There are a lot of organizations in the city working to make their slice of the Motor City better, and the Kresge Foundation announced this week that they’ll be supporting their work with $1 million in grants.
The grants will be used to help the operating expenses of the community development organizations over a three year period.
“These three-year grants reinforce our top priority, which is spreading the energy of renewal to the city’s neighborhoods,” said Wendy Lewis Jackson, managing director of Kresge’s Detroit Program in a post on Kresge’s site. “Neighborhoods have been the backbone of the city through its hardest time, and these organizations have been the backbone of their neighborhoods. These groups are on the forefront of block-by-block strategies to make neighborhoods more vital and livable. And they all understand that there’s no substitute for engaging residents and championing Detroiters’ priorities.”
Why this matters: Often in Detroit’s past, philanthropy and corporate giving focuses on funding a specific project, but the projects need people and resources to keep them going. Many of these groups are very small, and so $30,000 or $60,000 is a huge difference in their operating budgets.
The 21 organizations are: Bridging Communities, Central Detroit Christian CDC, Cody Rouge Community Action Alliance CDC, Congress of Communities, Detroit Catholic Pastoral Alliance, Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation, Eastside Community Network, Focus: HOPE, GenesisHOPE CDC, Grandmont Rosedale Development Corporation, Joy-Southfield CDC, LifeBUILDERS, Mack Avenue Community Church CDC, Osborn Neighborhood Alliance, Southwest Detroit Business Association Inc., Southwest Housing Solutions, The Brightmoor Alliance, The Villages of Detroit, U SNAP BAC, Urban Neighborhood Initiatives Inc., Woodbridge Neighborhood Development Corporation.
