Community Fund Grants

Filter the grants using the options below:

Organization Year Amount Initiative Programsort descending Project Description Neighborhoods
Brownsville Community Culinary Center 2019 $45,000 Invest in Youth Invest in Youth Grant Program To support the culinary training and apprenticeship program for young people, ages 18-34, from Brownsville. Brownsville
Center for Anti-Violence Education 2017 $40,000 Invest in Youth Invest in Youth Grant Program For comprehensive anti-violence, empowerment, and leadership programming for young people, including the expansion of services for LGBTQ homeless youth and service providers Boroughwide
Black Alliance for Just Immigration 2016 $30,000 Invest in Youth Invest in Youth Grant Program To develop the leadership and empowerment of the borough's Black immigrant youth and families in order to end racism, criminalization, and economic disenfranchisement. Boroughwide
Young New Yorkers 2015 $20,000 Invest in Youth Invest in Youth Grant Program Operating Support to provide art-based transformative justice programs to court-involved young people, with the ultimate goal of empowering them to transform the criminal justice system through their own creative voices. Boroughwide
Center for Urban Pedagogy 2022 $45,000 Invest in Youth Invest in Youth Grant Program To support a program for high school students that centers on engaging young people to understand policies and structures that affect their neighborhood, promoting civic engagement and supporting their capacity as community leaders. Boroughwide
Girl Be Heard 2021 $45,000 Invest in Youth Invest in Youth Grant Program For multidisciplinary arts opportunities designed to engage young women in social justice education and develop their leadership skills. Boroughwide
Black Women's Blueprint 2018 $35,000 Invest in Youth Invest in Youth Grant Program For a partnership with student organizers to pilot campus-based transformative justice practices that hold harm-doers accountable and support sexual violence survivors in their healing and development. Crown Heights
IntegrateNYC 2019 $45,000 Invest in Youth Invest in Youth Grant Program To support the leadership and capacity of students working to end segregation in New York City public schools. Boroughwide
596 Acres 2017 $20,000 Neighborhood Strength Crown Heights Grant Program To support stewardship, preservation, and transformation of two neighborhood lots into community gardens. Crown Heights
Bethany United Methodist Church 2017 $20,000 Neighborhood Strength Crown Heights Grant Program To support services, workshops, and cultural programming that engage residents around issues in the community. Crown Heights
Brooklyn Clergy Action Network 2015 $10,000 Neighborhood Strength Crown Heights Grant Program The Brooklyn Clergy Action Network mobilizes faith leaders and the community to end gun violence in low and moderate-income communities in Brooklyn. Funds will be used to establish a mentorship program for 12 to 17-year-old males designed to reduce and prevent violence by training them in methods of communication as an alternative to violence. Crown Heights
Haiti Cultural Exchange 2017 $10,000 Neighborhood Strength Crown Heights Grant Program To support local Haitian artists who will facilitate arts activities and programming in Westbrook Memorial Garden to bring community concerns to light. Crown Heights
Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine 2015 $5,000 Neighborhood Strength Crown Heights Grant Program Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine is a collaborative public art project that explores art-making as a community-building tool. Funds will be used to create and distribute an accessible guide to tenants’ rights to assist long-time residents being pushed out of their homes. Crown Heights
New York Communities for Change 2017 $30,000 Neighborhood Strength Crown Heights Grant Program For supporting the inclusion of community voices to inform the development plan of the city-owned Bedford-Union Armory. Crown Heights
Brooklyn Movement Center 2015 $15,000 Neighborhood Strength Crown Heights Grant Program The Brooklyn Movement Center, a Black-led organizing nonprofit, trains and mobilizes Central Brooklynites to lead local and city-wide policy campaigns to end abusive policing. Funds will be used for police accountability organizing and legislative advocacy in Crown Heights that mobilizes local stakeholders, creates alternative community safety approaches, and conducts know-your-rights and leadership trainings. Crown Heights
Repair the World NYC 2017 $20,000 Neighborhood Strength Crown Heights Grant Program To support increased accessibility, programming and community partnerships that bring new and long-term residents together to meet community needs at its storefront space on Nostrand Avenue. Crown Heights
Global Kids 2015 $10,000 Neighborhood Strength Crown Heights Grant Program Global Kids’ mission is to educate and inspire underserved youth to become successful students, global citizens, and community leaders. Funds will be used for the Human Rights Activist Project in three Crown Heights public schools to empower youth to advocate for community and global issues through interactive workshops on community organizing, social action, digital and social media, policy, and root causes. Crown Heights
NYC Coalition for Educational Justice 2015 $10,000 Neighborhood Strength Crown Heights Grant Program NYC Coalition for Educational Justice is a parent-led movement that seeks to affect policy change and create a more equitable educational system. Funds will support local parent engagement around the Department of Education's Community Schools Initiative, which will bring over a million dollars in new resources to three Crown Heights schools. Crown Heights
Progress Playbook 2015 $5,000 Neighborhood Strength Crown Heights Grant Program Progress Playbook designs customized learning experiences for entrepreneurs so that they can accomplish their business goals. A $5,000 grant will provide 10 Crown Heights youth with a three-month entrepreneur training program, through which each will develop a comprehensive business plan. Three plans selected by community members will receive financial and technical assistance to launch or expand their business within Crown Heights. Crown Heights
Simone Leigh 2015 $5,000 Neighborhood Strength Crown Heights Grant Program Resident Simone Leigh is receiving a $5,000 grant to support an innovative series of drumming classes and workshops for black women and girls in Crown Heights, which seeks to build bridges across cultures and communities and provide a nurturing environment where participants can relax, learn new skills, exercise, and connect in a non-competitive way. Crown Heights
UHAB 2015 $15,000 Neighborhood Strength Crown Heights Grant Program UHAB organizes tenants to fight poor living conditions in buildings neglected or abandoned by landlords; in 2013, three UHAB-organized tenant associations formed the Crown Heights Tenants Union. A $15,000 grant will support their focus on ending bad living conditions, illegal displacement, and loss of rent-regulated housing in Crown Heights by bolstering tenant and neighborhood power. Crown Heights
Weeksville Heritage Center 2015 $10,000 Neighborhood Strength Crown Heights Grant Program Weeksville Heritage Center is an historic site museum and community cultural center that preserves the legacy of the original Weeksville community founded in 1838 – one of the first and most prolific free African American communities in the United States. Funds will support a performance project featuring new oral histories and collaborations with local performing artists and teens to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1991 Crown Heights Riots. Weeksville will also host a community dinner for residents of its immediate vicinity. Crown Heights
Young Movement 2015 $5,000 Neighborhood Strength Crown Heights Grant Program Young Movement provides research, advocacy, and partnerships on socio-economic issues like financial literacy and employment alternatives for young adults. Funds will support the Weeksville Entrepreneurship Project to train 10 young adults from the Weeksville section of Crown Heights in tools to find and create sustainable solutions to employment, financial, and health disparities in Weeksville. Crown Heights
The Youth Farm 2015 $10,000 Neighborhood Strength Crown Heights Grant Program The Youth Farm is a one-acre farm on the Wingate Campus that grows approximately 15,000 pounds of fresh, culturally relevant crops for the Crown Heights community each year. Funds will support a year-round youth program, an advanced organic farming training program for adults, and a paid summer youth employment program. Crown Heights
Be More 2015 $5,000 Brooklyn Accelerator Incubator Project Be More aims to raise awareness about race-based disparities, train change agents with tools to reduce unconscious bias to eliminate racial inequities, and foster leadership to enable multiracial social change movements. In the coming year, Be More will launch its second #Vision2040 social media video campaign, organize community gatherings to heal from racism, and prototype a training to reduce unconscious bias using evidence-based techniques. Boroughwide
Domestic Workers United 2015 $5,000 Brooklyn Accelerator Incubator Project DWU is an organization of Caribbean, Latina and African caregivers and housekeepers—concentrated in Crown Heights and Flatbush—that organizes to end exploitation and oppression for all workers whose labor is based primarily in homes and is not protected by most labor laws in New York City. DWU has adopted a model that centers on the development of strong, low-income immigrant women of color leaders who have the drive, training, and sensitivity to lead a movement for social change. Crown Heights, Flatbush
The Precedential Group 2015 $5,000 Brooklyn Accelerator Incubator Project The Precedential Group, founded by Marlon Peterson in 2014, is an organization working to establish “Child Safe Zones” to reduce gun violence in Brooklyn neighborhoods by engaging young people, local police, schools, and residents. Marlon Peterson has led, advised, and supported several criminal justice reform organizations including Fortune Society, Crown Heights Mediation Center, and New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. Marlon recently received the Soros Fellowship Award from Open Society Foundation. For more information: marlonpeterson.com Crown Heights, Brownsville, East New York
Groundswell Community Mural Project 2022 $100,000 Spark Prize Spark Prize Groundswell Community Mural Project was founded in 1996 to bring together artists, youth, and community organizations to use art as a tool for social change. Its projects beautify neighborhoods, engage youth in societal and personal transformation, and give expression to ideas and perspectives that are underrepresented in the public dialogue. Each year, Groundswell engages over 450 youth, led by trained teaching artists, and in partnership with community partner organizations and city agencies, in the presentation of afterschool, summer, school-based, and community commissioned programs. In addition, Groundswell hosts free, often youth-led, events and programs for the general public. Boroughwide
VOCAL-NY 2018 $100,000 Spark Prize Spark Prize Voices of Community Activists & Leaders (VOCAL-NY) is a Brooklyn-based, statewide network building a movement led by low-income people of color to end the AIDS epidemic, the war on drugs, mass incarceration, and homelessness. Founded in 1999 as a progressive AIDS housing network at a time when the epidemic was increasingly concentrated in low-income communities of color, VOCAL-NY was formed to shift attention toward root causes, like homelessness and incarceration. Today, VOCAL-NY operates a syringe exchange that distributes over 50,000 clean syringes annually, provides overdose prevention training and other services to hundreds of New Yorkers, and has worked to pass 15 pieces of legislation since 2013. Boroughwide
Weeksville Heritage Center 2022 $100,000 Spark Prize Spark Prize Weeksville Heritage Center upholds the legacy of one of the largest free Black communities in pre-Civil War America, using historic preservation, education, the arts, and a social justice lens to keep this unique chapter of American history relevant and resonant for contemporary audiences, particularly Black residents in Central Brooklyn. The Weeksville Heritage Center is the steward of the historic Hunterfly Road Houses, and serves as an education space, community hub, and presenter of free or low-cost recreational and artistic programming—all with a nexus to the Weeksville legacy of self-determination. Having emerged from a crippling financial crisis in 2019, Weeksville reestablished a record of fiscal accountability under a new strategic plan, and was included in New York City’s esteemed Cultural Institutions Group in 2020. Boroughwide
Audre Lorde Project 2017 $100,000 Spark Prize Spark Prize An inter-generational organizing center for LGBT people of color that promotes community wellness and progressive social and economic justice in New York City. Founded in Brooklyn in 1996, ALP works with over 8,000 members on issues including creating safety models against police brutality and hate crimes, as well as training small businesses, community organizations, and neighborhood leaders on de-escalation and safety strategies. Boroughwide
Common Justice 2017 $100,000 Spark Prize Spark Prize A restorative justice program of the Vera Institute of Justice that works with responsible parties and those harmed by violent crime in Brooklyn. Founded in 2008, Common Justice is the first and only alternative to incarceration program for violent crimes in the adult courts in the United States. It works with 16 to 24-year-olds to address the criminal justice system’s over-reliance on incarceration, to halt cycles of violence, and to meet the needs of victims of crime. To date, fewer than 8% of its participants have been terminated from the program for committing a new crime. Boroughwide
Make the Road New York 2017 $100,000 Spark Prize Spark Prize An immigrant-led organization that develops grassroots leadership to mobilize Latino and working class communities. It provides legal services, education, and employment access to achieve policy change. MRNY is dedicated to building community power and racial equity in Bushwick, where it was founded in 1997. It now has over 20,000 members and 200 staff working across New York City, Long Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. Boroughwide
Brownsville Community Justice Center 2020 $100,000 Spark Prize Spark Prize For a multi-faceted initiative that seeks to re-engineer how the justice system works in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The Justice Center addresses systemic inequities by helping young people disengage from the justice system and discover routes to economic security, so they can, in turn, reinvest in their community. Brownsville
MoCADA 2017 $100,000 Spark Prize Spark Prize A “museum without walls” that serves the African Diasporan community through art exhibitions, education, and community programs to promote African diasporan art, racial equity, and social justice in Brooklyn. Founded in 1999, this year it is expanding from 2,000 sq. ft. to a new 20,000 sq. ft. headquarters in Fort Greene. Boroughwide

Pages