Former Grant Projects:
Planning Grantees 2008

The Capacity Building Fund of Third Sector New England has awarded Planning Grants for the 2008-2009 grant cycle to 16 networks. The grants are intended to help underwrite the cost of bringing organizations and networks together for a 3 to 4 month period to plan and develop longer-term projects of 12 to 18 months. Projects will help the individual organizations and the network as a whole more effectively achieve a shared goal – collaborating to face a community challenge – while together learning new program management and administrative strategies.   

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

Adolescent Consultation Services

Statewide Mass. – This network is made up of agencies that support youth involved with the juvenile court system in Massachusetts. The group has come together to learn how to ethically engage current and former clients in order to develop ongoing relationships. This knowledge will help the network improve youth involvement in its respective organizations in order to create opportunities that benefit the young people and the organizations.   

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  

Boston Action Tank at workBoston Action Tank

Eastern Mass. – This learning network consists of grassroots media practitioners representing a broad range of constituencies. This group seeks to build the capacity of social justice groups to prepare for and shape the changing media and technology future. Collectively, they hope to learn more about the strategies and tools needed by grassroots organizations that are working to confront the media/technology environment with a community-centered, social justice agenda. They aim to develop resources that can help lead to media and communications policies and systems that better serve social justice and all communities. 

Network members: Organizers’ Collaborative, Boston Neighborhood Producers’ Group, Cambridge Community Television, Progressive Communicator’s Network, The GIRLS Project 

Boston Faith & Justice Network

Boston, Mass. – This network is made up of organizations who share fair trade values and a vision of a more just, sustainable economy. Over the next few months, they will look at ways to devise a sustainable, inclusive model for a fair trade coalition in Greater Boston that can promote fair trade products and improve the lives of the workers that craft those products. The network will simultaneously look at how they can promote the values that underline fair trade:

  • Respect of workers
  • Environmental sustainability
  • Self-determination
  • Justice in a globalize economy

Network members: Boston Faith & Justice Network, Institute for Leadership and Social Justice Boston Trinity Academy, Red Tomato/Oke USA, Equal Exchange, Centro Presente, The Food Project, Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition  

Building Impact

Boston, Mass. – This network is made up of a cooperative of nonprofits, consultants and community partners focused on children and families in Greater Boston. They are coming together to improve their collective capacity to tackle complex social challenges. To accomplish this goal the network will attempt to learn how to leverage individual and collective social capital as well as networks that will better serve their constituents and communities.  

Network members: Building Impact, Latino After School Initiative, Youth Enrichment Services, Brookview House, Leadership Learning Community, Boston Youth Sports Initiative, Consulting Collaborative  

Centro Presente protestCentro Presente

Cambridge/Chelsea/Boston, Mass. – This learning network is comprised of immigrant workers’ centers which are striving to build on the success of a previous CBF-supported process of learning how to:

  • Develop trust between organizations;
  • Create a greater understanding of each others’ approach to work;
  • Strengthen their respective commitment to supporting each others’ efforts; and
  • Devise more joint strategies for worker justice.

To continue to push the learning of the network forward, the group will devise a plan to discover how to map the national worker center/worker rights field in order to address key issues facing the member organizations. The network will also plan how to go about collectively developing a clear message regarding immigrant unity among immigrants in addition to strategizing on how to best collaborate with unions in greater Boston and which organizing campaigns to support.            

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

Class Action

Hadley/Amherst, Mass. – This learning network is made up of community development organizations and religious institutions. With TSNE’s Planning Grant, the network will look at ways to develop a replicable model for a community-based process that will enable congregations to become supportive partners for women in poverty – by helping them achieve economic stability. The network will learn how supporting the development of cross-class relationships can facilitate women’s economic development from poverty to self-sufficiency.

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

Clean Water Fund

Statewide Rhode Island – This network is comprised of Rhode Island environmental groups, some part of a previously CBF-funded learning network, seeking to increase their collective capacity to collaborate on critical environmental issues. The network seeks to learn how to realize its vision of creating an environmentally-focused community that can effectively:

  • Collaborate on issues of great concern to Rhode Island;
  • Build public consensus around policy objectives; and
  • Ensure that necessary regulatory and legislative changes are implemented.

Network members: Clean Water Fund, Audubon Society of Rhode Island, Conservation Law Foundation, Environmental Council of Rhode Island Education Fund, Grow Smart Rhode Island, Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, Rhode Island Land Trust Council, Save the Bay 

Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture

Statewide Mass. and Rhode Island – The partnering organizations in this learning network run a “buy local” campaign designed to build connections between local farmers and local communities. Their specific focus is on the importance of local agriculture to its respective communities. Together, the network will learn how to:

  • Strengthen its community of practice;
  • Enhance member organizations’ skills in working together to increase in management and programmatic capacity; and
  • Further develop its adaptive and generative capacities as individual organizations and as a network. 

This process is intended to lead to an increased proficiency in programmatic and organizational strategic planning and the evolution of support and network communication.  

Network members: Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture, Berkshire Grown, Farm Fresh Rhode Island, Northeastern Harvest Buy Local/Topsfield Fair, Island Grown Initiative   

Henry Lee Willis Community Center, Inc.

Central Mass. – This network is made up of various social service agencies, local government and law enforcement agencies, and community advocates. These organizations have committed to a group-learning process and resource-sharing project focused on reducing the deep social inequity among Central Mass. residents, particularly with regard to disparities in healthcare, youth access and quality of life, civic engagement and civil rights.  

Network members: Henry Lee Willis Community Center, Inc., the City of Worcester, 50-member network  

The Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation

Jamaica Plain, Mass. – This learning network is comprised of six organizations that serve and have a membership base of Jamaica Plain residents who are predominately low-income and/or young people. The network organizations want to learn how to create a genuine, supported –and ongoing – dialog among youth and adults across race and class lines about around violence and other challenges that the community’s youth face. The group also seeks to learn how:

  • Adults can be effective allies to young people;
  • Tension between different communities of color can be reduced; and moreover
  • How a common agenda for Jamaica Plain can be developed that satisfies all of the interests across race and class lines in the community.  

Network members: The Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation, Bromley-Health Tenant Management Corporation, The Center for Teen Empowerment, Inc., Jamaica Plain Forum, South Street Youth Center/Southern JP Health Center, Spontaneous Celebrations

Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership

Boston, Mass. – The organizations within this network represent a diverse mix – a city housing agency, an academic institution, an elder service agency, a therapeutic treatment organization and state agencies. They are coming together to plan a regional housing initiative in response to the increasing health/safety and housing instability that results from compulsive hoarding. The network will accomplish this goal by expanding its collective knowledge of the need and developing a strategy to build capacity within the region to address this issue.  

Network members: Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership, Boston University School of Social Work, Metro-Boston Area Office, Elder Services of Merrimack Valley, Inc., Brookline Mental Health Center

Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless

Statewide Rhode Island – This learning group is comprised of a cross-section of coalitions that are primarily focused on economic security and justice, civil and basic human rights, accessible healthcare, accessible affordable housing and equitable education. The network wants to learn how to gain greater influence over Rhode Island’s public policy decision-making process. It is particularly interested in the role (or lack of role/voice) that social justice groups have in the development of the state’s annual budget process. The group hopes to build a broader network interested in ongoing skill building and networking that will sustain a movement for change. 

Network members: Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless, The Poverty Institute, Ocean State Action, Housing Action, Rhode Island Interfaith Coalition, Rhode Island Senior Agenda  

South Africa Partners

Greater Boston, Mass. – This network consists of six organizations with established long-term, health-related partnerships with their counterparts in South Africa. The network wishes to explore how its work in South Africa can help to improve its outreach efforts in the Greater Boston area. The project will identify strategies and best practices from South Africa’s efforts to address its AIDS epidemic that can be adapted to meet challenges in Boston’s battle with the fatal virus. The group also wants to learn how to develop a local campaign that will engage constituents in a process of examining the resurgence of the epidemic in Boston’s African-American and African-Diaspora immigrant communities.     

Network members: South Africa Partners, Boston Living Center, DotWell, Justice Resource Institute, Massachusetts Consumer Advisory Board, Massachusetts Medical Society, MGH Institute of Health Professions 

United Teen Equity Center

Statewide Mass. – This network consists of youth-serving organizations which have formed a statewide coalition here young people can learn all aspects of public policy work and implement specific issue-driven campaigns affecting youth in the state. The group is committed to achieving systemic change through youth-led policy-making and civic engagement. The organizations hope to collectively learn ways to measure or quantify the benefits their organizing and policy work yields to their respective youth members, while simultaneously evaluating how well they are collectively achieving the organizational campaign goals. 

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

Westbay Community Action, Inc.

Kent County, Rhode Island – This learning group is comprised of a cross-section of social service providers who have come together to address the challenges of maintaining financially-viable organizations while providing quality service to their respective consumers. The network will work together to control or reduce operational costs. Strategies being considered by the group are shared management services, shared facility maintenance, shared space and staff, joint purchasing and social enterprise efforts. Besides learning which are the most effective strategies, the project will focus on how to implement the strategies.  

Network members: Volunteers in Warwick Schools, Kent House, The Kent Center, Kent YMCA, Rhode Island Shelter, House of Hope, EBC House, Ocean State Center for Independent Living, Child Inc., Trudeau Center, Cornerstone Adult Services, Westbay Community Action, Boys and Girls Club of Warwick

Youth In Action, Inc.

Providence, Rhode Island – This learning network is made up organizations which use different strategies for change, but share common values around youth power, engagement and leadership. The partnering organizations want to address the lack of transparency and inclusive-practice within the municipal and educational institutions that have a profound effect on youth. The network wants to design a governance and coordination structure, which includes establishing a steering committee and providing technical assistance and professional development to partner organizations. With a shared infrastructure, the groups can meet the network’s larger goal: supporting 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., Direct Action for Rights and Equality, District Wide Student Government, Project 540, PrYSM, Young Voices