Olneyville Programs Awarded $182,708 in Grants by United Way of Rhode Island

by Posted in Arts & Culture, Basic Need, Children & Youth, Community Development, Creative Placemaking, Education, Equity, Health and Wellness, Housing and Homelessness, Immigrants and Refugees, Member Highlights, Member News, Philanthropy

Through its Olneyville Community Fund, United Way of Rhode Island has awarded $182,708 in grants to programs whose work is strengthening the Providence neighborhood it calls home. The investments focus on creating opportunities for all by improving access to services for residents, enhancing educational offerings for children through adults, and increasing nonprofit capacity to meet community need. Eleven organizations received funding.

Grantees include Amenity Aid, Children’s Friend, Clínica Esperanza/Hope Clinic, Community Libraries of Providence, FirstWorks, Inspiring Minds, Meals on Wheels of Rhode Island, Olneyville Neighborhood Association, Project 401, Providence Promise, and Teatro ECAS.

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Champlin Foundation Awards $9.6 Million to Nonprofits Statewide

by Posted in Arts & Culture, Basic Need, Children & Youth, Creative Placemaking, Equity, Health and Wellness, Member Highlights, Member News, Philanthropy

The Champlin Foundation announced more than $9.6 million in capital funding to 87 nonprofit organizations across the state.  Nonprofits receiving funding in this cycle serve Rhode Islanders of all ages across youth services, healthcare, arts and culture, and beyond. Among the recipients are 12 first-time grantees. 

The Champlin Foundation specifically supports capital improvements across nine areas of focus: arts and culture, conservation and parks, education, healthcare, historic preservation and heritage, libraries, social services, youth services, and welfare of animals. Every area is represented in this round of funding. Total giving by the Foundation will be supplemented with a second round of grants in fall 2022. 

The funding includes three $1 million awards, given to the Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum, Crossroads Rhode Island, and the Boys and Girls Club of Providence.   It is unusual for Champlin to award three grants of this size in one cycle, but it speaks to both the tremendous need in the nonprofit community and the leadership and commitment of the grantees.  

The Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum is preparing to build a comprehensive, four-building campus on 18 acres of rural University of Rhode Island land in South Kingstown that honors the region’s Indigenous history with a new museum, robust archives, a maker’s space, as well as a building for educational programming. 

In the face of an urgent statewide affordable housing crisis, Champlin awarded a $1 million grant to Crossroads Rhode Island, the leading provider of homeless services. The organization’s main headquarters, which is the epicenter of service and support for the more than 1,100 Rhode Islanders who face housing insecurity on any given day, is in need of significant exterior restoration and repair.  

The third and final $1 million grant in this cycle is going to the Boys and Girls Club of Providence, which plans to renovate and expand its Wanskuck Clubhouse. The branch opened in 1927 and has been providing recreational activities and educational programming to the young people of the city’s North End ever since. The Boys and Girls Club of Providence is also a longstanding grantee, having received the first of what has been an annual grant from The Champlin Foundation in 1958. 

In addition to the three mentioned, grants supporting other transformational projects were awarded to Teatro ECAS, which is building out a larger theater in the Valley Arts District; Save the Bay, which is moving its Newport aquarium to a greatly expanded new Downtown space; Revive the Roots in Smithfield, which is acquiring land and the historic Mowry house; and a grant to CCRI that will completely update the Dental Hygiene program’s equipment at the Lincoln campus.  

 The full list of grantees and their awards is available on the Champlin website. 

RISCA, RI Arts Organizations Awarded Over $900,000 from NEA

by Posted in Arts & Culture, Creative Placemaking, Member Highlights, Member News

As part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ $91 million grantmaking initiative (Arts Projects, Our Town, and State and Regional Partnerships),  Rhode Island State Council of the Arts and five local nonprofits received a total of almost $990,000.

Nonprofit recipients were Community MusicWorks, Brown University, First Works, Newport Music Festival, and AS220.

RI Foundation, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of RI Recognize Effective Nonprofits

by Posted in Arts & Culture, Basic Need, Children & Youth, Corporate Citizenship, Education, Equity, Health and Wellness, Member Highlights, Member News, Philanthropy

The Rhode Island Foundation honored three nonprofit organizations with its annual Best Practice Awards. The work that is being honored includes an initiative to support Latino-owned small businesses and a community gardening program that grew one ton of fresh produce for a local food pantry.

Sponsored by Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, the award program recognizes outstanding practices by Rhode Island nonprofit organizations in the area of collaboration, with an emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion.

The three recipients will each receive $5,000 grants in recognition of their achievements.

The Norman Bird Sanctuary in Middletown was honored for its “Good Gardens Program,” which focuses on growing produce for the food pantry at Newport’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center. In 2021, over a ton of fresh fruit and vegetables was donated.  The initiative is a collaboration with the MLK Center and the URI Master Gardeners. It includes a summer program that introduces kids to gardening.

The Woonsocket Afterschool Coalition was honored for doubling the number of school children receiving services. The Riverzedge Arts Project is one of six nonprofit organizations that comprise the coalition.

The Coalition aims to increase the number of students receiving services by an additional 4,000 in the next three years. The other partners are the Boys and Girls Clubs of Northern R.I., the Community Care Alliance, Connecting for Children and Families, NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley and the Woonsocket YMCA.

The Rhode Island Israel Collaborative in Providence was honored for its R.I. Latino Biz Web Design Project, which matched skilled local students with Latino-owned businesses in Rhode Island to create websites in order to keep up with the move to e-commerce during COVID-19.

In partnership with the R.I. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, 31 Latino-owned businesses were paired with students from Providence College and other local colleges to create websites using Israeli WIX, a cloud-based, web development platform located in Israel. The Israel General Consulate to the New England and other donors helped fund the project.

 

BankNewport 2021 Philanthropic Efforts Resulted in Over $1.2 Million Awarded to Over 350 RI Nonprofits

by Posted in Arts & Culture, Basic Need, Children & Youth, Climate/Environment, Employee Engagement, Health and Wellness, Member Highlights, Member News, Philanthropy, Uncategorized

BankNewport announced that its 2021 philanthropic efforts resulted in over $1.2 million awarded to over 350 nonprofits in Rhode Island. The donations include all grants, sponsorships, community contributions from local branches, and year-end proactive and holiday support totaling $74,000 to nonprofits that meet basic needs for the underserved throughout Rhode Island.

Organizations in every county of Rhode Island benefitted from the giving effort, with areas of impact focused on basic human needs, children & families, education, economic security, healthy living, arts and culture and the environment. Over the past 11 years, BankNewport has awarded $7 million in grants, sponsorships, and donations to a wide range of nonprofits to help strengthen and enrich lives and communities throughout the state.

Financial education and community involvement by Bank employees in 2021 totaled over 7,300 hours. Through BNWise, BankNewport’s financial education program, over 2,500 students and community members were engaged in interactive financial education presentations on a variety of topics, from saving and budgeting to credit and entrepreneurship, which were made available in-person and virtually.

BankNewport also presented two high profile campaigns generating statewide awareness of food insecurity and for those organizations serving Rhode Island’s homeless population: Kind Souls Full Bowls benefitted the with a $50,000 Bank gift and over $7,500 raised from the community, and Kind Heart Fresh Start collected over 4,700 personal care items impacting more than 1,000 individuals in need with a $50,000 Bank gift and over $7,500 raised from the community, and Kind Heart Fresh Start collected over 4,700 personal care items impacting more than 1,000 individuals in need.

 

$450K in American Rescue Plan Funds for RI Arts Organizations

by Posted in Arts & Culture, Disaster Philanthropy, Member Highlights, Member News, Policy

Representative David Cicilline announced that six Rhode Island arts organizations have been awarded a total of $450,000 in competitive grant funding from the American Rescue Plan. These grants, awarded through the National Endowment for the Arts, will support payroll costs and pandemic-related expenses. The grants were awarded as follows:

  • Alliance of Artists Communities, Providence – $100,000
  • Dirt Palace Public Projects, Providence – $50,000
  • DownCity Design, Providence – $100,000
  • Spectrum Theatre Ensemble, Providence – $100,000
  • Everett Arts Incubator, Providence – $50,000
  •  Riverzedge Arts, Woonsocket – $50,000

The pandemic and safety measures have hit arts organizations here in Rhode Island and around the country hard. These American Rescue Plan grants will help Rhode Island’s cultural institutions weather this storm and continue to enrich Rhode Island communities.

State Arts Council Awards 74 Grants to RI Artists, Arts Organizations and Nonprofits

by Posted in Arts & Culture, Member Highlights, Member News, Policy

Arts and culture organizations, arts education and healthcare programs, individual and teaching artists, culture workers, and related community projects benefited from $215,011 in funding announced by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA). The 74 grants, of which 34 went to individual artists, were approved by the Arts Council’s Board on Dec. 13, and will assist RI’s arts and culture community throughout the 2022 fiscal year.

The next cycle of arts and culture grants will open on Feb. 1 with a deadline of April 1. Several grant programs have been updated to align with the agency’s ongoing work to ensure that arts and culture continue to be an essential part of Rhode Island life and thrive in our communities. For more information, visit RISCA’s grants webpage.

National Endowment for the Arts announces $195,000 in Project Funding to 11 RI arts organizations

by Posted in Arts & Culture, Creative Placemaking, Member Highlights, Member News, Philanthropy, Policy

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced today the first round of recommended awards for fiscal year 2022, with 11 awards totaling nearly $195,000 to Rhode Island-based arts and culture organizations.

Nationally, the first round of NEA’s recommended awards for fiscal year 2022 totaled 1,498 organizations and nearly $33.2 million in funds. The Grants for Arts Projects funding spanned 15 artistic disciplines and reached communities in every state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Recipients of the Challenge America grant program, NEA Literature Fellowships in creative writing and translation, and support for arts research projects were also included in this announcement.

Click here to see the national listing of grantees.

RISCA and RIHPHC Award $3.46 million in Capital Grants

by Posted in Arts & Culture, Community Development, Creative Placemaking, Member Highlights, Member News, Philanthropy, Policy
Governor Dan McKee, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) and the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission (RIHPHC) jointly announced the recipients of 24 State Cultural Facilities Grants and 18 State Preservation Grants.
Together the projects represent some $2.28 million from RISCA and more than $1.18 million from RIHPHC for capital preservation work at public and nonprofit arts and performance facilities, museums, cultural arts centers and historic sites throughout the state.
Last March, Rhode Island voters overwhelmingly passed the Cultural Arts and State Preservation Grants Programs ballot measure, which authorized the state to allocate funds to arts, culture and historic facilities. Included in this funding are carryover funds from the 2014 $30 million ballot measure totaling $460,930.
For a listing of State Cultural Facilities Grants, click here.
For more on HPHC’s State Preservation Grants, visit www.preservation.ri.gov.

State Arts Council Awards 74 Grants to RI Artists, Arts Organizations and Nonprofits

by Posted in Arts & Culture, Education, Member Highlights, Member News, Philanthropy

Arts and culture organizations, arts education and healthcare programs, individual and teaching artists, culture workers, and related community projects benefited from $215,011 in funding announced today by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA). The 74 grants, of which 34 went to individual artists and will assist RI’s arts and culture community throughout the 2022 fiscal year.

The next cycle of arts and culture grants will open on Feb. 1 with a deadline of April 1. Several grant programs have been updated to align with the agency’s ongoing work to ensure that arts and culture continue to be an essential part of Rhode Island life and thrive in our communities. For more information, visit RISCA’s grants webpage.