The Endowment is offering up to $5,000 for what it calls community grants and capacity-building grants. CEO Dan Winslow explained the difference.
“The endowment has segmented our grant-making program into bands of a rainbow, and the two lowest bands that are closest to the people are the community grants band and the capacity grants band.…basically the difference between the two is community grants are externally focused, what for up to $5000 could an organization do to benefit the community and capacity grants are internally focused, that is, what can the organization do to improve itself to make itself better in serving the community doing whatever it does?”
As examples, Winslow said a community grant could look like an Eagle Scout project — while a capacity grant might be professional development training or a new suite of software.
Five thousand dollars might seem like a lot for a Boy Scout project — and, conversely, not enough to provide something like training for the entire staff of some nonprofits. Winslow acknowledged it's a bit of an experiment.
“Well, we picked these amounts so that we could walk before we ran we are going to do this first round of grants. uh we are gonna learn from this first round of grants. We'll step back, we'll reflect, we'll hopefully improve," Winslow said.
Winslow said they will also consider moving the community and capacity grants to the rolling application cycle of the larger — but first, they want to see what happens with this inaugural batch. The deadline is April 4, the Endowment will review them through May, and announce recipients in June
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