Change is coming to the Steuben County Community Foundation grant guidelines. The goal is to help local nonprofits continue to dream big. These changes were motivated by recent discussions with the local nonprofit community. The SCCF board looked at national and regional community foundations to review their processes for grantmaking. We identified updates that would resonate with the needs of Steuben County nonprofits.
At the end of 2019 the SCCF board of directors voted to approve the new guidelines after a year of strategic discussion. They apply to all grantmaking at SCCF as of July 1, 2020. Along with more detailed guidance on eligibility, the guidelines include an additional cycle called Impact Grants. These will offer multi-year support and larger investments in programs that are innovative, collaborative, and sustainable.
To prepare nonprofits for these changes, SCCF’s Spring 2020 Nonprofit Capacity Building series focused on workshops that will improve their applications. Nonprofits who wish to apply for an Impact Grant must send a representative of their organization to at least two of the five workshops offered by SCCF from February through June. SCCF presented these guidelines along with special panelist discussions at SCCF’s first workshop of the series on February 12, 2020 from 11:30-1:30 at Club Z in Trine University’s MTI Center.
Grant guidelines can be downloaded on the SCCF website at steubenfoundation.org/grants.
