Community Fund Grants
Filter the grants using the options below:
| Organization | Year | Amount | Initiative |
Program |
Project Description | Neighborhoods |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| exalt | 2017 | $40,000 | Invest in Youth | Invest in Youth Grant Program | To counteract the school-to-prison pipeline by elevating expectations of personal success for court-involved youth through job skills courses, individualized support, paid internships, and alumni network | Boroughwide |
| El Puente | 2017 | $35,000 | Invest in Youth | Invest in Youth Grant Program | To organize communities of color to fight gentrification through youth-led community campaigns and initiatives focused on environmental justice, climate change, community safety, and racial/cultural equity in education, the arts, and wellness | Williamsburg |
| Alex House | 2016 | $25,000 | Invest in Youth | Invest in Youth Grant Program | Pregnancy and parenting groups for teens and other young, low-income, first time mothers and fathers in Red Hook. | Red Hook |
| Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project | 2015 | $20,000 | Invest in Youth | Invest in Youth Grant Program | Operating support to help transform the lives of Haitian newcomer youth in Crown Heights, East Flatbush and Canarsie through education and leadership development and raising awareness of immigrant education issues in the community and citywide. | East Flatbush, Canarsie, Crown Heights |
| ReConnect | 2018 | $30,000 | Invest in Youth | Invest in Youth Grant Program | To connect youth to employment, entrepreneurship training, and access to college credit to help navigate systemic challenges that make it hard to find sustainable employment. | Bedford Stuyvesant |
| Brooklyn Community Services | 2017 | $30,000 | Invest in Youth | Invest in Youth Grant Program | For a project that engages young people, primarily immigrant youth, in activities to help them develop job skills, improve their academic performance, and become community leaders | Coney Island |
| Global Kids | 2015 | $10,000 | Neighborhood Strength | Crown Heights Grant Program | Global Kids’ mission is to educate and inspire underserved youth to become successful students, global citizens, and community leaders. Funds will be used for the Human Rights Activist Project in three Crown Heights public schools to empower youth to advocate for community and global issues through interactive workshops on community organizing, social action, digital and social media, policy, and root causes. | Crown Heights |
| Repair the World NYC | 2017 | $20,000 | Neighborhood Strength | Crown Heights Grant Program | To support increased accessibility, programming and community partnerships that bring new and long-term residents together to meet community needs at its storefront space on Nostrand Avenue. | Crown Heights |
| NYC Coalition for Educational Justice | 2015 | $10,000 | Neighborhood Strength | Crown Heights Grant Program | NYC Coalition for Educational Justice is a parent-led movement that seeks to affect policy change and create a more equitable educational system. Funds will support local parent engagement around the Department of Education's Community Schools Initiative, which will bring over a million dollars in new resources to three Crown Heights schools. | Crown Heights |
| Progress Playbook | 2015 | $5,000 | Neighborhood Strength | Crown Heights Grant Program | Progress Playbook designs customized learning experiences for entrepreneurs so that they can accomplish their business goals. A $5,000 grant will provide 10 Crown Heights youth with a three-month entrepreneur training program, through which each will develop a comprehensive business plan. Three plans selected by community members will receive financial and technical assistance to launch or expand their business within Crown Heights. | Crown Heights |
| Simone Leigh | 2015 | $5,000 | Neighborhood Strength | Crown Heights Grant Program | Resident Simone Leigh is receiving a $5,000 grant to support an innovative series of drumming classes and workshops for black women and girls in Crown Heights, which seeks to build bridges across cultures and communities and provide a nurturing environment where participants can relax, learn new skills, exercise, and connect in a non-competitive way. | Crown Heights |
| UHAB | 2015 | $15,000 | Neighborhood Strength | Crown Heights Grant Program | UHAB organizes tenants to fight poor living conditions in buildings neglected or abandoned by landlords; in 2013, three UHAB-organized tenant associations formed the Crown Heights Tenants Union. A $15,000 grant will support their focus on ending bad living conditions, illegal displacement, and loss of rent-regulated housing in Crown Heights by bolstering tenant and neighborhood power. | Crown Heights |
| Weeksville Heritage Center | 2015 | $10,000 | Neighborhood Strength | Crown Heights Grant Program | Weeksville Heritage Center is an historic site museum and community cultural center that preserves the legacy of the original Weeksville community founded in 1838 – one of the first and most prolific free African American communities in the United States. Funds will support a performance project featuring new oral histories and collaborations with local performing artists and teens to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1991 Crown Heights Riots. Weeksville will also host a community dinner for residents of its immediate vicinity. | Crown Heights |
| Young Movement | 2015 | $5,000 | Neighborhood Strength | Crown Heights Grant Program | Young Movement provides research, advocacy, and partnerships on socio-economic issues like financial literacy and employment alternatives for young adults. Funds will support the Weeksville Entrepreneurship Project to train 10 young adults from the Weeksville section of Crown Heights in tools to find and create sustainable solutions to employment, financial, and health disparities in Weeksville. | Crown Heights |
| The Youth Farm | 2015 | $10,000 | Neighborhood Strength | Crown Heights Grant Program | The Youth Farm is a one-acre farm on the Wingate Campus that grows approximately 15,000 pounds of fresh, culturally relevant crops for the Crown Heights community each year. Funds will support a year-round youth program, an advanced organic farming training program for adults, and a paid summer youth employment program. | Crown Heights |
| 596 Acres | 2017 | $20,000 | Neighborhood Strength | Crown Heights Grant Program | To support stewardship, preservation, and transformation of two neighborhood lots into community gardens. | Crown Heights |
| Brooklyn Clergy Action Network | 2015 | $10,000 | Neighborhood Strength | Crown Heights Grant Program | The Brooklyn Clergy Action Network mobilizes faith leaders and the community to end gun violence in low and moderate-income communities in Brooklyn. Funds will be used to establish a mentorship program for 12 to 17-year-old males designed to reduce and prevent violence by training them in methods of communication as an alternative to violence. | Crown Heights |
| Bethany United Methodist Church | 2017 | $20,000 | Neighborhood Strength | Crown Heights Grant Program | To support services, workshops, and cultural programming that engage residents around issues in the community. | Crown Heights |
| Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine | 2015 | $5,000 | Neighborhood Strength | Crown Heights Grant Program | Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine is a collaborative public art project that explores art-making as a community-building tool. Funds will be used to create and distribute an accessible guide to tenants’ rights to assist long-time residents being pushed out of their homes. | Crown Heights |
| Haiti Cultural Exchange | 2017 | $10,000 | Neighborhood Strength | Crown Heights Grant Program | To support local Haitian artists who will facilitate arts activities and programming in Westbrook Memorial Garden to bring community concerns to light. | Crown Heights |
| Brooklyn Movement Center | 2015 | $15,000 | Neighborhood Strength | Crown Heights Grant Program | The Brooklyn Movement Center, a Black-led organizing nonprofit, trains and mobilizes Central Brooklynites to lead local and city-wide policy campaigns to end abusive policing. Funds will be used for police accountability organizing and legislative advocacy in Crown Heights that mobilizes local stakeholders, creates alternative community safety approaches, and conducts know-your-rights and leadership trainings. | Crown Heights |
| New York Communities for Change | 2017 | $30,000 | Neighborhood Strength | Crown Heights Grant Program | For supporting the inclusion of community voices to inform the development plan of the city-owned Bedford-Union Armory. | Crown Heights |
| Be More | 2015 | $5,000 | Brooklyn Accelerator | Incubator Project | Be More aims to raise awareness about race-based disparities, train change agents with tools to reduce unconscious bias to eliminate racial inequities, and foster leadership to enable multiracial social change movements. In the coming year, Be More will launch its second #Vision2040 social media video campaign, organize community gatherings to heal from racism, and prototype a training to reduce unconscious bias using evidence-based techniques. | Boroughwide |
| Domestic Workers United | 2015 | $5,000 | Brooklyn Accelerator | Incubator Project | DWU is an organization of Caribbean, Latina and African caregivers and housekeepers—concentrated in Crown Heights and Flatbush—that organizes to end exploitation and oppression for all workers whose labor is based primarily in homes and is not protected by most labor laws in New York City. DWU has adopted a model that centers on the development of strong, low-income immigrant women of color leaders who have the drive, training, and sensitivity to lead a movement for social change. | Crown Heights, Flatbush |
| The Precedential Group | 2015 | $5,000 | Brooklyn Accelerator | Incubator Project | The Precedential Group, founded by Marlon Peterson in 2014, is an organization working to establish “Child Safe Zones” to reduce gun violence in Brooklyn neighborhoods by engaging young people, local police, schools, and residents. Marlon Peterson has led, advised, and supported several criminal justice reform organizations including Fortune Society, Crown Heights Mediation Center, and New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. Marlon recently received the Soros Fellowship Award from Open Society Foundation. For more information: marlonpeterson.com | Crown Heights, Brownsville, East New York |
| MoCADA | 2017 | $100,000 | Brooklyn Accelerator | Spark Prize | A “museum without walls” that serves the African Diasporan community through art exhibitions, education, and community programs to promote African diasporan art, racial equity, and social justice in Brooklyn. Founded in 1999, this year it is expanding from 2,000 sq. ft. to a new 20,000 sq. ft. headquarters in Fort Greene. | Boroughwide |
| Neighbors Together | 2017 | $100,000 | Brooklyn Accelerator | Spark Prize | A dynamic soup kitchen, social service provider, and community center committed to ending hunger and poverty in Ocean Hill, Brownsville, and Bedford Stuyvesant since 1982. It provides empowerment and community action programming to organize community members to advocate for policy change, in addition to serving 80,000 meals annually out of its community café. | Ocean Hill, Brownsville, Bedford Stuyvesant |
| Cave Canem | 2018 | $100,000 | Brooklyn Accelerator | Spark Prize | Founded in 1996 to remedy the under-representation and isolation of black poets, Cave Canem has grown from a gathering of 26 poets to become an influential movement and artistic incubator based in Brooklyn with a high-achieving international fellowship of over 425, and a local workshop community of over 900 poets. | Boroughwide |
| Center for Law and Social Justice | 2018 | $100,000 | Brooklyn Accelerator | Spark Prize | Founded in Brooklyn in 1985 as a community service unit of Medgar Evers College to serve as an institutional response to pervasive racial injustices, the Center for Law and Social Justice continues pushing for meaningful policy changes to stem the institutionalization of police brutality and systemic racism across New York City. In addition to promoting alternative community policing solutions, it is a leading advocate for the protection and integrity of voting rights and for racial equity in public education. | Boroughwide, Bedford Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Flatbush, East Flatbush, Brownsville |
| exalt | 2018 | $100,000 | Brooklyn Accelerator | Spark Prize | Since its founding in 2006 in Brooklyn, exalt has worked with over 1200 youth ages 15-19 who have been involved in the criminal justice system. exalt equips youth with tools and experiences to avoid further criminal justice system involvement through structured classes for tangible skill development, individualized support to navigate the education and justice systems, placement in paid internships, and an alumni network of resources. | Boroughwide |
| Griot Circle | 2018 | $100,000 | Brooklyn Accelerator | Spark Prize | Founded in 1996 by a group of LGBTQ elders of color living in Brooklyn to address the systemic racial, social, and economic injustices that LGBTQ elders of color experience, GRIOT Circle now offers culturally-sensitive, innovative programming to over 400 members throughout the year, | Boroughwide |
| Red Hook Initiative | 2018 | $100,000 | Brooklyn Accelerator | Spark Prize | Founded in 2002 as a program of a local hospital in response to the severity of health and social issues in Red Hook, RHI has become a neighborhood stronghold and nationally recognized model for youth and community development, providing safe and enriching opportunities for young people ages 11- 24 primarily living in the Red Hook Houses—New York City’s largest NYCHA housing development. | Red Hook |
| Audre Lorde Project | 2017 | $100,000 | Brooklyn Accelerator | Spark Prize | An inter-generational organizing center for LGBT people of color that promotes community wellness and progressive social and economic justice in New York City. Founded in Brooklyn in 1996, ALP works with over 8,000 members on issues including creating safety models against police brutality and hate crimes, as well as training small businesses, community organizations, and neighborhood leaders on de-escalation and safety strategies. | Boroughwide |
| Common Justice | 2017 | $100,000 | Brooklyn Accelerator | Spark Prize | A restorative justice program of the Vera Institute of Justice that works with responsible parties and those harmed by violent crime in Brooklyn. Founded in 2008, Common Justice is the first and only alternative to incarceration program for violent crimes in the adult courts in the United States. It works with 16 to 24-year-olds to address the criminal justice system’s over-reliance on incarceration, to halt cycles of violence, and to meet the needs of victims of crime. To date, fewer than 8% of its participants have been terminated from the program for committing a new crime. | Boroughwide |
| Make the Road New York | 2017 | $100,000 | Brooklyn Accelerator | Spark Prize | An immigrant-led organization that develops grassroots leadership to mobilize Latino and working class communities. It provides legal services, education, and employment access to achieve policy change. MRNY is dedicated to building community power and racial equity in Bushwick, where it was founded in 1997. It now has over 20,000 members and 200 staff working across New York City, Long Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. | Boroughwide |