Acclaimed Neighborhood Small Grants Program Funds in Jeopardy – A Call to Action!
The Neighborhood Small Grants Program funds small but powerful community efforts aimed at connecting and engaging residents, building community capacity, improving neighborhood livability, and increasing community impact on public decision making.
This year SE Uplift funded a typically inspiring group of Neighborhood Small Grants recipients. Examples of 2016 year projects that represent the depth and breadth of this program’s impacts on our communities include Catholic Charties’ immigrant and refugee emergency preparedness classes, Know Your City’s Jade Journal, Wild Lilac’s community mural, Johnson Creek College’s art classes for restoration exchange – and too many more to list here.
The Neighborhood Small Grant Program boasts 9 years of such stellar projects – putting money where it counts – in the community. The program has funded 143 projects within SE Uplift. These collaborative grants ran an average of a little over $2,000 per project and leveraged over four dollars for every single dollar granted.
This program is arguably one of the most effective programs the Coalitions manage. The funding is from the City of Portland, Office of Neighborhood Involvement, as a part of our grant with the city.
We believe the Neighborhood Small Grants program is critical for neighborhoods to address issues and build community at a grassroots level. If you agree, please let the City know. Community advocacy impacts budget decisions made by the City Council. Your voice is especially important when it comes to small programs, such as the neighborhood grant program.
Here’s how you can help: write or email the Mayor and the other Portland City Council members, ask them to support this program that does so much with so little for our city. If you were a grant recipient, or benefited from, or delighted in a project funded by this program – write! If you would be willing to speak to the City Council about your appreciation for this program, let SE Uplift Executive Director Anne Dufay (anne@seuplift.org) know. We will be happy to help you organize your testimony.
Charlie Hales, Mayor
1221 SW 4th Avenue, Room 340
Portland, OR 97204
Phone: (503) 823-4120
Email: mayorhales@portlandoregon.gov
Amanda Fritz
1221 SW 4th Avenue, Room 220
Portland, OR 97204
Phone: (503) 823-3008
Email: amanda@portlandoregon.gov
Nick Fish
1221 SW 4th Ave, Room 240
Portland, OR 97204
(503) 823-3589
Email: Nick@portlandoregon.gov
Steve Novick
1221 SW 4th Avenue, Room 210
Portland, OR 97204
Phone: (503) 823-4682
Email: novick@portlandoregon.gov
Dan Saltzman
1221 SW 4th Avenue, Room 230
Portland, OR 97204
Phone: (503) 823-4151
E-mail: dan@portlandoregon.gov