Giving back: Banks, distillers, others step up

BEN ALLAN SMITH, Missoulian Banks, real estate agents, distillers step up to help (PSOR\HHV-RH\+XGHNDQG*LQD0RUULOO2OVRQÀOOKDQGVDQLWL]HU ERWWOHVIURPDMXJ0RQWJRPHU\'LVWLOOHU\KDVDOLVWRIFOLHQWVFXUUHQWO\RQWKH waitlist for more, so they aren’t accepting any new orders at the moment.

DAVID ERICKSON david.erickson@missoulian.com

From banks to real estate companies to local distilleries and breweries, Missoula businesses and nonprofits are taking action during the coronavirus pandemic to support healthcare workers and needy people in the community.

12 MISSOULA BUSINESS • SPRING 2020

Ryan Montgomery, who owns Montgomery Distillery in downtown Missoula with his wife Jenny, has been able to keep more than a half-dozen workers on the payroll by pivoting to making hand sanitizer for local healthcare workers and first responders. He teamed up with Big Sky Brewing Co. in Missoula and is now pumping out 50 gallons a week of the stuff.

“They donated their extra keg beer to us, and we’re distilling that into alcohol,” Montgomery explained. They then mix the alcohol with other ingredients and bottle it. He jokes that it’s the “most expensive hand sanitizer in history” because very little alcohol comes from the beer, and his artisan setup isn’t specifically designed for the purpose. They’re barely covering costs, but he said he’s happy to be doing something to help.

Montgomery has been inundated with calls from hospitals, clinics and other organizations all over Montana and the region, and he said he’s simply unable to fill all requests. But he and his team have delivered to local hospitals, police, firefighters and the Montana Highway Patrol. Rattlesnake Creek Distillery in Missoula also has been making hand sanitizer, as have many distilleries in Montana.

“We’re able to do it, so we decided we wanted to help until all the big manufacturers can ramp up production,” Montgomery said.

He noted that they’re currently on a very long waitlist for sanitizer, so he’s not able to take any new requests at this time, and the sanitizer is solely for healthcare workers and others on the front lines.

They’re not the only business that’s pivoted during this time.

Engel & Völkers Western Frontier, a real estate brokerage based in Missoula with shops throughout western Montana, kicked into gear on a different initiative as soon as local businesses and restaurants were restricted due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Their “Feeding the Frontlines” program began sending meals each day to local hospitals, including St. Patrick’s Hospital, Community Medical Center, Kalispell Regional Medical Center, St. Joseph’s in Polson and Marcus Daly Memorial Hospital in Hamilton. Brokerage owner Dawn Maddux kicked things off with a donation, then more than 60 real estate advisers and staff stepped in to extend the program. In the first week of April, they started a GoFundMe account so community

friends and neighbors could help keep their program going and quickly raised over $1,000. They’ve also purchased $3,000 worth of meals from local restaurants.

“As a fellow small business owner and spouse of a medical professional, I understand not only the stress of keeping your doors open and employees working during this time, but also the daily stresses facing our medical teams,” Maddux said. “We know how important it is to support our local small businesses right now, and these meals are just one small way we can say thank you to our medical heroes working so hard to keep us healthy.”

Stockman Bank, a statewide financial institution with offices in Missoula, has offered to defer loan payments that are due and will restructure debt for borrowers as necessary. The bank is also working with commercial and agricultural customers on a case-by-case basis.

“Over the past few weeks, we have all become part of an unprecedented world health crisis,” said Stockman CEO Bill Coffee. “As schools, universities and local businesses temporarily close, community and sporting events cancel and people stay home to self quarantine, care for loved ones or even themselves should they become ill, we recognize the stress and anxiety this causes for Montanans, who still have bills to pay. As Montana’s community bank, we are making accommodations to help reduce this stress and protect customers’ credit.”

Coffee said they’re offering 24-hour telephone banking.

“During our nearly 70-year history, through ups and downs — market swings, wars, natural disasters — we have weathered many storms together,” Coffee said. “Montanans are strong, resilient and we take very good care of each other. We will weather this storm too.”

The Headwaters Foundation, a local healthcare nonprofit, has pledged nearly half a million dollars in 2020 to help fund organizations on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis.

“As the COVID-19 crisis rapidly became more widespread, staff talked extensively with our grantees to understand their changing needs,” said Headwaters CEO Brenda Solorzano. “We brought this information to our board, and they made the courageous decision to allocate more resources to organizations in western Montana as these organizations work tirelessly to address the issues, gaps and needs left in the wake of COVID-19. This funding is meant to respond to what our grantees told us were the most urgent needs they see in our communities.”

The new $450,000 allocation approved by the Headwaters board of trustees will bolster the $4.3 million the foundation already budgeted for 2020 grant making.

Solorzano said the additional funding is earmarked to address food insecurity and emergency childcare. Headwaters will also realign American Indian strategic initiative funding to meet the immediate needs of American Indian communities in western Montana as a result of the current pandemic.

“We want this money to help people now,” Solorzano said. “Food banks, childcare centers, and small nonprofits are suffering, and we hope this extra boost will help in this time of crisis.”

COVID-19 pandemic inspires generous Montanans

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Montana, many of our friends and neighbors stepped up to help those in need.

Their spirit of generosity prompted business owners and a University of Montana researcher to pivot to making hand sanitizer, Starbucks employees and others to sew masks, and a company based in Bozeman to design face shields for emergency responders.

As the pandemic clobbers people and businesses, here’s a reminder of just some of the other generous community members lending their time and knowhow to ease the way for people on the frontlines and those affected in the economic fallout.

Rocky Mountain Biologicals rapidly switched gears in order to produce a muchneeded component for COVID-19 testing capabilities in Montana and the world if needed. Formed in 2004 and located in Missoula’s development park near the airport, the company usually makes cell culture media like serum and other products for the pharmaceutical, cancer treatment and veterinary vaccine industries.

Grant Kier, the CEO of the Missoula Economic Partnership, knew there was an acute shortage of viral transport media for COVID-19 testing. Essentially, viral transport media is clear substance that’s used in a testing kit to transport the swab from a patient to a lab.

“The viral transport media was a bottleneck in the process of getting tested,” explained Jeff Pease, the chief business development officer at Rocky Mountain Biologicals. “I don’t know the reason why it’s not more available, but Grant Kier and Nicole Finke at Community Medical Center informed us there’s a shortage. Others in the state are getting close to running out. They asked if we could make it.”

As it turned out, the company had most of the necessary components on hand. In just one day, it produced enough media, 18 liters, for 6,000 tests. The material was going to Community Medical Center and 14 other hospitals and clinics across the region, including a tiny clinic in eastern Montana.

A group of Missoula Starbucks employees could have taken paid time off at home, but instead, they gathered at the coffee shop to sew masks to help the community. They brought in their own sewing machines, and they made 30 masks in just one day.

“All of us that were not at work were just at home, so we were just like, might as well come here and hang out and all sew together,” store manager Meghan Murtagh earlier told the Missoulian.

Dr. Neil Fishman, the chief medical officer of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, told the New York Times that even homemade masks could help protect people infected with the virus from spreading it. Masks shouldn’t replace hand-washing and social distancing, but the story notes they should be considered part of the arsenal of protection.

Many people have figured out ways to make hand sanitzer even though their usual day jobs have little or nothing to do with that product.

At UM, professor Rich Bridges learned firefighters needed hand sanitizer, and he turned his lab into a production facility, using a power drill with an attachment to mix two simple ingredients.

“It’s fun to be able to do something,” he said, wearing a white lab coat and pouring carefully measured proportions of glycerol and isopropyl alcohol into a big bucket. He’d already made and distributed 25 gallons of hand sanitizer, and when the Missoulian met with him a couple of weeks ago, he was expecting 2,000 empty bottles in the mail. Bridges, in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy’s Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, planned to fill them and distribute them to local firefighters and the Missoula CityCounty Health Department.

UM alum and former employee Sam Belanger was helping on the same front. In an effort to “flatten the curve,” his CBD manufacturing company Green Ridge Biosolutions was working to produce thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer for the local community and beyond.

“As a country, we need to help flatten this curve,” said Belanger, COO of the Ronan-based company, in an earlier interview with the Missoulian. The company produces muscle rubs, hemp extract oils and bath products that contain CBD, or cannabidiol, the nonpsychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

The idea for the sanitizer came about when he realized he couldn’t buy any hand sanitizer on his bi-weekly trip to Costco in Kalispell. So Green Ridge Biosolutions started making the product with ingredients it already had on hand and then selling it an affordable price and providing it for free to local stores and agencies in need.