25 senior Community Network Builders’ from around the country converged in Miami this past fall to generate what they called “actionable knowledge” about what they do, how they do it and why they think this work is distinctive and impactful and needed now in struggling American communities. This 2 day convening was sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with Grassroots Grantmakers, and with our planning and facilitation help. “Community Network Builders” are seasoned leaders and change agents working locally to build new networks of relationships across class, race, geographic, professional and other boundaries that otherwise hamper effective progress and functionality in our towns, cities and rural areas. These new networks are designed to unleash the kind of creative and optimistic energy – and a more effective functionality – needed to tackle tough challenges and drive positive community change in the 21^st Century.

Five headlines emerged from what we consider a first ever gathering of this type:

1. Our primary intervention as community network builders is to create, protect and preserve intentional community spaces that help people weave a community fabric of relationships, co-investment and action
2. Well designed and effectively stewarded spaces that feed the aspirational energy of residents, can unleash significant capacity for creative local solutions and cultivate important new connections across class, ethnic and racial, geographic and generational divides.
3. As stewards of these intentional spaces, we must lead from within.  Which means we must fully inhabit these spaces ourselves and practice; expose our own questions and vulnerabilities and work to diminish the impact of positional power on the co-investment process.
4. The forms needed to support this work must be more flexible, less boundaried and more adaptable than traditional community-based organizations.
5. The case for supporting community network building is clear to practitioners, but needs a relationship-based approach to engaging funders, policy makers and others in co-creating a data/narrative for external case making.

There was consensus that this is an intervention with a strong bias. The bias is that there is much more value, power and functionality to build on in poor struggling communities than is recognized and revealed by traditional community development, community building or social service interventions. This power and value is locked up and unrealized because these institutions are not designed to genuinely explore, reveal and then put to use, the aspirational energy and creativity that exists in abundance in most people and in most communities.

While the Community Network Builders at the Miami convening can be found working in a range of disciplines – community organizing, community building, human services support, engagement in faith communities, health care – they have a common perspective and a common approach: to offer the optimum environment for people to engage, bring their own best stuff, build trusting relationships and co-create.  In this way, Community Network Building is about unleashing aspirational energy – or an aspirational force – to catalyze and shape and sustain healthy and productive community life.

Over the two days, participants – organized beforehand into Session Teams – led Open Space small group discussions and fish-bowl reflections sessions around 4 areas of inquiry:

1. Practice: What are the distinctive elements of network building practice at the local level?
2. Leadership and Stewardship:  What is needed from us to lead and guide these efforts?
3. The Forms:  What are the new organizational issues/challenges that arise in network building?
4. Case Making: What is the case for this work and how do we make it?

Here are some key conversations:

The Practice and Urgency of Creating Space

Community Network Leaders see their practice as creating aspiration-driven spaces – rooms, meetings, physical space, moments of community life – that help people connect across differences, build supportive relationships, engage in value exchange, generate action and co-create with each other.  They see their work in these spaces, wherever they may be, is rooted in an essential bundle of activities and behaviors explicitly designed to create the force needed in the moment.

• A Connecting Force –  sparking deeper relationship building within existing networks and bringing organic networks of people together across differences
• An Affirming Force  - helping people explore, reveal and exchange actual value
• A Flattening Force – challenging and neutralizing positional power dynamics derived from professionalism, race and class so that those sharing the space can engage as ‘people first’.
• A Revealing Force – providing the time and opportunity to engage in learning and exploration, around issues, neighborhood life, life skills
• A Generative Force – facilitating the time and space for organic generation of new campaigns, movements, collaboration, new community institutions and organizations

In these kinds of spaces, a community can re-discover its functionality and power.  Some of these spaces exist but there are nowhere near enough of them to constitute the ‘connectivity infrastructure’ that is needed in today’s world. There needs to be a concerted, intentional and strategic effort to generate these spaces. If today we have 10 such spaces, tomorrow we need to have a hundred and the day after that a thousand.  A community that is populated with this kind of connectivity infrastructure will have a higher degree of self-determination, will be able to do lots more with the less they are left with, will be populated by more people who have a actionable sense of their own power, and will have the aggregate and collective power to stand up for itself in a regional and global economy.

As Leaders and Stewards, Trading Control for Co-Investment

It is a challenging irony that to effectively lead in a network environment requires one to lead with one’s own needs, questions and vulnerabilities. Community Network Builders see their primary role as ‘creating, recognizing and protecting spaces for co-investment.’  But the leadership/stewardship role in a network like this creates a fundamental challenge to the leader – to work to diminish his/her own real and perceived positional power in order to create space for others to lead, create and engage. This is more than leading by example. This is the primary set of acts and behaviors that is the leverage to pry open spaces where trust can be established and rule. Community Network Builders work in environments where mistrust is heightened and the pain of being invisible and diminished is palpable and present in many people and therefor in most of our interactions. It takes radical acts of surrender to counteract these forces and we as leaders need to surrender first; surrender control, pre-conceived notions about what will work, pre-determined views about the outcomes that will result.

If surrender is the first role, bold experimentation with “devices and contrivances” designed to bring people into mutually supportive relationships is the second.  The network steward is not a passive facilitator but the first in the room that voices the need and desire for new connections and relationships and the ‘mad scientist’ who comes up with contrivances like The NeighborCircle, the NeighborNight, Tuesday’s Together, The Check In, the Hello Circle, Speed Friending, The Weaver Explore – all simple devices to encourage connectivity across differences.

The 3^rd primary role is to protect this kind of ‘connectivity space’ when the network is successful and gets busy producing the programs and projects and campaigns that inevitably and quickly grow from all that great connectivity. The need for these spaces does not diminish with network growth, but the ability to protect and sustain them becomes more challenging and complex.

In each of these roles, there are essential acts and behaviors that need to be performed and proliferated though the network environment. Some of those featured are:

• Inhabiting the Space – Being intimately engaged at all levels of network functioning. Don’t lead from the outside.
• Helping people name power, power relationships and power driven dynamics that usually drive decision-making and outcomes in other community spaces and get in the way of genuine co-investment
• Introducing and reinforcing network-centric, and relationship strengthening  practices
• Magnifying and raising the profile of positive norms and outcomes when and where they emerge

Forms Designed to Bridge Different Worlds

Local network building is challenging traditional ideas about community based organizations and blurring some lines between and among silos and the helping professions.

Because the orientation is to work through networks of relationships, the forms that are emerging to support this work need to be more flexible, less boundaried and exceedingly adaptable.

Because they are challenged to create shared spaces – shared by people and organizations that have not and would not typically share space – they are pushed to cross traditional neighborhood boundaries, professional boundaries and institutional boundaries.

In addition, local community networks have three unique features that also challenge traditional forms:

1. Networks don’t occupy the same kind of institutional space in local communities as CBOs, principally because they represent different layers of community life. In fact, participants described community networks as layers of connected relationships that interlace with a whole range of institutional connections; church, family, neighborhood, community organization –  without getting in each other’s way.  The way that one can be a member of a health club and a church and a buying club and a sewing club – picking and choosing which to be invested in in a given week, this is the kind of layer the community network represents. It was felt that far from competing with local block clubs, associations and CBO’s, a healthy community network can feed these forms with engagement, expanded networks, and people who are more informed and more skilled in effective participation.
2. Community Network Building works to identify and support and sustain natural networks in neighborhoods while challenging them to cross lines of difference – to bridge.  This is a challenge but also an opportunity to create new functionality in divided communities. This work is not about getting institutions to collaborate but rather about a careful cross stitching of individual relationships that are ‘surprising’ and that begin to weave networks that wouldn’t otherwise be weaved.  Intergenerational, cross professional, neighborhood residents and leaders of large institutions, and of course cross ethnic and racial.
3. Networks also generate infrastructure for aggregate power in addition to collective power. Networks are best at offering many options for many people – all loosely linked together.  Some of the new community organizing campaigns cited by community network builders were focused more on creating a kind of ‘market demand’ for change rather than traditional community organizing collective demand. During the convening we called this “aggregate power” which is more akin to voting or consumer purchase power than it is to constituent based advocacy.

These and other dynamics are shifting the way that Community Network Builders are crafting the infrastructure – funding, staffing, internal management needs, technology needs – that they require to cultivate local network development.

The Griot’s Role in Community Network Building

The word “Griot”-  the traditional name of the West African storyteller – comes from French and Portuguese words for “servant.”  The Griot’s role is to hold and pass on the powerful narratives that guide moral choices and community life. The Griot is a servant of ‘the truth.” Capturing and disseminating the truth about the impact of Community Network Building remains a difficult challenge for a number of reasons, but the conversation at the Miami Convening was hopeful and instructive. First, because we all realized that we need our own version of the Griot – a network of people from a range of disciplines who work together as servants of the truth and tell the powerful story that is emerging from this work. There are 4 elements to this powerful story that can be developed:

1. Effectively Capturing the Tangible Outcomes – what are the raw programmatic and/or community building outcomes and impacts that spring from this work.
2. Finding and unleashing powerful voices who can testify about ‘Life inside the Network’ – the infrastructure for ‘bringing to life’ the essence of the network experience is still out of reach.  Powerful nuanced stories require strong storytelling skill and broadcast medium. These elements are needed.
3. Proving Differential Outcomes: Being able to illustrate the “net value” of the network environment to programmatic and other outcomes through indicators like retention, effective use of resources, leverage, mutual support and so on.
4. Convincingly describe the Paradigm Shift; developing the language and imagery needed to make a compelling and clear distinction between Community Network Building and other interventions and why Community Network Building is needed now.

Given the newness of this work and the few resources that have been dedicated to developing the practice, the challenge today lie in capturing the essence and importance of “a good spring season” of turning soil and sowing seed – always hard to truly measure until the harvest.

But, as the group agreed, it’s all about telling a powerful story: having a powerful narrative that is backed by powerful evidence, some of which can be/should be quantitative data. But the task is not a narrow one of being able to identify and commit to a data set and tracking technology. The task is to generate a broad partnership willing to work closely to develop and disseminate a powerful narrative in an environment characterized by skepticism, a short term outcome orientation, and an unwillingness to commit the resources needed to do this well. This will take relationship building across lines of difference between and among a special group of people who occupy the “practitioner, funder, policy maker, evaluator” spaces, but who are all willing champions and, even more importantly, willing to be Griot’s in their own complex and rarified environments.

These are just some of the thoughts and knowledge that emerged from our convening that we know are driving action today in communities around the country. There are great notes, graphic illustrations and video and photos available that bring our moment in Miami to life as well. There are new connections and new trusted relationships among experienced community builders that were started during our convening that will bear fruit for years to come. There is energy and there are strategies for continuing the network building we began in Miami – with cross city learning, regular group Skypes and conferencing and further convenings.  All of these things will be pursued in a network-centric way: demand driven and with shared leadership.

We are often pressed for the “elevator speech” around this work. We don’t have that.  But because community network building is about engagement and conversation, we conclude this piece with an “elevator conversation” that we could imagine taking place once we have engaged (trapped) a foundation leader, corporate CEO or policy maker in an elevator that gets stuck for a little while.

How can I/we best spark change in my neighborhood?

• Create a community network where lots of community members can get active and connect with other people in their community

Why is this strategy the best answer?

• Times are tough, our communities need positive change and we need all of our members to be doing well and contributing to community life.  Most community members in most communities have energy and aspirations for themselves and for the place where they live, but today there are not nearly enough positive ways to engage. A community network brings people with different backgrounds, perspectives and gifts together into a positive space, to build trusted relationships, feed each other’s aspirations for themselves and the community, and to shape and implement visions of change, be they small or large.

How do I/we develop a community network?

• Networks need new kinds of spaces and practices where people can connect and spark new ideas and action. Community network builders focus on finding and create lots of different spaces (indoor and outdoor places, gatherings, meet ups) that are welcoming to a wide range of people and that facilitate relationship building, mutual exchange of value, learning and co-investment. They invent useful practices that help people connect in the midst of a busy life and with people who are different.

How do I know if I am creating a good network space?

• People come. People come back. There is a steady influx of new people coming. New ideas for action and connection emerge. There is no one leader. Responsibilities and roles change and are shared. Relationship-building and exchange traditions/protocols that get established. People begin to steward/manage the space themselves.

What does this take?

• A diverse team of people to create the space and do the inviting.
• A carefully crafted invitation to draw people into the space.
• An intentional effort to ensure that the space is comfortable and engaging
• A clear invitation to come back to the space and help manage it

What do we do in these spaces, as they evolve?

• Help people connect and exchange information and opportunity and spark action
• Involve those who come in to help in creating, protecting and preserving  the space going forward.
• Create new and better ways to share power and leadership and welcome new people in
• Help people turn their ideas into new community initiatives, campaigns, programs and interventions
• Create a forum for deep, thoughtful conversation based on real information
• Actively listen to and capture all of the stories flowing from the exchanges, using them to shape and share a collective narrative for the others to see.
• Embrace all sparks – be they conflict or innovation – and help others use sparks to make the space better or create new spaces.
• Support and hold others accountable for actions flowing from an exchange or a series of exchanges.
• Resist attempts to convert the space into a form that will no longer be welcoming to new people or facilitate mutual exchange.

Read more about Bill and Frankie and their work with Trusted Space Partners.

Thinking Big About the Power of Relationships

Join us this summer in Syracuse for our next On the Ground!   We are delighted to be working in partnership with The Gifford Foundation for the next in our series of highly regarded learning gatherings for funders.

This learning gathering will use The Gifford Foundation’s engaged grantmaking as a platform for exploring the realities of working from a “we begin with residents” perspective with a commitment to building community connections and resilience.

We will use our time together to delve into the following questions:

• How can a place-based funder use relationships to leverage their grantmaking for greater impact?
• What does it take to build, nourish and sustain authentic relationships with and between residents, community groups and community institutions?
• What role does grassroots grantmaking play in expanding a funder’s spectrum of relationships?
• What are we learning about making community partnerships work – and elevating the role of residents in those partnerships?

In addition, our planning for this gathering is designed to ensure that those who attend:

• Get a clear, insider’s picture of The Gifford Foundation’s work and how its engaged grantmaking approach is evolving;
• Tap into the experience of your peers via our segments on our meeting agenda that are specifically designed for peer to peer sharing;
• Leave with strengthened networks and personal relationships, and
• Gain insights that are useful for their own practice and local context, ideas for increased impact and effectiveness, as well as with increased energy for their work. These insights will flow out of sense of connection to others doing work this work, the important contribution that this work is making, and the growing national focus on this work.

We will match the “on the ground” time with time for discussion and reflection to connect insights from The Gifford Foundation’s work with grassroots grantmaking work in other contexts.

Registration will be limited to 50 participants to maximize opportunities for peer to peer connections and to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to contribute. Registrations will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

Who can attend?

This learning event is designed for funders so registration will be limited to staff, board members, grantees and learning partners of funding organizations or people who are sponsored by a funding organization. We strongly encourage team participation.

If you are not associated with a funding organization but would like to attend, please contact Janis Foster Richardson to see if you are eligible to attend. Space permitting, we will be generous in making special exceptions for people associated with organizations whose work supports and informs the practice of grassroots grantmaking.

What does it cost to attend?

Registration is $300/person. The registration fee will cover on-site transportation, materials, and most in-meeting meals. Participants are expected to cover their own lodging expenses, meals outside of the meeting agenda, and travel from their home community to Syracuse.

Where is our event home-base?

We will be in the community and in community settings for much of our time together, but we will be using the Jefferson Clinton Hotel as our home base.

What is the agenda for the gathering?

We will kick off on Tuesday afternoon at 3:00, work together through the day on Wednesday, and conclude on Thursday by 3:00. We are still fine-tuning the agenda, but will post it here shortly.

What about hotel accommodations?

The historic Jefferson Clinton Hotel is providing a special $144/night room rate for participants for three nights – August 6, 7, 8.  This special rate will be available for as long as space is available and will be honored for the two days before and after the event if you want to spend additional time in the Syracuse area.

You can make reservations at this special rate by calling  (315) 425-0500 and asking for Grassroots Grantmakers’ special rate before July 1.  You can also make your reservation on-line.

How do I register?

Registrations can be submitted on-line by clicking one of the links on this page. Multiple registrations from one organization can be submitted at one time; registration fees for multiple registrations can be easily handled with one payment. You will receive an email confirmation after you register, and we will hold your space unless you notify Janis Foster Richardson that you will not be attending.

How do I submit payment of my registration fees?

Our online registration system will request payment at the time of registration via credit card.

If you to prefer to handle payment via a check, please contact us and we will process your registration and send an invoice for the registration fee.

What if I register but need to cancel?

We can accept cancellations and issue a full refund of your registration fees until July 1, 2012. After July 1, we can accept your cancellation but cannot issue a refund. If you are unable to attend but would like to offer your registration to a colleague, we will be happy to make that switch if you contact us with that request.

When will I receive meeting materials and specific logistical info?

We will launch an on-line discussion board exchange several weeks before the meeting, and will use that exchange to share background materials and logistical info about the gathering. We will also send the basic information that you will need via email about a week before the gathering.

What is the proper attire for this gathering?

Casual, of course! We will be on and off a bus several times a day so comfortable clothes and shoes for walking are definitely in order!

Other questions?

Contact Janis Foster Richardson for anything else you need to know. You can reach Janis via email or phone (361-798-1808).

The Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities (GCDD) is a federally funded, independent state agency that serves as a leading catalyst for systems change for individuals and families living with developmental disabilities. Through public policy initiatives, advocacy programs and community building, GCDD promotes and creates opportunities to enable persons with disabilities to live, work, play and worship as an integral part of society.

In 2010 the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities launched the Real Communities Initiative. Real Communities equips people at the local, grassroots level to work together toward common goals to improve their own community using person centered supports, community centered connections and persistent and reflective learning.  Purposefully involving people with and without developmental disabilities in collaborative projects is pivotal to the framework of Real Communities.

By handing the reins to individual communities and leading by stepping back, GCDD supports real communities as they flourish and achieve four important results:

•  Create real positive changes that improve community life for everyone, based on the thoughtful and well informed answers to two

questions: What are the assets of our community?  What does our community need from us?

• Build strong bridges to community associations, leaders, and alliances that stretch outside the boundaries of disability and connect all people together celebrating the energy and gifts of people with and without developmental disabilities and their families.
• Create a sustainable model of community-centered family support that is based on collaboration and the principles of Asset Based Community Development.
• Learn about how to make positive change that moves the focus beyond disabilities to community engagement and full participation.

More on Real Communities

Formed in August, 2011, Better Together, the Real Communities-Milton Mini-Grant Initiative, is a grassroots effort created to make Milton a more welcoming community for all people. A partnership between the City of Milton and the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities, Better Together works to award mini-grants to people who have an idea for bringing people of all abilities together but need resources to make it happen.

Since the Better Together committee was formed last summer, the 15-member core group meets every two weeks. We now have 6 grants that have been approved:

• A sensory garden at Milton High School
• A paper collage by a local artist which will be created with help from community members
• An accessible horse-washing system for children who participate in equine therapy
• A friendship-building club at Milton High School between teens with and without autism
• A beautification project for Milton’s downtown intersection
• A downtown dog party for all residents

We are currently sorting through more grant applications. Everyone has gifts and strengths and this is an opportunity to showcase everyone’s talents while making friends in our community.

Contact:  Caitlin Childs
Position: Organizing Director
Email: cpchilds@dhr.state.ga.us

Enter: TheGrayZone.  As I mentioned grassroots grantmaking functions in the gray zone of the funding world.  But here is the kicker, grassroots grantmaking programs do this intentionally.  While it may seem far easier to build a set of all-encompassing rules that will quality and disqualify groups for funding, the truth is that in order to have a successful program the rules have to be relatively loose.  I was at a lunch meeting a couple days ago with a group of people who provide support and technical assistance to Neighborhood Connections grantees.  In the Neighborhood Connection circles these technical assistance providers are called Connectors.  The group was sharing successes and problems they faced when conducting their site visits.  People raised concerns about how tempting it is for non-profits  that act as fiscal agents to to present their own projects as resident-led projects and about residents who apply for multiple grants for the same project in an attempt to get more money.  Tthe  Connectors started brainstorming about rules that could be put in place to deal with these challenges – more rules for fiscal agents and more rules for residents.

As I reflected on the suggestions, it  became clearer and clearer that there couldn’t really be any one hard rule put in place to prevent these kinds of things from happening.   Because, as members of the grantmaking committee will tell you, some of the most unlikely characters have seen some of the greatest successes and some projects that have been set up for success have seen failure.  Neighborhood grantmaking seems clunky because it’s as much about people and relationships as it is about good  planning and experience.  As I continue to observe it, it becomes clear just how crucial the skills and talents of the grantmaking committees are—specifically resident-led grantmaking committees.  They are the champions of The Gray Zone.  Their observations and discussions help navigate this nebulous space and identify which applicants are working to achieve the goals of Neighborhood Connections: strengthening neighborhood relationships, building community capacity, and empowering grassroots community groups.

Rachel Oscar is Grassroots Grantmakers’ AmeriCorps VISTA Volunteer, working with Grassroots Grantmakers in Cleveland as the guest of The Cleveland Foundation on resident-led grantmaking.

Some of the stories I heard at the party were truly extraordinary.  More than anything they reflected an impact on Clevelandneighborhoods that is much larger than a dollar amount on a piece of paper.   The first story I want to share comes from The Friends of Greenwood Park. GreenwoodPark, located south ofLoraininOhioCity, is well equipped with slides, climbing bars andOhioCity’s only outdoor pool.  Over the last twenty years, however, the park has been used, on and off, as a place to sell drugs.  For this reason the park has been greatly underutilized by residents.  The Friends of Greenwood Park were granted funds to give out free ice cream in the park once a week during the summer in the hopes that food and fun would bring families outside to use the park as it was always intended: a safe space to enjoy neighbors and friends.  When asked about something surprising that happened during their project year a member of the Friends of Greenwood Park told a story about a particular evening in the park.  Oftentimes high schoolers in the neighborhood roughhouse and fight in the park adding to the reasons why families hesitate to useGreenwood.  On this particular evening the Friends of Greenwood Park and their neighbors were giving out ice cream and children and families were enjoying the night when two teenagers began getting into an altercation.  Normally, other teenagers instigate and encourage the fighting, however, this night when the girls were asked to stop, their friends agreed and helped quiet the situation.  While this appears to be a small gesture it demonstrates recognition amongst both adults and youth thatGreenwoodParkis not a place for unsafe activity and behavior.  It put the neighborhood one step closer to reclaiming the park for positive family and neighborhood fun.

The second story I want to share comes from the Morgana Little League inCleveland’s Slavic Village Neighborhood.  The Morgana Little League is one ofCleveland’s oldest little league teams.  For years they were receiving old, used equipment from other little leagues or donors, however, season after season the team would watch at least half of that equipment thrown away because it did not meet safety regulations.  Their Neighborhood Connections grant went entirely to purchasing new equipment but its impact was far greater.  With new mitts, bats, helmets and balls the little leaguers spent far less time fund-raising as they had in previous years.  The team finally got to return to the heart of the league: baseball.  Coaches finally got to spend their time coaching and team members got to spend their time playing.

These two stories are just a tiny sampling of all the neighborhood work that is coming from community grants programs like Neighborhood Connections.  Events like Final Report Parties and grantee gatherings provide the opportunity and space to share advice, questions, and lessons learned.  In essence they give grassroots leaders a birds-eye view of their city and help achieve the bigger-picture goal of creating a patchwork of relationships that cross neighborhood boundaries; relationships that become resources for change.

Rachel Oscar is Grassroots Grantmakers’ AmeriCorps VISTA Volunteer, working with Grassroots Grantmakers in Cleveland as the guest of The Cleveland Foundation on resident-led grantmaking.    

The Foundation seeks to build capacity on three levels: resident capacity, organizational capacity and the network capacity of organizations and individuals.

Focusing on resident capacity, Neighborhood SUCCESS supports grassroots groups in community development projects that enhance the quality of life in Warren and Youngstown, Ohio. The goals of Neighborhood SUCCESS are to:

• Expand meaningful resident participation and leadership
• Encourage communication and collaboration among residents, associations and institutions
• Build on/leverage financial, human and material resources that exist in the community.

Groups of residents, neighborhood associations, and school affiliated groups, faith-based, civic and social organizations are eligible to apply for grants of $500 to $5000.

Contact Person

Jennifer Roller
Title: Program Officer
Email: jroller@rjweanfdn.org
Telephone: 330 – 394 – 5600

NeighborWorks Training offers professional certificates in eight content areas, including a community building track certificate program. Training includes national institutes, place-based training and online learning.

Of particular interest to funders is Success Measures, an outcome evaluation resource for community development organizations, intermediaries and funders that is based at NeighborWorks America. A social enterprise, Success Measures was created by practitioners and funders who wanted to document their impact for the people and communities they serve. Its participatory approach equips nonprofits and their funders with skills and tools needed to demonstrate results and communicate success.

To learn more and connect with NeighborWorks:

Visit www.nw.org
View videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/neighborworksamerica
Follow at www.twitter.com/neighborworks
Become a fan at www.facebook.com/neighborworksamerica
Subscribe to our e-newsletter
Contact: editor@nw.org

Good Neighbor Grants provide up to $1,000 of support to projects that:

• Enhance bridges between people who are different from each other in some significant way (e.g. race, religion, economic status).
• Engage people—especially those who haven’t participated in community activities before—in projects that make a difference in the lives of all those involved.
• Embrace youths by involving them in project planning and/or providing leadership opportunities.

ChangeMaker Workshops are free, action-oriented programs designed to provide participants with creative tools and enjoyable strategies to help them:

• Build bridges between diverse community groups
• Generate the momentum and credibility necessary for tackling larger challenges
• Inspire people to move beyond talking to engaging in mutually beneficial projects
• Energize and motivate people to get involved and stay involved.

Front Porch Grants are based on the custom of neighbors gathering on the front porches of their homes to share conversations about family life, community events, and the latest news, Front Porch Grants provide grants of up to $100 to support activities like block parties, get-togethers and town meetings, which build deeper neighbor-to-neighbor connections.

Contact: Jessica Aguilera, Community Investment Manager-Initiatives
Title: Community Investment Manager, Initiatives
Email: jaguilera@kalfound.org

The Self Family Foundation’s Civic and Community grantmaking area seeks to improve neighborhood resources and community attitudes and services with an emphasis on the utilization of existing facilities, skills and talents to create a stronger, more unified community through collaboration with organizations, businesses, public institutions and residents.  The Foundation is currently providing support for the Neighborhood Leadership Development Academy, Neighborhood Association Council and the Neighborhood Development Office, all administered by Healthy Greenwood Neighborhoods, Inc.  Healthy Greenwood Neighborhoods, Inc. is currently housed at the Greenwood Area Chamber of Commerce.

Contact Person:  Mamie Nicholson
Title: Program Officer
Email: mamienic@selffoundation.org
Telephone:864 – 941 – 4011

With that goal in mind, Grassroots Grantmakers is currently connecting with funders that utilize a panel of residents as partners in making funding decisions related to grassroots grantmaking (resident grantmakers) to document promising practices and foster learning about this approach.  We will share what is learned in a toolkit that we will make available to funders to help strengthen their work or launch work that is positioned to build from the experience of their peers.

Our workplan for this project includes:

1. Conducting interviews with residents who serve on grantmaking committees and staff  who work with resident-led grantmaking committees.  We are particularly interested in learning from the resident grantmaking committee members  about their experience as resident panel members, what they have learned, what they have been able to take back to their community, and what training or information would have helped them leverage the opportunity to serve in this capacity for greater impact.
2. Organizing a peer-learning oriented convening for (and with) resident grantmaking committee members that provides opportunities for resident grantmaking members from different communities to pursue sharing learning agendas and exchange experiences, insights and lessons learned.  This will be a by-invitation-only convening, held in Cleveland  in May of 2012.
3. Developing a training curriculum or tool kit that can be utilized by funders who are using or want to use the resident-led grantmaking model.
4. Sharing this learning with others via this website, blog posts, webinars and presentations.

We are interested in expanding the learning circle for this project with funders who are engaged in grassroots grantmaking (and by that we mean grantmaking that is designed to directly support everyday people and the groups that they form for community change or mutual aid via a highly relational style of grantmaking and technical assistance that includes scale appropriate grants ranging from $100 to $10,000), and who are utilizing a grantmaking process that is designed as a capacity building and leadership development opportunity for community residents and involves residents from the community that the grants are designed to benefit as key decision-makers.

We are asking those involved with this project to:

1. Connect Grassroots Grantmakers’ AmeriCorps VISTA, Rachel Oscar, to resident panel/committee members for telephone interviews;
2. Support  a delegation (3-4 people) of resident grantmakers to travel to Cleveland for the peer learning gathering of other resident grantmakers (cost will be similar to one of our On the Grounds with a modest registration fee to cover food etc and pay-your-own way travel and lodging);
3. Participate in the development of materials to share promising practices and lessons learned with the broader funding community.

If you are interested in participating and or learning more, please contact Rachel Oscar (216-685-2010 or rachel@grassrootsgrantmakers.org).

We also invite you to check  our website (Learning/Resident-Led Grantmaking) for stories, information and insights on resident-led grantmaking that we will be sharing as this project unfolds.