“Care” is a many-faceted word. It’s a word Sterling Bax—executive director for the Community Foundation for a Better Bigfork (CFBB)—uses liberally when describing what it is the foundation does.
And it’s for good reason that care comes up so often when talking about CFBB: their work is also multifaceted, the work never stops, and it’s absolutely necessary for the functioning of Bigfork.
“Right now, we’re taking care of sidewalk repair,” Sterling says, “we’re looking into fixing street lamps, we take care of snow plowing, and we take care of the doggie care stations throughout town.”
If you’re a discerning reader, you may think to yourself, “these are all services that towns take care of.” For the most part, you’d be right, but Bigfork is an unincorporated community, which means they have a different set of priorities than communities where certain needs are provided by the municipality.
It’s what makes the work CFBB does so important.
“People aren’t paying taxes into city services and things like that,” Sterling explains. “The town itself has chosen to remain unincorporated, which is a testament to how well we take care of things.”
“So, some of those city services that people might think the county’s taking care of, or somebody else, it’s actually all our foundation,” she says. “And most of our funding comes from private donors, which is just such a testament to the culture that exists within Bigfork. It’s people who really come together to take care of their town and take care of it in a way they want it to be taken care of, which is just a total treasure.”
This all speaks to Bigfork as a unique brand of tight-knit community where the people know and support one another, where energy and time invested comes right back in real world, tangible results.
“We just had our 23rd annual fall auction,” Sterling says. “We have it every September at the Garden Bar, which is this super fun staple of Bigfork. We have hundreds of donated items from local businesses, and this year we had a lot of record-breaking numbers. All of that money goes straight back into how we take care of the town. 100 percent of the proceeds go there. So it’s pretty amazing to know that this has been going on for so many years, and it’s been successful for years.”
“[We had] everything ranging from yards of gravel to boat rentals, night stays at local hotels, lots of private dinners, because we have some pretty amazing chefs in the area. Local musicians donated private shows,” she says. “It’s cool because everybody wants to be involved. Every business is doing something on a large or small scale. I think it’s the definition of community.”
The CFBB’s executive director role is a recent development in their evolution as an organization (and Sterling Bax came in to fill the new position in April of 2025), but the work she’s tasked with in this incarnation is anything but new to her.
“I grew up in the Flathead Valley and spent most of my adult life working in San Diego,” Sterling says. “So I’ve worked in nonprofits across the West, and I’ve never seen anything as truly community-oriented as what happens in Bigfork.”
“I think it’s because, like I said, people want to protect where they live,” she continues, “and they can see such a direct impact of where their money or their donation or their volunteer time is going. They see the direct impact right in front of their eyes, and I think that’s one thing that’s so unique about it.”
One real and recent example of the good work CFBB is doing is their capital campaign they are calling “Preserve River View Place.” It’s a prime instance of Bigfork residents coming together to maintain a certain character and quality of life in the place they live.
“There’s a downtown green space and it overlooks the Swan River, and it’s the last green space in downtown Bigfork,” Sterling says. “It was up for sale, and a group of local residents decided to purchase it and hold it for us until we could raise the $1.5 million to buy it, and they gave us until February 2027.”
“After this most recent round [of fundraising], we’re at $1.2 million, and the goal is to protect that green space so it doesn’t turn into any other development, that there’s no condos there,” she says. “We want to keep it a green park, and we want it to be a community space for Bigfork. Our mission is to protect it for the town of Bigfork.”
What’s hinted at here is the rapidly changing face of Western Montana, especially in desirable locales like Bigfork. The last half-decade has brought a lot of growth across the region. Part of the work CFBB does is to help keep the town the desirable, welcoming place it has always been, regardless of whatever changes in population or demographics the area might be going through.
“Because Bigfork’s growing and changing, we want to make sure that the heart of Bigfork gets preserved in that process,” Sterling says. “How can we protect Bigfork’s culture as much as possible, while also acknowledging that there is an influx of younger people coming in, there’s an influx of a bit of cultural change.”
“What I think makes Bigfork unique from some of the other growth that’s happened around here is that we’ve preserved a lot of that small-town charm,” she says. “We know that we are a charming town, and we want to be welcoming to everybody that comes through. That’s something that I think is special about Bigfork: we know that what we create is for people to come and visit us, and to get to know Flathead Lake and our little tucked-away area, to know how special it is and how different it is from the rest of the Flathead Valley.”
“Montana’s gone through a huge change since the pandemic. We’re all very aware of it, everybody’s feeling it,” she continues. “One of the things that I know people in Bigfork are very proud of is that they’ve been able to keep their true sense of who they are in the face of that change, and to be really welcoming, to say: ‘This is our small town, and you’re totally welcome here. We want to show you why it’s so special.’”
“We’re looking into fixing street lamps, we take care of snow plowing, and we take care of the doggie care stations throughout town.”
“The town itself has chosen to remain unincorporated, which is a testament to how well we take care of things.”
"I think it’s the definition of community.”