Timeline

We are excited to announce preliminary plans for our upcoming grant programs.  After the April 2010 Community Grant Making meeting, the Board decided to develop and use the program in Fiscal Year 2010-2011.  In the next year, Wisconsin Community Fund plans to make grants three times. 

Two grant cycles will be Community Grant Making meetings, further developed based on our experience with the April 2010 meeting (see above) and adapted to local circumstances.  This is likely going to be a short-lived, low-bureaucracy, participatory meeting of stakeholders, primarily grant-seekers, activists, donors, board members, staff.  Currently a committee is working on a process to determine the focus and invite list of a Community Grant Making meeting preliminarily scheduled for Milwaukee this fall or winter and a greater Wisconsin location in the spring.    A third grant cycle is slated to be a written proposal process intended for those who cannot participate in the two in-person meetings.  As more details are finalized, we’ll make them available.

Thanks to the many committed individuals who volunteer and work with the Fund, we are revitalizing the Fund’s support for Change, Not Charity TM. 

 

 

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Recent Grants

1st Community Grant Making

 On April 10, 2010 Wisconsin Community Fund held the very first Community Grant Making meeting.  In one day, 24 people gathered and

• shared information, technical assistance, and resources;
• built relationships, allies, and coalitions;
• developed and submitted grant proposals;
• raised $3000 to add to the $7000 already available for grants;
• and, most importantly, negotiated grant allocation decisions as a group.

Participants were primarily grant-seekers, activists, donors, and Fund staff and Board Directors.   This meeting had a dual purpose.  One, provide grants and other resources to grassroots progressive social change groups.  Two, evaluate the grant program for future consideration.  Thus, in addition to board and staff, we invited groups that received a grant or site visit from Wisconsin Community Fund in the past two years and donor volunteers who showed interest. The majority of participants were social change activists, consistent with our commitment to activist-decided grants for Change, Not Charity™.

Every group that requested a grant received one, seven groups in total, including a coalition formed during the meeting.  A total of $10,000 in grants was awarded to:

• Grassroots Leadership College, Madison Area, $1500
• Wise Women Gathering Place, Northeastern Wisconsin, especially Native American Communities, $1350
• Crawford Stewardship Project, Crawford County and Statewide, $1500
• Freedom, Inc, Dane County,  $1723
• Operation Welcome Home, Madison, $1723
• Wisconsin Apprentice Organizers Project, Statewide, $480
• Uhuru Family Initiative, Madison and Milwaukee, $1723  

 

34^th General Fund Grantees

Crawford Stewardship Project - Gays Mills – Environment - $8,000

Funding for General Operating Expenses will be used to provide salary for a CSP part time staff position.

Group description:  The Crawford Stewardship Project protects the environment of Crawford County from threats such as those posed by Confined Animal Feeding Operations and promotes sustainable land use, local control of natural resources and environmental justice.

Equality Wisconsin Fund - Milwaukee - LGBT - $2,000

Funding for this Project supports an organizer to develop new gay and non-gay Latino leaders who take concrete action on LGBT issues.

Group description:  Equality Wisconsin Fund improves the quality of life of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Wisconsin by improving public understanding and public policy through education, organizing, coalition-building, and other charitable activities.

Freedom, Inc – Madison – Immigrants - $7,000.

Funding for this Project will be used to hire a part-time coordinator for the project Southeast Asian Family Unity.

Group description:  Freedom, Inc. challenges the root causes of violence, poverty, racism, and discrimination in low-income communities. The people who are most affected by these issues must have voice, power, resources, and choice, in order for true social change to happen.

Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods – Milwaukee - Community Organizing - $7,000

Funding for General Operating Expenses supports staffing costs in engaging community education and organizing on the need to prioritize the creation of new job opportunities for disadvantaged and low-income populations in projects that will receive federal stimulus funding.

Group description:  Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods Coalition promotes responsible economic development policy and practice through civic participation and community organizing.  They envision equity in regional development and an economy that works for all.

Intercultural Leadership Initiative - Lac du Flambeau – Youth - $7,000

Funding for General Operating Expenses supports supplies, facility rental, food/beverages, service-learning activities, transitional program expenses, After School Leadership Program, and community meetings.

Group description:  Intercultural Leadership Initiative serves students in the Lakeland Union High School

District which is fed by four K-8 schools, one predominantly Native American while the other three are all non-native. ILI helps eradicate the racism inherent in this system.

Operation Welcome Home – Madison – Housing - $4,000

Funding for this Project supports theater and media projects to create organizing tools that address discrimination and prejudice around the issue of homelessness.

Group description:  Operation Welcome Home organizes homeless people and educates the community to address root causes of homelessness and the criminalization of homelessness.

WI ADAPT – Madison – Disabilities - $4,000

Funding for General Operating Expenses supports the office and staff and pays for member transportation and attendant care.

Group description:  WI ADAPT is a national network of disability activists that employ non-violent civil disobedience as part of a social change strategy.  They demand an end to exclusionary policies that deprive people with disabilities from meaningful inclusion in American Society.

WI Apprentice Organizers Project – Milwaukee - Community Organizing - $7,000

Funding for General Operating Expenses helps train a new grassroots community organizers by covering direct costs related to training and supporting the wages, taxes, and wellness stipend associated with developing a new organizer from a marginalized community.

Group description:  The Wisconsin Apprentice Organizers Project (AOP) builds a strong culture of grassroots community organizing for social, economic, racial and environmental justice in Wisconsin through a paid apprenticeship program.

Wise Women Gathering Place - Green Bay - Native American - $7,000

Funding for this Project advances coalition building around the "Peace, Respect and Belonging" movement in Oneida., specifically addressing prevention of domestic violence, sexual assault and adolescent pregnancy..

Group description:  Wise Women Gathering Place provides women and their families with information, advocacy and referrals regarding health problems, treatment options and the accompanying benefits and risks enabling them to make informed choices.

Worker’s Rights Center – Madison - Worker’s Rights - $7,000

Funding for this Project helps build a statewide coalition in support of comprehensive immigration reform fortified and expanded by educational and outreach efforts with greater media coverage outside of the major metro areas.

Group description:  The Worker’s Rights Center gives low-wage workers in South Central Wisconsin a greater voice in the workplace and the community.
 

African American Children’s Theatre - Milwaukee - Culture - $5,000

Funding for General Operating Expenses to cover scholarships for disadvantaged children, ages 8-18, who audition to participate in after-school theater-based instruction. It will also be used for contracted artist, costumes, rehearsal space, performance space rent.

Group description:  AACT provides African-American children with opportunities to express their creativity, to nurture their individuality, and to guide them in learning and acquiring leadership and performing skills while producing quality art.  At the same time, these children also learn self esteem and skills to function in a racist society.

Anathoth Community Farm - Luck - Community Organizing - $5,000

Funding for General Operating Expenses to support the work of organizing, networking, and training activists on-site. Expenses covered by funding would include electricity, outreach with printing, postage and occasional advertising charges, heating costs, phone and internet bills, fuel, maintenance fees, office supplies, and two staff positions, insurance and a small part of the property tax. Additionally, travel to work with groups at their locations will be covered.

Group description:  It is critical to the survival of life on Earth that we shift from a social and economic system based on consumption and “power over” to one based on cooperation, sustainability and mutual respect. Through trainings in nonviolence, nonviolent direct action, organizing, strategizing, and personal example, Anathoth Community Farm encourages action toward these necessary changes. Working and living in intentional community is an essential context for creating lasting change and personal empowerment.

Dane Co Timebank - Madison - Economic Justice - $5,000

Funding for General Operating Expenses to make up a budget shortfall for the Timebank Director and Administrative Assistant, bringing their pay scales to a level more equitable compared to pay for the two coordinators.

Group description:  Promotes self-sufficiency and community interdependence through time/dollar exchange.

Freedom, Inc - Madison - Immigrant - $7,000

Funding for Project to hire a part-time coordinator for the project Southeast Asian Family Unity. Ten thousand dollars will pay for staff time and benefits. Five thousand will be used to pay for office rent, supplies, staff travel, materials, brochures, and trainings.

Group description:  Freedom, Inc. exists to create social justice through leadership development and community organizing that will bring about social, political, cultural, and economic change resulting in the end of violence against women and children in communities of color. Freedom, Inc., works to challenge the root causes of violence, poverty, racism, and discrimination in low-income communities. The people who are most affected by these issues must have voice, power, resources, and choice in order for true social change to happen.

Grassroots Leadership College - Madison - Community Organizing - $6,000

Funding for Project  El Programa de Liderazgo Communitario: staffing, supplies, childcare, space, food, transportation  as well as the issue-based series pilot for staffing, supplies, childcare. Funding will be used to expand el Programa de Liderazgo Comunitario, the grassroots leadership development program for the Spanish speaking community in Dane County. 

Group description:  Grassroots Leadership College develops grassroots leaders by building skills and relationships in a supportive and challenging environment. Classes are taught by volunteer faculty drawn from neighborhood, non-profit, governmental, educational, faith-based organizations as well as the for-profit sector.

Intercultural Leadership Initiative - Lac du Flambeau - Youth - $6,000

Funding for General Operating Expenses for session supplies, facility rental, food/beverages, service learning activities, transitional program expenses, After School Leadership Program, community meetings.

Group description:  Intercultural Leadership Initiative serves students in the Lakeland Union High Schooldistrict which covers 800 square miles, four feeder K-8 schools and one high school, serving ten communities in two counties in northern WI.  Of the four K-8 schools, one is predominantly Native while the other three are all non-native. ILI is in its eighth year and works with students from 4^th grade through 12^th grade.    

JOSHUA - Green Bay - Community Organizing - $5,000

Funding for Project of training of Hispanic Community Leaders.  JOSHUA/ JOSUE will send at least five (5) Spanish-speaking members to participate in the week-long National Leadership Training Institute of the Gamaliel Foundation.

Group description:  JOSHUA (Justice Organization Sharing Hope and United for Action) is an interfaith congregation-based social justice organization located in Brown County, Wisconsin. There are eleven full-member congregations which include both Protestant and Catholic faiths, and another dozen congregations and organizations which are associated with JOSHUA. JOSHUA deepens relationships within and among congregations and empowers people to act together for justice.

South Side Parents Against Lead - Milwaukee - Anti-Racism - $9,000

Funding for Project involving wage support for Growing Power staff member (to lead the youth program and train our SSPAL members).  Amenities and enhancements to the garden picnic tables, tool shed, installation of an onsite water source, improve signage. Stipends for ten youth workers who participate in the year-long educational program at the garden and the Growing Power Community Food Center.  Materials to install additional raised beds with all natural microbial compost, worm casting fertilizer, seeds, vegetable plugs, and tools. Minimum of five soil testing kits and improvements of the onsite composting system, i.e. rodent-proofing.

Group description:  The Southside Parents Against Lead (SSPAL) is a volunteer group of parents from the near south side of Milwaukee whose children have been poisoned by lead found in our homes and yards. They are dedicated to protecting all children from this hazard by helping families to acquire safe housing, by promoting good nutrition habits, and by building healthier neighborhoods through the removal of lead. They empower the community by educating themselves and others on tenants’ rights, by fighting absentee landlords to remove lead from their properties, by encouraging community-wide soil remediation, and by advocating for undocumented persons in their search for safe housing.

Voces de la Frontera Action - Milwaukee - Immigrants - $6,000

Funding for General Operating Expenses 501(c)4 -- general operating support / capacity-building grant for the fledgling 501c4. Grants will specifically be used to support the grassroots and direct lobbying activities of VFA staff and campaigns along with its administrative costs (i.e. lobbying).This will support staffing VFA to carry out grass roots organizing to build broader support for immigration rights. The campaign work for VFA will specifically focus on grassroots lobbying to educate the public and prevent the legislative efforts to criminalize immigrant workers and force local law enforcement into the role of federal ICE officers, thereby increasing racial profiling, eroding civil rights and hurting police/community relations. This grant builds the capacity of VFA to create a more politically-powerful Latino-immigrant community and build a broader immigrant rights movement that can achieve broader immigrant reform post-2008.

Group description:  The mission of Voces de la Frontera Action (VFA) is to educate low-wage and immigrant workers about their employment rights, develop youth leadership, and promote community organizing and legislative education and advocacy in order to achieve policy changes that benefit the immigrant community and the workforce at large.

WI Rural Womens Initiative - Elkhorn - Women - $2,000

Funding for General Operating Expenses to cover the following for WRWI meetings: Travel expenses around rural southeastern Wisconsin, printing and reproduction of brochures and materials for meetings, marketing as well as supplementing the director's salary.

Group description:  Wisconsin Rural Women’s Initiative empowers women through gathering circles. This unique and safe circle process promotes the development of personal skills and cultivates the total wellness of women. The ultimate goal is wholeness and transformation to effect systemic change within local and world communities.

32nd General Fund Cycle Grantees

9 to 5 Poverty Network Initiative - Milwaukee  - $6,000

9 to 5 Poverty Network Initiative is a multi-racial, multi-issue organization; our mission is to strengthen the ability of low-wage women to win economic justice. They combine advocacy, public education, grassroots organizing. policy campaigns and leadership development to relief from the most punitive components of welfare reform and improve employment policies, while building for long-term goals, especially creation and retention of family-supporting and family-flexible jobs.

Grant funds will be used to support general operating expenses including staff time, a portion of office/rent/supplies and postage overhead and scholarships for our member leaders to attend local and regional leadership training conferences to develop our campaign work around the greater Milwaukee Good Jobs/Livable Neighborhoods Coalition.

Adult Learning Center - Milwaukee - $2,000

The Adult Learning Center provides basic educational opportunities to economically disadvantaged adults so that they may enhance the quality of their lives, positively affect the community and pursue lifelong learning. Students are predominantly African-American and courses focus on black history and communities while discussing the role of race and class in this society.

The grant will fund the Street Law course offered at no charge to community members and current ALC students. Space and instruction are funded. WCF grant monies will go to purchase instructional materials including textbooks, instructor’s materials, all student notebooks and folders, videos and transparencies.

African American Children’s Theatre - Milwaukee - $3,000

AACT provides African-American children with opportunities to express their creativity, to nurture their individuality, and to guide them in learning and acquiring leadership and performing skills while producing quality art. At the same time, these children also learn self esteem and skills to function in a racist society. 

The funds will be used to cover operating expenses, grant writing, training, rent and AACT’s Training Academy Scholarships

Center Advocates - Milwaukee - $8,000

Center Advocates exists to win concrete legislative improvements in the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals in Metro Milwaukee.

The money will be used to fund continued work funded in the 31st FC including:  recruiting lesbian and gay couples of color who will speak publicly about how the lack of legal recognition affects them, increasing the ownership of the LGBT movement by activists of color through an active steering committee, house parties and events, building lists of leaders of color who support the freedom to marry rather than just oppose LGBT discrimination, organizing an affirming event in the Black church, and build grassroots support in African American neighborhoods for marriage equality by conducting neighborhood canvasses, and continuing successful earned-media efforts to educate the African American community about same-sex families.

Fox Cities Rotary Multicultural  Center - Appleton - $3,000

Fox Cities Roatry Multicultural Center will use its $3,000 grant to battle racism in the Appleton community. Founded in 2004, the Center works to promote diversity and understanding among races through education.

The facility acts as a hub for area multicultural groups, offering a meeting place with internet access as well as guidance for smaller non-profits. In addition, the Center holds Diversity Circles, talking sessions throughout the community, as well as movie nights featuring multicultural films. Funds received from WCF will be used to address issues to be identified at its Action Forum in May. This is the first year WCF has funded the group.

Grassroots Leadership College -  Madison - $9,000

Grassroots Leadership College develops grassroots leaders by building skills and relationships in a supportive and challenging environment. Classes are taught by volunteer faculty drawn from neighborhood, non-profit, governmental, educational, faith-based organizations as well as the for-profit sector.

Funding will be used to expand el Programa de Liderazgo Comunitario, our grassroots leadership development program for the Spanish speaking community in Dane County.

Intercultural Leadership Initiative - Lac du Flambeau - $7,000

Intercultural Leadership Initiative serves students in the Lakeland Union High School district which covers 800 square miles and four feeder K-8 schools and one high school serving 10 communities in 2 counties in northern WI. Of the four K-8 schools, one is predominantly Native while the other three are all non-native. ILI is in its eighth year and works with students from 4th grade through 12th grade.

Funding for 2 ILI projects. ILI After School Leadership (ASL) pilot project. Twelve dedicated LUHS ILI high school students meet with ILI staff to more deeply explore ILI issues, get training as elementary session mentors and facilitators, peer mentoring and other advanced leadership skills as well as develop service learning activities across the community. Continued support for the ILI Transition Program, a project we began a few years ago to bring all of the area 8th graders and their teachers together in May to meet and interact with their freshman high school teaching staff.

Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice - Madison - $5,000

Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice educates and mobilizes the religious and labor communities in South Central WI on issues and campaigns to improve wages, benefits, and working conditions for workers, especially low-wage workers. The ICWJ set up and oversees the day-to-day operations of the Workers' Rights Center which educates workers about their rights in the work place.

Funds will be used to cover staff time to build a broad coalition of groups to work on issues surrounding conviction record discrimination. Funds will also be used for the various program expenses related to the project. A quarter time religious outreach organizer will be hired to focus on building contacts and ties to the various congregations and denominations in South Central Wisconsin.

TAPIT/new works - Madison - $3,000

TAPIT/new works was founded in 1985 for the express purpose of pursuing artistic innovation and community connection. TAPIT/new works believes that art helps people make better sense of the world and inspires people to make the world a better place. Experiencing art is an essential part of human nature and through art, TAPIT/new works strives to dismantle barriers of race, class, age and education

Funding will go towards putting the play "Tearing Up the Front Page" on tour and pairing it with facilitated discussions taking place before and after the performance, as a form of grassroots organizing through the arts.

Wexford Ridge Neighborhood Center - Madison - $9,000

Wexford Ridge Neighborhood Center provides programs, services and access to resources that promote growth and community well-being in response to neighborhood needs.

Grant monies will go to help fund the following programs: Community Mapping/Community Forums, Justice for Youth Coalition, Training/Peer to Peer Support, Teen Build Up Support

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Recent Grant Guidelines

THE FOLLOWING GRANT GUIDELINES ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY: The following, in italics, were the Grant Guidelines from the Wisconsin Community Fund's 34th General Fund, which was in 2009.  For 2010, the Guidelines are subject to change; the entire Grant program is currently being redesigned (May 2010). 

WCF's Priorities for its 34^th Funding Cycle are those priorities developed by the WCF founders in 1982. We choose these priorities as a confirmation of WCF's continued commitment to funding groups that are marginalized in this society yet speak the truth about the systemic changes needed for this society.

INTRODUCTION

Wisconsin Community Fund is the only Wisconsin foundation that channels charitable contributions to grassroots organizations working for progressive social change in every part of the state.  Each year WCF receives hundreds of donations allowing us to provide grant money and technical assistance to community groups.

WCF's annual grant cycle provides non-profit organizations with funding for projects and general operating expenses. 

ELIGIBILITY

Wisconsin Community Fund makes grants to organizations that are:

• Based in Wisconsin.
• Not-for-profit and exempt from federal taxes under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code or utilizing a fiscal sponsor.
• Working for fundamental social change and demonstrating practical alternatives to economic and social injustice.

PRIORITIES

Wisconsin Community Fund shows preference to projects that:

• Respond to current and emerging needs and issues, especially the Movement-building issue(s).
• Include coalition-building aspects, with groups from different issue areas working together toward a common goal.
• Work to protect and expand basic human rights and increase opportunities for the poor, the disenfranchised, and people of color.
• Promote and strengthen local community control and seek more equitable distribution of wealth, power and other resources.
• Advocate structural change to create a more just and cooperative society and challenge existing institutions to be more responsive to their constituencies.
• Demonstrate limited access to other sources of funding.

ANTI-RACIST ORGANIZING: WCF has committed itself to the defeat of racism in American society. The WCF Grants Allocation Committee is very interested in seeing that the groups we fund have boards, staff and volunteers that reflect their constituency. Challenging racism involves having diverse boards, staff and volunteers as well as organizing against oppression.

Organizations supported by WCF use a broad range of tools to work for a more democratic and equitable society. These tools include community organizing, coalition-building, action-oriented research and advocacy.  WCF seeks to support grassroots groups with a clear and well-defined strategy for developing local leadership and empowering their constituents, and which reflect awareness of broader social policy issues.

LIMITATIONS

Wisconsin Community Fund does not fund:

• Projects that are individual, national, academic or religious in nature.
• Social or community service, legal fees, academic research, education or cultural projects, unless there is an organizing or direct action component.
• Groups with annual operating budgets over $400,000.
• Annual fund drives, endowments or capital campaigns.

WHAT WE LOOK FOR

In reviewing funding requests, the Grant Allocations Committee will ask questions like these about each proposal:

• Do the strategies employed or proposed by the organization or project work to empower people?
• Are the strategies likely to be effective?
• How well does the organization/project challenge the dominant institutions and attitudes of society?
• Are other sources of funding likely to be available for this organization or project?
• Does the organization or project include outreach to and involvement of an appropriate constituency?
• Are the project goals realistic for the time and resources allocated?

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