History, purpose and where the money goes raised by the Cool Jazz Festival

The Cool Jazz Clean Water Jazz Band Festival with the leadership of 7 local Rotary Clubs, including Hawks Prairie Rotary,  provides to our community’s youth the opportunity to participate in an adjudicated jazz band festival. All the participating bands will have their skills evaluated and be provided with constructive feedback to help them become even better musicians.

The Cool Jazz/Clean Water event has netted over $350,000 over the past fourteen years thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, door-busting attendance at the evening wine and beer events, auction donors and bidders, and donations from music-lovers throughout the community. The funds were used to build international clean water projects, buy and refurbish over 500 instruments which were distributed to four local school district music programs, and to organize and promote a youth leadership training course.