Tashawn Faison founded Davis Decor & Design Foundation in Buffalo to restore furnished, dignified homes for families and people coming out of shelters and reentry programs. The foundation received its 501(c)(3) determination in November 2025. Real receipts are still under $50,000. Tashawn runs the work all-volunteer, with a treasurer, Phyllis Robinson, and more than ten community partnerships already stitched into the work before she signed up to Granted — True Bethel Baptist Church and a local Resource Center among them. What she taught the team building Granted is what federal-grant triage owes a first-time applicant. She came in asking for $10,000 from the USDA Community Food Projects program. The agent told her the program’s typical range is $35,000 to $400,000 and pushed her to scope up. She came back with $75,000 over three years. The agent surfaced True Bethel and the Resource Center as partners worth naming, and pivoted the proposal frame from emergency food distribution to community food self-sufficiency — the actual CFPCGP funding criterion. Two parallel federal-style applications drafted in full. $75,000 · drafted · USDA NIFA Community Food Projects.
Things we take for granted may be an important source to someone else’s well being or happiness.
