85. 49. $2.9 million.
Those three numbers offer the latest just-in-time snapshot of the progress of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.
The Foundation is celebrating its 85th anniversary at its annual meeting next week, at the Shubert.
Meanwhile, it has just offered financial lifelines to 49 local not-for-profits in its latest round of multi-year grant-making.
The grants — to groups working on immigration, prison reentry, youth violence, the arts — totaled $2.9 million. They came in response to proposals (and constitute part of about $20 million in the foundation’s annual distribution of grants).
Click here and scroll down to review the entire list of recipients.
Besides supporting direct services and helping organizations shore up their ongoing operational expenses, the round of grant-making aimed to promote the more general cause of “civic vitality,” the organization stated in a release. An example: $45,000 will go this year toward the work of Junta for Progressive Action for “for promoting a culture of community involvement and advocacy for the Latino community.”
Some of the grants helped launch new projects. For instance, $130,00 will help Yale-New Haven Hospital “create neighborhood-based hubs for services for new mothers.”
Other grants will help groups guide people to economic self-sufficiency (like $130,000 to Emerge Connecticut, which works with people getting out of prison); or just general provide direct service to the poor, at organizations like New Haven Legal Assistance, Centro San Jose, the Boys Girls Club, Solar Youth, and Citywide Youth Coalition.
The foundation also helped established organizations with general operating support: $50,000 a year for three years to the Festival of Arts Ideas, for instance, as well as to the Online Journalism Project (which publishes the New Haven Independent, Valley Independent Sentinel, and Branford Eagle). Artspace, Long Wharf Theatre, Music Haven, Neighborhood Music School, Elm Shakespeare, and Music Haven were also among the groups receiving multi-year general support.
Environmental grants include $85,000 to the New Haven Land Trust and $75,000 to the Urban Resources Initiative to help them continue to support almost 100 community greenspaces and community gardens in town.
Community activist and master social-networker Lee Cruz live-tweets from the convening.
The grant-making occurred at a time when the foundation has held “convenings” to examine the broader challenges facing the not-for-profit community in New Haven. Click here for a story about the most recent convening, at which a visiting national not-for-profit expert suggested ways to “get smart” in doing good.
At that meeting, the foundation released an in-depth survey on the state of the region’s not-for-profit sector. Click here to read a report summary. Click here to read the whole report.
