Partnership Grants Program Celebrates 12th and Final Year by Awarding Five Grants

This year marks the 12th and final year of the Partnership Grants at the Community Foundation of Western Nevada. During the last 12 years, $1.4M has been distributed to 103 local nonprofits. The Partnership Grants program was established after Phil, and Jennifer Satre, generous donors, and friends of the  Community Foundation opened their fund with us and is modeled after a similar program they became familiar with at the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis. The Memphis program raised money that was then pooled with funds from their endowment and grants were made to address community issues and needs. At the time our Partnership Grants program was created, we did not yet have an endowment established, so our Partnership Grantmaking fund started with a zero balance each year and was then filled with contributions by generous Community Foundation fundholders and community members who wanted to address the needs of the community. The Partnership Grantmaking Fund was created for two main purposes: 1.) to demonstrate to our fundholders that we make well-informed, educated choices when charged with unrestricted funds; and 2.) to develop real-world experience for when we finally established our endowment fund. Five years ago, the Community Foundation started laying the groundwork for the Community Endowment; today our Community Endowment Campaign is successfully growing our Community Endowment Fund, the income from which will fund grants for the community. We are confident that future grants made from our Community Fund will be successful because of the great work accomplished by the Partnership Grants Selection Committee over their many years of service. This year was the third and final year of a focus on evaluation. 19 Proposals were considered. The committee awarded $52,627 to 5 organizations: Domestic Violence Resource Center, The Generator, Note-Able Music Therapy Services, Urban Roots, and Wells Family Resource Center. These organizations were selected for their grasp of the importance of evaluation, the organization’s commitment to evaluation—and improving on what they are currently doing, their commitment to learning how to evaluate better to get better data to improve programming further, demonstrating a clear plan for what they wanted to do to take evaluation to the next level, and because they gave the selection committee a sense of confidence that they could do what they were proposing. Our Partnership Grants program served us well over the last 12 years, and we could not have done it without the generous donors and fundholders who contributed to the fund each year, our committed Selection Committee who gave their time and expertise to review dozens of proposals each year, and our staff and board who worked to promote the fund. We look forward to administering grants from our Community Fund in 2019, and to continue to address the needs of our community for generations!