April 24, 2020 PCL Small Grants Why Small Grants? Increase equity - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

PCL Small Grants Updates and Recommendations April 24, 2020

PCL Small Grants

Why Small Grants?

• Increase equity in our grantmaking through

reaching small organizations and underserved communities.

• Small organizations are defined as nonprofits
• r fiscally sponsored organizations with

annual budgets of $1 million or less.

Small Grants Fund Participatory Process

Design Team: Purpose: Support the design of the grantmaking process, application criteria, and ensure equity and access at every step. Experience: Design Team members have both public and private grantmaking experience and come from multiple cultural communities. January-April: 4 meetings (1 in-person, 4 virtual)

• Planned agenda for the community conversations
• Crafted process recommendations for Small Grants Fund.

Community Conversations

February 24th -March 27th.

• 1 was in-person
• 7 were virtual via Zoom

Representatives from 31 small organizations attended

• Communities and Populations: African, Arabic-speaking,

Zomi, Pacific Islanders, Black, Native American, multicultural children and youth, disability groups

• Topic-focused groups: youth-led organizations, teen

parents, sports organizations

Community Conversations

Topics discussed at the Community Conversations:

• Types of technical assistance small
• rganizations need
• Equity-based ways of facilitating the two-step

process

• Additional feedback on the construction of a

Strength-Based Grantmaking Process for small

• rganizations

Community Conversations: Findings

• Gratitude: Excitement about the community-engaged

planning process

• Process Right-Sizing: Application process needs to right-

sized to size of organization and grants

• 2-step process: Support for 2-step but didn’t want high
• pportunity cost, especially during Step 1.
• Step-2 interactive component: Evaluation criteria needs

to be fair, but flexible to the needs of different cultural groups and abilities.

Community Conversations: Findings

• Impact of COVID-19 crisis: Organizations need a shorter

process to get funds to underserved communities quickly.

• Technical Assistance Needs:
• Culturally-centered means of support for

children/youth with disabilities

• Ongoing TA and support for strengths-based

grantmaking relationship that allows for continuous quality improvement.

• Organizations have a variety of needs for TA. Staff will

make resource lists available for TA.

Small Grants Process Recommendations

• Step 1 Application: Short written application with 5

essay questions

• Narrow Applicant Pool: Design Team and Reviewers

narrow down applicant pool from Step 1 to Step 2

• Step 2 Application: Longer application, full budget detail

and interview.

• Step 2 Scoring: Step 2 Applications scored by Design

Team and Reviewers. Group creates funding recommendations to Allocation Committee.

Tentative Funding Timeline

May June July Aug/Sept October Nov 20- Jan 21 May 4thAC approval of process design May 13th Step 1 Application Materials published May 20th & 27th Informational Sessions Reviewer Training Step 1 Due Date July 8th Step 2 Materials to Allocation Committee Interviews Conducted Step 2 Applications Due & Scored AC meeting to decide which applications to fund City Council meeting to approve Allocation Committee decisions Contracts to nonprofits