United Way gives community grants

Staff

Published Thursday, September 25, 2008

The United Way of Freeborn County allocated more than $14,000 this week in one-time community impact grants to several nonprofit organizations throughout the county.

Freeborn County United Way Executive Director Ann Austin said after the United Way exceeded its goal last year, it had an about $10,000 surplus to give away in grants. Then, after a partnering agency dropped one of its programs, there was an extra $4,560 to add to the grants.

Applications for the grants were required to focus on at least one of three categories: education, income or health. Requests could be anywhere from $100 to $5,000.

Austin said 17 organizations applied for the grants, but in the end, the United Way was only able to fund six of the organizations’ requests.

The United Way’s allocation committee met Sept. 9 and spent more than two hours discussing which programs to fund, she said. The committee voted unanimously on the awarded programs, which included many start-up funds.

Some of the programs were ones that United Way partner agencies have developed, but some were not.

Austin said, regardless, all the programs will serve a need in the community that’s not being served already.

Specifically, funds were awarded for the new Operation Respect “Don’t Laugh at Me” program, during which children will learn to share feelings based on experiences they or others had with disrespect. Then using a guide book they will learn to be sensitized to the effects of ridicule, scorn, bullying and other forms of disrespect.

Funds also went to the Dollars & Sense Financial Literacy Project, which will be a workshop designed to get people more aware of how to manage their finances so they don’t have trouble down the road, Austin said.

The Freeborn County Hugs Council, also known as the Child Abuse Prevention Council, received funding to help raise awareness for what it is doing and to educate the public that child abuse is preventable.

Fourthly, funding will go toward educational DVDs on parenting that families and professionals can borrow from the Albert Lea Public Library or the Parenting Resource Center Speciality Library.

Fifthly, funding will go toward the Community Mentor Connection, which will be used to create and support new mentoring relationships.

Lastly, some of the funds will go toward the initial setup costs for the Alternatives to Violence program, which intends to create a professional, secure visitation site for supervised visitations and safe exchanges of children between parents in difficult situations.

“It’s really an exciting opportunity to reach out to programs outside of our partner agencies,” Austin said. “That’s what we want to try to do is make more of a visible impact in the community. Hopefully people will see this in the programs we funded.”

Austin said a couple of the requests were partially funded because there was only a certain amount of money to give.

The programs receiving funding will give a progress report of where the funding was used on March 15.

Though the funds are only one-time grants, Austin said she hopes to be able to offer more of them in the future.

“It would be really great for us to exceed our goal again this year, so we can offer more community impact grants,” she said. “There’s such a need out there.”

She said it was difficult for all of the allocation committee members to see some of the programs go unfunded, and the United Way is looking at other ways to support those groups.

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