Community Resilience Fund Nonprofit Grants (Charlotte, NC) is sponsored by City of Charlotte. This fund provides grants to nonprofit organizations in Charlotte, NC, that serve communities financially and/or disparately impacted by COVID-19.

Community Resilience Fund Nonprofit Grants - City of Charlotte opens in new tab or window Community Resilience Fund Nonprofit Grants Summary Application Period (extended): July 19-26, 2023 at 5 p. m. Bid Type: Other Advertisements Department: Housing & Neighborhood Services Applications for the Community Resilience Fund have reopened for one week.

We have expanded eligibility for this grant and now invite nonprofit organizations that have been operating in Charlotte for two to four years specifically to apply. New applications will not be accepted for organizations who met the original eligibility criteria of 4+ years. As a reminder, these grants are open to nonprofits that serve communities that have been financially and/or disparately impacted by COVID-19.

The Community Resilience Fund prioritizes work that fosters racial equity and economic mobility in marginalized communities.

Nonprofits applying for these grants must work within the following areas of community resilience: Housing and neighborhoods, such as: Fostering connections between neighbors Supporting social safety networks Housing stability for vulnerable residents Increased opportunities for youth and seniors Equity and inclusion, such as: Breaking down barriers to inclusion in civic life Mitigating the impact racial segregation Economic inclusion & mobility Welcoming newcomers and refugees Addressing system exclusion Sustainability and environment, such as: Protecting and preserving the environment Reducing greenhouse gas emissions/ promoting clean air Supporting energy efficiency Promoting uptake of sustainable mode of transportation Supporting waste reduction Non-profit organizations may submit applications for up to $250,000.

Grants must be used to support general operating costs, including, but not limited to, staff, rent, supplies, general overhead, and more. Grants may not be used to cover capital costs, and requests cannot exceed 30% of the organization’s total budget. We expect that grant award notifications will be now be announced in early September.

This schedule is subject to change based on the actual number of new applications received. For more information and to apply, please visit the city's grant portal . If you have any questions, please contact Jackie Clare .

Virtual Grant Application Workshop View the recording of the virtual grant application workshop that took place on June 1.

Transcript: Virtual Grant Application Workshop - June 1, 2023 So why don't we go ahead and get started we've got a pretty big group tonight thanks again for for joining us for our community resilience fund Grant Workshop um I am Jackie Claire I'm the community grants program manager um I just want to let you know if you hadn't noticed the meeting is being recorded this evening and we'll have that online in a couple of days for uh for review um and so tonight I have a couple of colleagues joining me um Patricia Mason is the risk and compliance manager with housing and Neighborhood Services and Nicole's story is the community engagement division manager and I am going to turn it over to Nicole to start us off fantastic thank you Jackie and welcome to everyone who are here I see a number of current partners and the rest of you I assume are future Partners so I cannot wait to make your acquaintance and to learn about the great work that you do as Jackie mentioned my name is Nicole story and I have the pleasure of serving as the division manager for the city of Charlotte's Community engagement Division and on behalf of the city of Charlotte I want to thank you for your continued contributions to the city of Charlotte for the work that I know that you do late at night and early in the morning and all of the other hours to serve the people that are so important to all of us and for being here tonight to learn about this grant opportunity our city council in Charlotte are committed to supporting our community in all that they do and particularly with these funds that we've been fortunate to receive through the American Rescue plan act over arpa as many of you have probably heard of those dollars this grant is part of that 60 million dollar arpa investment in the city of Charlotte that is going toward housing Workforce Development employment and Community vitality and this is a partner effort um through a partner effort that you'll hear from in the coming months with Hispanic Federation this will represent a 2.

75 million dollar award to local nonprofits with 1 million of that particularly earmarked for small nonprofits and we think city council for ensuring that that wish was clear and that we could share that information with you this grant is intended to support non-profits that were impacted by or serve populations that have been impacted by covid as so many of us have and I just want to finish my remarks by thanking staff Jackie mentioned Pat Mason Jackie Claire and Lacey Williams have really put an extraordinary effort behind this grant which is new to us and is reinvesting some funds that just came back our way and so I want to thank them for their extraordinary effort and I also want to ask your grace as we learn this grant together because it is brand new and there may be some questions tonight that we need some time to research we will absolutely get back to you with answers to those questions but without further Ado I turn it back to Jackie all right thanks Nicole all right so I'm going to go ahead and share my screen with you all so Nicole has already kicked us off and shared some of the the basic information with you um so I will not repeat um what she just said so we'll move on to um the next slide which um I want to share there are grants up to 250 000 available for your non-profit organizations within three areas of community resilience and those three areas are housing and neighborhoods equity and inclusion and sustainability and the environment and these bullet points are examples of work within the area of community resilience however your organization might be doing other work that meets those criteria so this is not meant to be an exclusive list it's simply to give you some ideas of what type of things qualify under these three broad categories so there are two tiers of funding available and small non-profits with operating budgets of up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars May request up to seventy five thousand dollars in funding and medium to large non-profits with operating budgets over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars May request up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars um one note that I want to make here is that your funding request should not exceed thirty percent of your total operating budget and there are two pools um of funding so small nonprofits the total award pool is one million dollars and for the medium to large nonprofits the award pool is 1.

5 million dollars so like all Grant programs there are eligibility requirements that all organizations must meet um so your organization needs to serve a public good and you must have been operating in the city of Charlotte for four consecutive years and your work must align with one of those areas of community resilience so as a reminder that was housing in neighborhoods equity and inclusion or sustainability and the environment your organization needs to be a 501c3 or under the fiscal sponsorship of a 501c3 tax exempt organization and if you are using a fiscal sponsor your sponsor's mission must relate to yours to your organization's mission you will need to have filed a current form 990 and for small organizations whose gross receipts are up to fifty thousand dollars um you are not required to file a 990 but you do need to submit a 990 n we will accept a 990 n or a 990 as the required documentation your organization should have an operating budget of at least twenty thousand dollars and you'll need to be able to demonstrate that your organization works with individuals or communities that have been impacted by covid-19 or provide proof of operation within eligible census tracts and those are shown in Blue on the map to the right side of your screen some additional considerations because these grants are federal funds all organizations must register with sam.

gov and provide a unique entity ID and expiration date in the application um the third bullet point here only applies to organizations that expand 750 000 or more in federal funds in one year from all sources including the CRF if awarded so if that applies to your organization you are required to obtain a single audit and then lastly funds cannot be passed through to another organization unless using a formal fiscal sponsor so they can't be used for membership fees or sub-granting and again These funds are for General operating support and program expenses and so they may not be used for Capital costs so this is the list of required documents that you will upload in the application so you'll need to pull together your operating budgets from 2021 22 and 23.

your current board of directors roster your IRS determination letter um or if you're using a fiscal sponsor your fiscal sponsor award letter and the spot or not a board letter but agreement letter and your sponsors IRS determination letter again your 990 or your 990 and and the unique Sam unique identity ID number and the expiration date that Sam ID number is a tongue twister sorry so the Sam registration is online at sam.

gov and this is a two-step process so if you haven't done this before the means getting an account and setting up a profile on sam.

gov also from this page you may also renew registrations if you already have an ID number so once you've signed up the second step is to register to become certified to receive grants from the federal government and this page might be too tiny to see but there are several questions that you'll be required to answer and they're mostly related to your organization's financial information your tax ID number and details and excuse me your business contact information and contact information for your executive director it's really important to register early according to the Sam website it takes 10 to 15 business days to get your full registration processed and it may take longer if they have any questions or there are any problems or issues with your registration so do that is as early as you can so once you've determined your eligibility and you have your Sam ID number in process you will be ready to apply and so the application process is sort of a multi-step process um so the first thing that you're going to do is navigate to the online application and I'm going to show you that in a moment and you will either register as a new organization or if you already have an account with us you'll um if you do have a previous record you'll want to make sure that as the applicant you as the individual you want to make sure that your profile information is current and up to date and you're also going to want to make sure that your organization info is up to date as well the grant is or Grant application is currently open and it will be open until 5 PM on June 30th so you've got most of the month throughout the rest of the month to get your application in um the applications will be reviewed by a committee made up of City staff and community members you'll be notified of your award status in August and you will also be if you are awarded a grant you will be invited to attend an orientation session and you will also sign a contract with the city of Charlotte once your contract is signed the first grant installment will be paid in approximately 45 days once a contract is executed and we've received your submitted invoice so as I mentioned the applications must be submitted on the grants portal um here are some screenshots of what that looks like and the easiest way to find the Portal is to navigate to Charlotte nc.

gov and search for CRF in the search bar on the website and that's where most of you found the link to register tonight so on that main page for the community resilience fund Grant at the bottom of that page is a link that says um Grant portal so you're going to click on that link and that will bring you to the portal and once you're there you'll either click on the link to create a new already does have have an account with us so as I mentioned you want to make sure that your applicant details are complete and accurate on the dashboard if you need to make any changes you're going to click on those pencil icons um to write of applicant or to the right of the organization name and then when you're ready to apply um you want to navigate to the apply button at the top of the page on that green menu um the one thing that I want to point out on the application page there are multiple grant opportunities um that you can see and apply to the ones that are open you want to make sure that you click on the apply button for the community resilience fund um because the grant applications are different so if you click on the neighborhood matching grants or on any of those other applications that you see you'll get a different set of questions and it won't make sense so just be careful to click on the apply button for the community resilience fund Grant so um on the next slide these are these um the scoring criteria and so we just want you to keep these in mind when writing your application um so the questions that you'll be asked to fill out will help the Review Committee determine um the vulnerable vulnerability and need both of your organization and of the communities that you serve they'll tell us to what extent your organization is serving a person's disproportionately affected by the pandemic how many people your organization is serving and How Deeply those people are being served um they're also looking at the strength the category strength um so to what extent is the organization's Mission and programming tied to those fundable um CRF categories that we discussed um the impact of covid so to what extent has your organization been affected by covid um the ask slash burden proportionality is the amount requested proportional to the impact of covid-19 on the population that you serve and then they'll also be reviewing all of the eligibility criteria to make sure that all of those criteria are being met so after your application has been approved if if you are granted an award um we want to talk to a little bit about the next steps involved so if you're awarded a grant you will complete vendor registration in the city's registration system um you'll also need to submit a current Certificate of Insurance and you'll attend contract signing and Grant orientation the date for this is still to be determined um we will let you know when that is as soon as we as soon as we can it's largely related to the number of applications that the Review Committee will need to to review so we'll try to get back to you as soon as possible and let you know um if your Grant has your Grant application has been approved and when the contract signing and orientation will be held you'll also once you've been approved you'll also submit your first invoice and documentation to the city to request payment so documentation that you'll include with your invoice might include copies of receipts canceled checks a payroll report um for your first payment you'll receive um 30 percent of your Grant award unless your Grant award was ten thousand dollars or less in that case you'll receive a hundred percent of your award in that first payment um when you submit your subsequent um reports that's when you'll also submit your next invoices so those will be due quarterly so 30 each time until the final report and then you'll receive the final 10 that will be remaining in your Grant award um you'll be required to complete quarterly reports and schedule check-in meetings with a member of our community engagement team and so in those meetings you'll discuss with your um with your liaison um any challenges you're having with your project you'll share your successes and opportunities and also share any upcoming events and whatever support that you may need so our team is here to help you along the way if you have any questions um you know just feel free to reach out to us at any time so that we can help you be successful with your with your Grant implementation once your Grant is complete in about a year you will submit a final report and in the final report um you'll report on your um the number of community members served and really show what the community impact was by having the grant um how did the grant dollars help your organization stabilize Revenue over the last year and then we'd like to see a narrative of two success stories that you can either fully or partially attribute to the city of Charlotte's organization support um and then our staff may follow up with you for further details um once we receive that final report um so hopefully this isn't too too daunting I know um federal grants have do have a lot of requirements and it may um sound um scary and daunting but hopefully um we've you know shared that it's um not too much information to compile and we are here to uh to help you again every every step of the way um so I know that there are lots of questions um so we will open it up now to questions and so I'm gonna stop sharing my screen so I can see I did see a few things in chat um so let's see where's the stop sharing button all right so if you have questions just go ahead and use the um and raise feature and I will um crawl on you as as I see you so um Matt Olin go ahead thank you Jackie appreciate it I have two questions um one is probably one that's on most people's minds which is that if if a non-profit makes a request that is more than what is available in in the pool can the city choose to award you know the non-profit less than they requested or do you know what I'm saying or or do you get eliminated if you've asked for more than uh is is available um Nicole I would say that partial funding could be available would you agree with with that assessment uh let me make sure that I understand the question Matt are you asking if a non-profit can ask for an overall award more than what stated in the program guidelines or are you asking if we run out of money and there's partial funds left if we will give a second round yeah depending on what the total sum of the asks are from all the non-profits can the city choose to offer smaller Awards than what the nonprofits actually asked for it is generally not our practice to reduce the amounts requested because often it changes the nonprofit's ability to deliver the the service or um the service that they provided the being that these are operating grants I think there's opportunity to consider that um let us do a little bit of thinking on that and and some of our response might be depending on how much interest we get in this grant we have 100 participants in this webinar so we're really expecting and hopeful for a lot of interest but let us work on that and do not let the answer to that question dissuade you from applying if you are interested we're going to do all that we can to support to support as many entities as we can thank you Nicole and it was indeed it's the fact that these are operating uh Grant support grants that should have triggered the question for me on my second and final question is you know the and you may not know the answer to this you know the pending debt ceiling bill would would theoretically rescind about 28 billion in unspent coveted relief funds do you anticipate that any of these funds would be jeopardized by by the terms of that uh bill we're definitely unable to answer that question at this time but if if that should impact us we'll certainly take appropriate action to consider what funds we do have available awesome thanks appreciate it all right Angela Allen hey Jackie thank you um I was wanting to follow up on the comment that was just made about operating funds that Matt said Can can we talk a little bit more about that I just want to be clear that the expectation is that we're going to be applying for Opera overall operating funds and not specific programs right right so it can be used toward programs but it needs to be um no Capital funding so it needs to be salaries um you know programs overhead uh supplies you know things of that nature just no Capital expenses can be included did that answer the question yes thank you I appreciate it okay um JB yes thank you um I had a couple questions about the 990.

yes uh for physical sponsorship um is it is a 990 required for the organization that is being sponsored or are we saying that the 990 from the physical sponsor um actually provides their 990 um just trying to get clarity around that um Pat correct me if I'm if I'm wrong but the 990 is for the applicant not for the fiscal sponsor is that correct Pat yes you're correct Jackie okay thank you okay so what's the 990 for the actual or because I I was on an impression that 990s were only four 501 c3s um non-profits so if you're being physically sponsored um as an applicant I don't know if we would actually have you know a 990 because we actually are requesting a physical sponsor does that make sense um if we had a 990 we wouldn't need a physical sponsor is kind of what I'm saying okay Pat can you field that question for us uh yes hi JB yeah your 990 could be from your physical sponsor if that's the case we would like to see the agreement that you have with the with your physical sponsorship it costs most agencies that have physical sponsors do have a written agreement that layout roles of responsibilities of that physical sponsor with that agency all right so next question we'll take is from Eric yes thank you Jackie uh just a clarifying question about the operating budgets that are required to be uploaded uh for those of us who are on a fiscal year that is not uh January to December in our case it's July to June so um for example 2023 operating budget would that be for the fiscal year 23-24 or for 22.

23 foreign I would say whether um if you're on a fiscal year um for 2020 324 22 wait um just the last three years your current operating budget your operating budget from last year and the one before that so however that that works out whether that's calendar year or fiscal year um yeah start with your current and go back two years okay okay so we are wrapping up a fiscal year now at the end of this month so it would be for this current year and going backwards not the budget that we're working on for the for the new fiscal year that'll start July 1.

exactly you're right you're right on point okay thank you thank you um Stephanie yes thank you Jackie um I had two questions one had to do with um the disbursement of the funds if one is awarded um I maybe I missed a step when you guys talked about the 30 percent does does that mean the invoices that we would be submitting would need to equal 30 of the grant award correct okay so we need to make sure we're spending it in that fashion okay just want to make sure um and then the second question I came in just a smidge late I was having issues with zoom and um I thought I heard you say something about those you know those categories of um of services and and issues that you guys are interested in I wanted to see if I thought I heard you said something like um their suggestions are those hard and fast categories or the three categories are are but the the bullet points underneath are just to give you ideas for what falls under each category so you might be doing different work that falls under you know those headings and that's okay so if what you do isn't doesn't have its own bullet point that doesn't mean that it doesn't count it's not meant to be an exclusive list okay great thank you so much you're welcome um Maria sorry hi good afternoon I have a couple of questions is this a one-time Grant or something that we can reapply this is a one-time Grant okay and how much time do we have is we we have the funds uh we are awarded we have to use the funds uh for the fiscal year that we are in 23 24 in this case or we can extend the amount of money for the next fiscal year um it's one year so four four payments uh quarterly so it's a one-year Grant okay and for the report and this is my final question um it needs to be something specific about the outcome for example I am I'm in the uh preschool uh educational area and so it's um evidence-based assessment report data that we have to present as an outcomes or how that works um Nicole can you help me out with with that I apologize I was answering a question in the chat can you repeat the question please yes um I'm I'm the director of preschool so for all the grants that we already got in the past I always have to report in base of outcomes that are evidence-based so on assessment that are evidence-based in this case it's the same thing how are the outcomes um what requirement for the outcomes on the reports that you guys asked for yeah great question um the city has worked hard to try to provide as much flexibility as possible within this grant uh within the the recognition that we are investing public dollars and have a stewardship responsibility to do that well um so in terms of outcomes I think you have some flexibility to decide what that means to you specific to your organization because all of the nonprofits represented and funded are probably going to do a pretty wide variety of things and so the evidence evidence-based requirement is not part of our guidelines but we may have some follow-up questions for you upon a receipt of the grantees applications to help us arrive at a better definition thank you of course all right uh Shamira yeah so I just wanted to um clarify I'm vice president of the Urban League here in Charlotte and we are a Fiscal Agent for smaller nonprofits that have budgets under a certain amount of money so when they go and apply for federal grants we're allowed to submit our 990 because they don't have enough money to file a 9.

94 an audit um so I want to make sure in this case like just to clarify if anybody is using a Fiscal Agent and I think Patricia may have touched on it but um I didn't hear the response the Fiscal Agent is allowed to submit their 990 for the smaller non-profit is that correct yes that is correct Samira okay um just just as long as they have a they provide us with the written agreement that you have with that with the organization because a lot of the uh organizations since they don't have a um their 501c3 there should be a written agreement that lays out the roles and responsibilities to other Fiscal Agent okay perfect and my last question and I apologize because I'm doing laundry I'm sure you hear that um my last question that I have is in the realm of the Workforce Development under the Community resilience Branch um is there a data metrics that will be linked to job outcomes or do you not have those data metric numbers as of yet I will need to um get back to you on that no I don't have those numbers um right yet so I'll make a note because I just didn't know if it was going to be based on like say if we applied and we say that with this funding we can serve 75 people and out of that 75 people we can make sure that 70 of them get