Ruby Valley Swimming Club, Sheridan, $1,200 — To purchase a chair lift to provide pool access for the elderly and people with physical disabilities.
   
• Scottish Rite Clinic, Billings, $5,000 — To support a speech, occupational and physical therapy clinic, offered free of charge to children with a variety of disabilities.
   
• The Angel Fund, Helena, $2,000 — To help needy children in Grades K-12 purchase school supplies, gym shoes, winter coats and materials for school projects.

PPL Montana provides safe, reliable energy from coal-fired power plants at Colstrip and Billings, as well as 11 hydroelectric plants along West Rosebud Creek and the Missouri, Madison, Clark Fork and Flathead rivers. It has a combined generating capacity of more than 1,200 megawatts and has offices in Billings, Butte and Helena. PPL Montana and its 500 employees are dedicated to Montana and its communities, supporting educational, environmental and economic development programs across the state. PPL EnergyPlus operates a trading floor in Butte that markets and sells power for PPL Montana in wholesale and retail energy markets throughout the western United States. PPL Montana and PPL EnergyPlus are subsidiaries of PPL Corporation (NYSE: PPL).