RSSNR: New private fund to start awarding grants
January 9th, 2008 | Published in In the Press
by Staff Reporters | News & Record
A new private foundation aimed at helping neighborhood groups promote democracy will launch next week.
The Fund for Democratic Communities will open its first grant-making cycle with a news conference at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday at its office at the HIVE at 1214 Grove St., Greensboro. The fund will hold a 90-minute information session for prospective grantees starting at 10 a.m. Jan. 19 at the HIVE.
The fund intends to support community-based initiatives and institutions that foster authentic democracy to make communities better places to live. Its focus areas are education, recreation, arts, housing, community health and safety, justice, humans’ relationship with the natural environment, relationships between different communities, and sustainable economic development. It will make grants, provide direct technical assistance, conduct research, and eventually produce training and community building materials to support this agenda. It is placing a special emphasis on developing non-traditional and youth leaders.
The fund, founded by local activists Marnie Thompson and Ed Whitfield, is seeking applications for $20,000 in grants the organization hopes to award in May. The fund is financed by a bequest from the estate of Thompson’s father, the late W. Hayden Thompson of Cleveland, Ohio, and organizers hope its assets will grow to $5 million by 2013. If successful, that would give the fund about $400,000 to award each year. For its first grant cycle, the fund plans to make awards ranging from a few hundred dollars to up to $10,000.
Thompson is a consultant in educational research and educational change who previously was a senior research scientist at Educational Testing Service. Whitfield, a social critic, writer and activist who works closely with the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro, is the fund’s part-time executive director.
The fund’s board of directors are: Sabrina Abney, Marilyn Baird, Erica “Ricky” Bratz, Jonathan Henderson, Stephen Johnson, Muktha Jost, Kyle Lambelet, Nicole Lambelet, Logie Meachum, Isabell Moore, Steve Sumerford and Joya Wesley.
More information: 336-617-5329 or http://www.f4dc.org.
