Current Grant Projects

The Capacity Building Fund at Third Sector New England has awarded Implementation Grants to 9 learning networks made up of at least 5 organizations that have come together to address an issue of shared concern. The grants are intended to support the cost of putting into operation the capacity building projects that derived from TSNE’s 2008 Planning Grants. These 12- to 24-month co-learning projects will lead to greater organizational capacity to meet shared learning goals.

Following are descriptions of the networks, organizations within each and the planning projects being undertaken.

Adolescent Consultation Services

Statewide Mass. – This learning network is comprised of five organizations, each engaged in working with system-involved youth toward the common good of nonviolence, civil rights, health care and/or education in Massachusetts. This learning network seeks to learn how to best increase constituent and stakeholder inclusion and foster a comprehensive plan for ongoing leadership development.

The network has two overarching goals that will fuel their process. The first goal is to create a strategy for integrating system-involved youth into program development, decision making and/or ongoing advocacy efforts. The second goal is to begin taking initial steps toward including the voices of court-involved youth in advocacy efforts. 

Network members: Adolescent Consultation Services, Cambridge Family and Children’s Service, Citizens for Juvenile Justice, Health Law Advocate and the Salvation Army/Bridging the Gap  

The Center for Teen Empowerment 

Jamaica Plain, Mass. – This network of community-based organizations has the overarching goal of developing a strategy to build the capacity of the community for year-round youth employment in their neighborhood through continuing to build and sustain youth-adult relationships among community residents.

This goal evolved from a plan involving equal parts adult staff and community members and young people seeking to address the artificial lines of race, class, ethnicity, age, etc. that separate youth and adults and a desire to build better relationships between neighborhood youth and adults.

Network members: The Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation, The Center for Teen Empowerment, Inc., Jamaica Plain Coalition, Southern Jamaica Plain Health Center, Spontaneous Celebrations

Class Action

Hadley/Amherst, Mass. – This learning network is comprised of churches and community-based organizations located in Western Massachusetts. These groups are partnering to ascertain how to engage churches and community members in a conversation to raise awareness of classism as a matter of social justice and then to devise strategies to address the classism that exists in their communities.

The primary goal for this learning network is to develop their capacity to work together as a community who can supplement what service agencies cannot provide. They seek to heal the invisibility and separation in their region that leaves so many people suffering, with a steady intention toward collective insight, caring and creativity. The secondary goal is to have a process for reflection for all parties that they can understand the components, difficulties and key elements, and write up their experience as model that can be shared with others.

Network members: Class Action, Amherst Survival Center, N. Congregational Church-Amherst, S. Congregational Church-Amherst, First Congregational Church-Hadley, First Congregational Church-Haydenville  

ECRI Fund 

Statewide Rhode Island – This established network, consisting environmental organizations, is shifting its focus from traditional environmental issues to learning how to apply their best practices and success strategies to the issue of public transportation in R.I.

The network has two major goals:

  1. To elevate healthy, sustainable and accessible transportation on the policy agenda and build momentum for implementation
  2. To build the political power of Rhode Island’s community, quality of life, social justice, health and environmental groups

Network members: Sierra Club-R.I., Clean Water Fund, Conservation Law Foundation, Grow Smart Rhode Island, Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, Rhode Island Land Trust Council, Save the Bay, R.I. Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, American Lung Association 

Henry Lee Willis Community Center, Inc.

Central Mass. – This network, consisting of community-based organization and the city of Worcester, seeks to define and address the most prevalent social injustices and inequities that affect marginalized groups in their community. They seek to create a foundation of listening, sharing and trusting each other, and want to reach a common understanding of their community’s social justice challenges to guide their work as a cohesive and resource-rich cohort of diverse community leaders.

The network’s overarching goal is to diminish the isolation currently experienced by individuals and organizations engaged in social justice work and to bring them together in a collective to address these issues.

Network members: Henry Lee Willis Community Center, Inc., the City of Worcester, YWCA of Central, Worcester Roots, AIDS Project Worcester

Centro Presente protestImmigrant Worker Center Collaborative 

Cambridge/Chelsea/Boston, Mass. – Six constituency-based immigrant organizations with a history of collaboration are seeking to learn how to strategize about creating opportunities for cross community organizing.

The goals of this learning network are to:

  • identify the steps necessary to play a larger leadership role in efforts for workplace justice for immigrant workers in this area and begin to implement those steps
  • clarify the components or activities which might comprise a leadership role in “wage theft” issues in this area and begin to implement those activities and learn from them
  • identifying the kind of training and support this enlarged role will require and strategizing ways of getting that support (potentially including the development of a parallel training component for the capacity building work)
  • develop further linkages to national efforts for immigrant worker justice and bring lessons from those efforts into the development of strategy for the local work

Network members: Centro Presente, Chinese Progressive Association, MetroWest Immigrant Workers Center, Greater Boston Legal Services, Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, Chelsea Collaborative

Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership

Boston, Mass. – This network, which is comprised of organizations charged with leading intervention efforts in hoarding cases, seeks to increase the number of resources available to residents in crisis. They expect to better learn how to partner with other professionals to provide a range of services as determined by the individual client’s specialized intervention plan.

Over the next two years, the network will:

  • focus on an intensive effort to provide training in assessment and intervention across disciplines within our implementation team
  • disseminate protocols for appropriate intervention utilizing national and local best practices for addressing hoarding
  • build the capacity of professionals across the region to effectively intervene and manage hoarding cases and identify long-term funding options for expanding the hoarding response system in the Greater Boston area

Network members: Springwell, Inc., Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership, Boston University School of Social Work, Brookline Mental Health Center, Maloney Properties, Inc., Department of Mental Health, Brookline Community Mental Health Center

United Teen Equality Center

Statewide Mass. – This network, comprised of youth-serving organizations, seeks to identify a way to measure or quantify the benefits its organizing and policy work yields in youth members, while simultaneously evaluating how well it is collectively achieving its ultimate campaign goals. Teens are integral stakeholders in decision making for this network, and it strives to ensure that organizers are meeting their emotional and educational needs while working towards achieving their identified campaign goals.  

Network members: Everett Community Health Partnership, HOPE Coalition, Holyoke Youth Task Force, Hyde Square Task Force, Lowell Teen Coalition, Haverhill Violence Intervention Prevention 

Youth In Action, Inc.

Providence, Rhode Island – This learning network seeks to employ a shared infrastructure that will increase each organization’s capacity to:

  • utilize multiple strategies for change;
  • strengthen their current programs/campaigns; and
  • align their work with the broader social/political climate in Providence.

A shared structure to facilitate the implementation of the larger network’s goals will also support a base of youth engaged in city and school leadership by providing a training ground for transparent, youth-led decision making.

Network members: Youth in Action, Inc., District Wide Student Government, PrYSM, Young Voices