2020: A huge year for grant awards
November 24, 2020
 | By Jamie Schloegel, Chief Executive Officer |
2020, a great year for grantmaking
Well, the infamous year 2020 is nearly over, and it will forever go down in history as the year we awarded more grants than we can ever remember doing before. The reasons why so many grants were needed this year reminds us how fortunate we are to be in a position to help a community in crisis.
Granting with guidance
We spent a lot of time listening to our nonprofit community this year. Their voices helped us realize that our regular 4-times-a-year grant program would not be sufficient in this painfully challenging year. In response, we created two new grant programs related to pandemic-response:
- Great Rivers United Way partnered with us in March to launch the La Crosse Area Emergency Response Fund. For the first several months we met daily to award grants to nonprofits serving our friends and neighbors hardest hit by the pandemic. To date, over ONE MILLION DOLLARS has been awarded through this program.
- The Emergency Survival Grant program launched over the summer to provide nonprofits at risk of not surviving the pandemic with unrestricted funding to cover operating costs. To date, 25 nonprofits have received unrestricted grants totaling $414,018.
The grand total
Combining totals across all competitive LCF grant programs, we awarded nearly $2,300,000 in 2020. To compare to last year, in 2019 we awarded nearly $1,200,000 in competitive grants. The amount awarded this year is nearly DOUBLE!
This might be a good time to note that we have two grant types: competitive and noncompetitive. Competitive grants are those that nonprofits have to submit a grant application for, and our grant committee recommends awards to our board. Noncompetitive grants come from our donor advised and designated funds and there’s no process to apply.
Responding to a community in crisis with help from our friends
We could not have done any of this without friends. Great Rivers United Way’s support and partnership with the La Crosse Area Emergency Response Fund is a significant driver behind its success.
And without the hundreds of generous people who’ve made contributions to the fund, we couldn’t have made a single grant award. The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration made a $500,000 gift to the fund that inspired so many others to give. We are forever grateful to those wonderful women!
And then came the overwhelming amount of requests to the Emergency Survival Grant program. Nonprofits were desperate for significant financial assistance and we didn’t have enough to help everyone. Our donor advisors came to our rescue by contributing about $70,000 from their LCF funds to help us meet the needs of nonprofits. Then, our board of directors approved to release an additional $90,000 to help fund the incredible need.
A huge year for grant awards, a huge year for strengthening partnerships
It’s hard to look back on this year and feel good. One thing that helps is thinking about the overwhelming evidence of the goodness that abounds in our community. When help is needed, people give, organizations partner, and communities organize. We are so grateful to all those who spread love and kindness this year. It was huge.