Trust for Civic Life

The Trust for Civic Life is now accepting nominations for the first Civic Entrepreneur #grant cycle! Our?priority deadline for nominations is Wednesday, September 25. These are 1-year programmatic grants, up to $25,000 each, with $2M in total funding available for this round. What's a Civic Entrepreneur? This is an individual or small group experimenting with new programs that draw people together and spark civic participation. We are looking for nominees in our priority regions (the Black Belt, Central Appalachia, Tribal Lands and U.S. Southwest Border), and we have a special interest in work that touches on the themes of faith, digital and public spaces. If you know of someone in your community that you think is a great fit, you can find our nomination form here: https://lnkd.in/gHdDYjVN. The form goes into more detail about the specific grant eligibility and includes a link to FAQs about this cycle's application process.

Today is our priority deadline to submit nominations for our Civic Entrepreneur grants. We have a rolling application process for this cycle, so we encourage nominators to send in forms by end of the day if you want your nominee to receive priority consideration. We will share another update once all of our available funding for this cycle has been allocated. Find the form and linked FAQs here: https://lnkd.in/gHdDYjVN

Thanks to all of our 2024 Civic Hub grantees for joining the Trust’s Learning Cohort kickoff session last week! We had a great time getting these incredible groups together for the first time, hearing what everyone is working on and brainstorming on common challenges. Can’t wait to keep learning from each other over the next 3 years to keep building trust and solving problems in communities across the U.S. Mississippi Center for Cultural Production Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky Invest Appalachia The Industrial Commons West Virginia Community Development Hub Imperial Valley Wellness Foundation Chinle Planting Hope Four Bands Community Fund Inc Humboldt Area Foundation Adirondack Foundation Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque Communities Unlimited Innovia Foundation Partridge Creek Farm Vibrant Hawai?i WARM COOKIES OF THE REVOLUTION Entidad Front Porch Forum BLACK BELT COMMUNITY FOUNDATION and Abara !

“Rural is compelling for lots of different types of funders — or at least it should be.” It's true, rural regions get a very small cut of national philanthropic dollars each year. It’s also true that curiosity and appetite is growing among national funders to add rural work to their portfolios. The big?question may not be IF there is a funding gap or enough opportunity (the answer is yes to both), but rather how do we match up the resources with the needs? If we’ve learned one thing from working with rural communities, it’s that top-down funding does not work in rural America. It's consistently a losing approach. Despite well-intentioned philanthropic and private sector efforts, this approach sends the message to local communities that they are broken and can’t be trusted with resources. What does work (and is not just an “easy way for funders to say they are involved”) is getting dollars directly into the hands of the people who know what’s going on in their communities every single day. Most of the national funders we talk to have a strong desire and mission to support locally-led solutions but simply aren’t set up to source and direct large funds to these types of on-the-ground efforts, much less hear about them. So what can we do? First off, we can’t go at it alone. To create a new funding pipeline that gets steady resources to the right places, we need funders from all backgrounds and ideologies to work together, pool resources, and support rural America as an incubator of innovation that’s full of Americans capable of creating the solutions their communities want and need.

Great opportunity this week to learn more about bridging social economic divides! The American Academy of Arts & Sciences is launching a new resource on economic connectedness and hosting a virtual learning event September 12. Speakers will discuss why economic connectedness matters and how everyone can get involved in fostering the cross-class relationships that our economy and our democracy need.

In an era marked by division, a new funding collaborative aims to bridge the gap and foster unity. This article on Inside Philanthropy explores how this initiative seeks to promote collaboration and understanding across diverse communities. Martha Ramirez reports: The goals and strategies of the new funding collaborative Impact on community building and reducing polarization Examples of funded initiatives promoting unity Join the conversation on how philanthropy can play a role in bridging societal divides. Tagging Trust for Civic Life Omidyar Network Rockefeller Brothers Fund Stand Together Carnegie Corporation of New York The David and Lucile Packard Foundation Chinle Planting Hope Front Porch Forum Humboldt Area Foundation Wild Rivers Community Foundation BLACK BELT COMMUNITY FOUNDATION The Industrial Commons Invest Appalachia Communities Unlimited Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky American Academy of Arts & Sciences TLL Temple Foundation Four Bands Community Fund Inc #CommunityBuilding #Unity #SocialImpact #Collaboration #FundingCollaborative #CivilDiscourse #ConflictResolution #SocialCohesion #BridgingDivides #CollaborativePhilanthropy #DialogueAndUnderstanding #Polarization #PositiveChange #InsidePhilanthropy #Philanthropy

Great to see Trust grantee Front Porch Forum featured in the Washington Post for creating a popular online space that gets Vermont residents civically engaged: ow.ly/f9Rt50SVZkG “Front Porch Forum is one of the few online spaces in America that leaves its users feeling more informed, more civically engaged and more connected to their neighbors, rather than less so.” America needs more of this!

Our first Trust for Civic Life newsletter is out! In this issue, we talk about Civic Hubs: what they are, why they matter, and what we're learning from them. Not on the mailing list? Follow the link to subscribe.

Thanks to Martha Ramirez at Inside Philanthropy for today's thoughtful article on the Trust for Civic Life! "Here, we are getting to reinvest and reimagine what democracy means, what the American experience means, and we're getting to do it in a way that involves more people than it ever has.”

Big thanks to Drew Lindsay for capturing the spirit of our new grantees' efforts, and bringing awareness to the locally-led work in rural America that is making our democracy stronger.