Grant Overview
Neighbor Up Action Grants fuel the power of neighbors to make the change they want to see in their communities.
Grants range from $500 to $5,000, and are meant to spur small, grassroots community projects throughout Cleveland and East Cleveland. Grants may be used for a wide variety of projects, and groups are encouraged to think in new ways about what will work in their communities and with whom they might partner.
Groups may submit one proposal per round. Groups may receive funding once per calendar year—either in Spring or Fall, but not both.
Neighbor Up Action Grants have three main purposes:
1. Build Resident Leadership & Ownership in Their Neighborhood: Stimulate and support projects designed and implemented by groups of neighbors that address neighborhood issues. Grants are intended to support the work of everyday people out of their mutual self-interest. We are looking for ideas that originate with a group of people from a neighborhood that are being moved into action as a project, event, or activity. The intent is to support residents as active citizens. Grants are not intended to be used as start-up funds to create more nonprofits, to support established non-profits, or to develop more social service programs.
2. Build Community, Especially Across Lines of Difference: Encourage new and stronger relationships between diverse residents of the community, among grassroots groups, and between grassroots groups and more established organizations: Building relationships is key to transforming neighborhoods. Projects must have the potential to build and strengthen positive relationships inside the neighborhood and must be inclusive and equitable in their design and implementation. By ‘across lines of difference’, we mean building trust and understanding across things that many times separate us (racial, ethnic, religious, generational, geographic, socio-economic, homeowner-renters, resident -institutional, etc.)
3. Build Power: Support opportunities to develop community leadership, organizational capacity and build community capacity: our grants are intended to help support community members develop their leadership skills and make clear the possibilities of what they can do when they come together.
Applications are reviewed and decisions are made by a committee of Cleveland and East Cleveland residents. Learn more about previously funded projects here.
Grant applications for the next round of funding are due by Monday, February 12th, 2024 at 11:59 pm.
