$2.3 Million to Boost Brooklyn
July 22, 2011
$2.3 Million in New Support for Brooklyn Nonprofits
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We’re thrilled to announce our first round of grants for 2011! With your generous support over the past year, we’re helping 118 nonprofit organizations make Brooklyn better and stronger.
Our $2.3 million investment will boost a variety of projects in Brooklyn—from preserving affordable housing, to growing after school programs, expanding access to the arts, promoting greener and healthier communities, and providing essential services to our neighbors in need.
Our $2.3 million investment will boost a variety of projects in Brooklyn—from preserving affordable housing, to growing after school programs, expanding access to the arts, promoting greener and healthier communities, and providing essential services to our neighbors in need.
“We can improve the lives of Brooklynites now and in the future by investing in the people and organizations that understand local needs and can provide the best and most effective approaches to serving their communities.”
- Brooklyn Community Foundation President Marilyn Gelber
Building and Bettering Our Neighborhoods
We know some communities in Brooklyn struggle more than others and that Brooklyn’s new economic growth is passing many of our neighbors by.
Our approach: patient but targeted grantmaking, to make a substantial and lasting impact in high-need areas.
We’re giving 30 grants directly to Central Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights and Brownsville communities, which rank among the highest in the city’s poverty and infant mortality rates—and lowest in graduation and employment rates. These grants—from across our five giving areas—offer a holistic view of community improvement. They include:
a $25,000 Education and Youth Achievement grant to Groundwork, Inc to provide college prep and workforce development for high school students;
a $50,000 Arts for All grant to the Weeksville Heritage Center for programs at its new Education & Cultural Arts Building on the site of the first free African-American community in New York state;
a $15,000 Caring Neighbors grant to the Bed Stuy Campaign Against Hunger to support the food pantry’s annual distribution of 1.1 million meals;
a $25,000 Community Development grant to Pratt Area Community Council for economic initiatives like the “Rolling Up the Gates” storefront stroll on Fulton Street;
And a $5,500 Green Communities grant to the Hattie Carthan Community Garden for a food justice training series.
We’re also focusing on Red Hook, East New York, Fort Greene/Clinton Hill, Bushwick/Williamsburg, and Flatbush/East Flatbush. Explore the new grants here.
Small Grants, Big Possibilities
From the start, we’ve been an incubator of new ideas for addressing community needs—not only financially, but through access to community leaders and links to peer groups—to help organizations grow intelligently and be ripe for greater investment over time.
In 2003, we gave a $500 micro grant to the New York Writers Coalition. It was the first grant the fledgling writers’ workshop for “voiceless communities” had ever received, and marked the start of our partnership with them that has flourished in the years since. We’ve connected NYWC with other funders, steered them toward a permanent space at the 80 Arts Building in Fort Greene, and this year, we’re granting $10,000 to NYWC’s free Brooklyn writing programs.
Carrying on this approach, we're now helping launch enterprises like Actionplay at the Brooklyn Museum of Art for children with autism, the burgeoning Lefferts Community Food Cooperative, and Sustainable Flatbush’s Church Avenue Communal Garden.
More Next Week…
Stay tuned to learn how we’re using our funding to challenge local communities to give and get more involved with nonprofit groups working on their behalf!
Small Grants, Big Possibilities
From the start, we’ve been an incubator of new ideas for addressing community needs—not only financially, but through access to community leaders and links to peer groups—to help organizations grow intelligently and be ripe for greater investment over time.
In 2003, we gave a $500 micro grant to the New York Writers Coalition. It was the first grant the fledgling writers’ workshop for “voiceless communities” had ever received, and marked the start of our partnership with them that has flourished in the years since. We’ve connected NYWC with other funders, steered them toward a permanent space at the 80 Arts Building in Fort Greene, and this year, we’re granting $10,000 to NYWC’s free Brooklyn writing programs.
Carrying on this approach, we're now helping launch enterprises like Actionplay at the Brooklyn Museum of Art for children with autism, the burgeoning Lefferts Community Food Cooperative, and Sustainable Flatbush’s Church Avenue Communal Garden.
More Next Week…
Stay tuned to learn how we’re using our funding to challenge local communities to give and get more involved with nonprofit groups working on their behalf!
Together, we will make New York City’s best borough better for everyone!
| Anyone Can Be a Philanthropist. Learn more at www.brooklyncommunityfoundation.org/donor-advised-funds. |