PITTSBORO, NC—Triangle Community Foundation has announced a pilot initiative with United Way of Chatham County and Chatham County Government to promote community collaboration in addressing a local problem. For the 2016 grant, access to affordable housing has been identified as the target issue.
The special initiative will offer funding of $30,000 to a partnership of at least two agencies serving Chatham County that offer a collaborative approach to address affordable housing. This issue is closely related to employment, transportation, education, job skills, food costs, health services and other areas of concern.
“We are excited about this opportunity to work together with other funders because it recognizes that social problems in our communities are complex in nature and often require several groups to work together to effectively address them,” said Lori O’Keefe, president and CEO of Triangle Community Foundation. “We hope that this can be a model for other communities across the region.”
O’Keefe added, “Limited access to affordable housing has various root causes and all of these are connected. We look forward to seeing what innovative ideas local agencies come up with.”
Chatham County Manager Renee Paschal said, “We are very appreciative of the opportunity to work with the Foundation and United Way in fostering community collaboration on such an important issue. Affordable housing is one of the priorities of our Board of Commissioners, because the commissioners recognize that we have some specific challenges in Chatham County.”
Chatham County has worked closely with United Way of Chatham County for more than 20 years to offer a nonprofit grant application process. In that process, nonprofits have been able to use the same application to request funding from the county and United Way.
“This new pot of money adds a special level of commitment to collaborative solutions,” said Dina Reynolds, executive director of United Way of Chatham County. “This is not something we could have done on our own. By working together and each of us contributing funds to the project, we can offer this unique opportunity.”
The application process for the collaborative grant begins with an announcement going out to nonprofits in late November. All agencies in the collaboration must first pass the United Way and Chatham County certification process for nonprofits.
Certification of the agencies must be completed first. The applications will be due April 15, 2016. Agencies will be required to make a presentation on May 4, 2016 and the award announcement will be made by May 5, 2015.
The online application form will be available by Dec. 3, 2015 on Triangle Community Foundation’s website at: www.trianglecf.org/nonprofits/grants/
Training for interested agencies will be available on Jan. 14, 2016 as part of the regular training for nonprofits interested in county and United Way grants.
Eligible projects must address one or more aspects of affordable housing and contributing issues, which are outlined in materials provided to potential applicants.