CFO moves into former MSU alumni center downtown

Many of the 46 full- and part-time staffers at Community Foundation of the Ozarks Inc. are unpacking boxes at their new “forever home,” President and CEO Winter Kinne told Springfield Business Journal in an interview this morning.

“We are actively moving today,” Kinne said.

The 52-year-old regional nonprofit made a long-planned transition into its new digs at 300 S. Jefferson Ave., the former Kenneth E. Meyer Alumni Center once owned by Missouri State University. An LLC linked to the foundation, CFO-SGF LLC, bought the new headquarters building at 300 S. Jefferson Ave., and its attached 221-space parking deck, for $5.8 million in February 2024, according to Greene County Assessor records and comments by CFO officials.

Kinne said the move is part of CFO’s focus on stewardship and legacy and that staffers are “excited to take this next step in CFO history.”

“We are doubling down on our commitment to downtown Springfield,” she said. “I think I jokingly said in 2024 at the news conference, but still remains the same, that we’re thinking of stewardship in a completely different definition these days, where we used to think about financial stewardship and the stewardship of the philanthropic community, but now we’re also thinking of stewardship in terms of an 80,000-square-foot building.”

CFO is occupying the fourth floor of its new building, which was designed by Springfield architect Richard Stahl and opened as a facility for Bank of Springfield back in the mid-1970s.

CFO has also spent some $5 million on shoring up its new headquarters, Kinne said. Needs included renovations to the fourth floor, a new roof, repairs to the parking deck, a “light refresh” for the facility’s first-floor hospitality and community room area, along with power-washing and landscaping for the building exterior.

The new CFO headquarters is just the third location for the nonprofit in its half-century of operations. From 1989 to 2006, Kinne said it was based in Hammons Tower, 901 E. St. Louis St. From 2006 until this week, CFO operated out of a 10,000-square-foot building at 425 E. Trafficway St. valued at roughly $1.4 million, Kinne said, just two blocks from its new digs.

In recent years, CFO began outgrowing the space, Kinne said, with many staffers packed into shared offices at its Trafficway location.

“We had absolutely outgrown the space, maybe about two years ago,” Kinne said. “We actually had rented space over here at 300 S. Jefferson (Ave.) after we purchased this building because there was not enough space in the Trafficway location.”

Kinne said of 425 E. Trafficway St., “It’s still a great building, it just happens to be too small for us.”

With 300 S. Jefferson Ave., Kinne said, “If and when we would ever need to expand, there’s the space to do it.”

Kinne said CFO’s new building is currently 100%-occupied and that the MSU Foundation and some other university functions will continue operating out of it into the latter half of next year, when a transition into the $26.2 million Clifton M. Smart III University Advancement Center – currently under construction at a campus location on National Avenue – is expected.

“We will be looking for other tenants roughly this time next year,” Kinne said.

CFO incorporated back in 1973 after local leaders deemed that a pool of philanthropic resources could be leveraged to benefit not just the Springfield community, but also smaller communities across the region.

Early grants benefited community resources like Dickerson Park Zoo. The first CFO staffers were hired in 1988, including the late Jan Horton, CFO’s first executive director. That move came two years after CFO reached the milestone of managing $1 million in assets. By 1995, CFO was managing $10 million in assets, Kinne confirmed Monday, and just two years later, the total reached $20 million.

As of June 30, CFO was managing $540 million in assets, CFO officials said.