The Mabel Louise Riley Foundation’s grassroots grantmaking program supports volunteer, resident-initiated and led activities in the Dudley Street Neighborhood. The Riley Foundation has partnered with the Annie E. Casey Foundation on this program over the years. A resident of the Dudley Street Neighborhood provides staffing for the small grants program, and grant decisions are made [...]
The Seattle Foundation began its Neighbor to Neighbor (N2N) Small Grants Program in 1991 through a grant from the C.S. Mott Foundation as part of its Community Foundations and Neighborhoods Small Grants Program. N2N has two goals: one is to support grassroots groups in low-income communities and communities of color that organize residents and build [...]
Created in 1960, The Skillman Foundation is a private philanthropy committed to helping children in metropolitan Detroit. In a departure from traditional grantmaking and a move to dramatically improve the lives of Detroit children and families, The Skillman Foundation’s Good Neighborhoods Initiative, launched in January 2006, provides full-scale support to six city neighborhoods where many [...]
THE FOUNDATION’S HISTORY The Steans family-Harrison, Lois, and their three daughters, Heather, Jennifer, and Robin-created the Steans Family Foundation in 1986 in order to sponsor a class of sixth graders through the “I Have a Dream” program. The family got to know the 35 students and their families well, working with them as they made [...]
The Baltimore Community Foundation has demonstrated a strong interest in neighborhoods and supports neighborhood development in a variety of ways. The Neighborhood Grants Program (NGP)is an integral part of the Baltimore Community Foundation’s Community Development priority area, and offers funding for resident-driven and -led community-based organizations in Baltimore City and Baltimore County neighborhoods. The NGP [...]
A Citywide Grants Program Guided by Citizen Volunteers The Cleveland Foundation’s Neighborhood Connections program, launched in 2002, provides small grants (from $500 to $5,000) and technical assistance to neighborhood groups for a wide array of improvement activities and projects. The program has three main goals: (1) stimulate the development of new projects designed by grassroots [...]
An Incubator for Neighborhood Supports Participation in the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation’s Community Foundations and Neighborhoods Small Grants Program enabled The Winston-Salem Foundation to increase its efforts to provide leadership and financial support to “build community”. In the 1990’s the foundation’s assets were less than $75 million and there was no community infrastructure. Although the [...]
A Focus on Neighborhood Capacity-Building and Leadership Development The Denver Foundation’s Strengthening Neighborhoods program was launched in 1998 after several years of planning and development. The program offers small grant support and leadership training to grassroots groups in ten target communities (including eight Denver neighborhoods plus two other communities to the south – original Aurora [...]
The Neighborhood Connections staff at The Cleveland Foundation will tell you that of the 150-200 grant applications they receive per round about half get funded. They will also tell you that of the half that gets funded, very few are first-time applicants. For a grants program that was created for the grassroots community, for the [...]
The tricky thing about grassroots grantmaking is that it operates in the nebulous gray space of the funding world. Behind the foundation walls are dollars and cents that add up very neatly, accounts receivable records coming through humming fax machines, and proof of non-profit status reports in piles across cubicle desks. On the streets ofClevelandCity’s [...]
A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of attending my first Neighborhood Connections Final Report Party. What is a Final Report Party, you ask? Well, at the close of a grantee’s project year they have the option to complete their final report in several different ways. The first is to write a traditional, [...]
