Overview of Third Grant Cycle for 2022
At the Foundation’s October Board meeting, the Trustees made grant awards totaling $745,000 to support five nonprofits working to create a more just and equitable future for individuals and families in Metro Atlanta communities.
New Funding for Previous Grantees
We are pleased to continue our support of the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP), a regional and national leader in quality, affordable housing development. Trustees awarded a $300,000 grant in support of ANDP’s Closing the Gap campaign to create or preserve at least 2,000 units of affordable housing by 2025, including 1,250 apartment units and 750 single-family homes. This campaign is the largest nonprofit production plan in Georgia’s history. ANDP’s goal is to maximize homeownership while also increasing the purchase of single-family homes for rental to help alleviate the barriers to affordable housing for low- to-moderate income families.
Over the years we have provided many grants in support of Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta (BGCMA), whose mission is to save and change the lives of children and teens, especially those who are most at-risk. BGCMA is very intentional about where they locate their clubs – most notably in communities that are farthest from economic opportunity and do not have after school program options. As a result, they reach 7,000 kids and teens annually from families living at 200% or below the federal poverty level. Our $300,000 grant will assist with their $27.5 million long-term campaign for capital improvements and capacity building that will strengthen their programming and result in serving more kids, more often by 2025.
Chastain Park Conservancy has been awarded a $25,000 grant to assist with the Northwoods Trail Project, which sets up pedestrian access to the park’s northern acreage. When completed, the trail will have a one-mile educational nature trail loop, and access to more greenspace, picnic and grilling areas for visitor use. Initially developed in the 1930s and 1940s, Chastain is Atlanta’s largest public park, covering 268 acres include a number of amenities.
In 2003, Kate’s Club launched with a gathering of six children for a social outing at a bowling alley and has matured into a dynamic nonprofit that has helped thousands of grieving kids ages 5 to 18 and their families, understand how to cope with their grief and know they are not alone. Today, Kate’s Club is remains committed to empowering children, teens, and young adults facing life after the death of a parent, sibling, or caregiver. The majority of their program participants come from low-income communities that have disproportionately higher children’s bereavement rates and lower access to care. Our $100,000 grant will help support the expansion of their program space at the ClubHouse.
The Trustees provided a one-year grant of $20,000 to Learn4Life to support their data expansion project. Each year, L4L publishes a report on progress achieved on its six leading indicators, and in 2020, L4L created an online data dashboard that provides easy access to publicly available data about education indicators. The data dashboard provides school-based data disaggregated by subcategories including geography, population, economic status, English proficiency, gender and race, as a tool to identify schools that are serving predominantly low-income students and that far outperform schools with similar demographics. Learn4Life is seeking to make the data dashboard more robust and include updated school-based data.
Overview of Grant Making 2022
The Foundation provided over $4.2 million in capacity building grants to 31 nonprofits working to create a more just and equitable future for individuals and families in Metro Atlanta communities. These included many organizations working to build and preserve affordable housing, as well as those working to keep families housed through a combination of direct financial support, advocacy, case management, and holding units with reputable landlords and housing complex managers for low income working families. Other grants were made to highly effective nonprofits providing out of school time programming for youth living in under resourced communities. The Foundation also made investments in organizations removing financial barriers to college and building career paths and networks for underrepresented students transitioning to their first job. Our investments in organizations providing mental health supports are bringing outpatient services to uninsured children and families, behavioral supports to youth in crisis who present at the ER, as well as a safe and supportive environment for children and youth grieving the loss of a loved one. In 2022, the Foundation supported the capacity of long-standing organizations that are anchors in the Atlanta community, most notably those providing a space for underrepresented voices and less told stories to be heard, seen and celebrated.