NEW BUFFALO TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — Mary Dunbar thinks it's an interesting experience to "finally be on the opposite side of philanthropy."

For years Dunbar has been involved in nonprofit organizations, and one of their biggest challenges is finding funding. Now, as executive director of The Pokagon Fund, she's on the other side of the table.

"On the other side, asking for money, is hard work in the nonprofit world, writing grants," Dunbar said. "Being on the flip side is much more enjoyable."

Handing out checks "is a lot of fun, and rewarding," but Dunbar said it will be "even more rewarding" to watch what the organizations do with their money and the impact it has on the community.

"This is a lot of money infiltrating this little part of the world," Dunbar said. "It will be more fun following up and seeing what kind of changes occur as a result of these funds."

The Pokagon Fund is being supported initially by 2 percent of the electronic gambling revenue from Four Winds Casino in Berrien County's New Buffalo Township.

It gave out its first disbursements to five charities in November and another round of funding to nonprofits in December.

The fund asked groups and individuals to apply for funding for programs and projects in health and human services, arts and culture, education, recreation and the environment.

With such a wide-ranging request for proposals, one might think every oddball group in the region would be sending in requests. Not at all, Dunbar said.

"For most of the ones we've seen, people are really giving good, thoughtful consideration for what they want to ask for," Dunbar said. "That's impressive. Those people aren't coming to ask us to fund great huge projects without doing their homework first."

A good example was the request from Chikaming Open Lands, Dunbar said. That organization this month got $19,676 for support of a program to identify land critical to the local ecology and to come up with a plan to conserve that land.

"They asked us to fund a project that evaluates the priorities of the land that might be available for conservation, instead of asking us to fund conserving land immediately," Dunbar said. "They are doing a survey and are prioritizing land that would be most meaningful to conserve. There's a lot of thoughtfulness going into these proposals."

The fund started accepting proposals at the end of September, and so far has 29 of them, Dunbar said. Awards totaling $92,676 have been granted.

That's a lot of money going out in two months, and it can have a big impact, Dunbar said.

"Not a bad day at work," she said.

The Pokagon Fund board did not get requests from the five charities it gave checks to in November, Dunbar said.

"The board wanted to make holiday contributions and researched and chose those five," she said.

The Pokagon Fund is separate from the Local Revenue Sharing Board, which also gets 2 percent of the gambling revenue from the casino, Dunbar said. The money is to go to various government units and schools.

The Pokagon Fund has a seven-member board that meets monthly to decide which requests to accept, she said.

The funds are meant to be used in a specific service area, which is New Buffalo and Chikaming townships and the cities and villages in those townships, Dunbar said. Ten percent of the funds also go to fund projects in communities that have Pokagon land trusts, such as Dowagiac, Hartford and North Liberty in Indiana, she said.

The Four Winds Casino and Pokagon Band as of now are not releasing information on the annual amount of money that The Pokagon Fund may give out, Dunbar said.