Recent Grant Recipients
Martin Luther King Center
The West End of Rock Island: A preferred place to live & thrive
We envision a West End of Rock Island that is a preferred place to live and thrive. This requires building the West End community's wealth, power, and livability. No single person, organization, or sector can do this independently. We all must work together to achieve it. The Martin Luther King Center is bringing together the West End community and its supporters to make overdue, positive, lasting, transformational change.
Prairie State Legal Services
When we prevent a wrongful eviction or utility shut-off, our clients avoid a destabilizing event that can send a family into a cycle of financial and emotional turmoil, affecting their current and future residential stability (Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City and founder of the Eviction Lab). Through PSLS' services, we will see decreased homelessness for families due to wrongful evictions. When we help people with disabilities and elderly clients obtain needed medical care and medication, we reduce the need for more expensive and complicated emergency room care, thus reducing the number of people in economic hardship due to medical bills. When we obtain a restraining order for a domestic violence survivor, we prevent future exploitation, threats, violence, or even death. Each day in the United States, three women are murdered by current or former intimate partners. (Bureau of Justice Statistics). In addition to legal services, PSLS offers our clients resources to help them resolve non-legal elements of their problems thanks to our relationships with social service agencies and local charities.
WQPT PBS
Educational Programming and Community Outreach Support
As a public media service of Western Illinois University, WQPT PBS actively serves a diverse audience throughout West Central Illinois and the Eastern Iowa region. WQPT and our supporters are committed to providing free access to lifelong learning and entertainment, fostering educational success and cultural competency within our communities.
On television, in classrooms, and the community, WQPT provides free access to educational TV and outreach activities.
Nahant Marsh
Bridging the Nature Gap for RI Students and Residents
For the last eight years, Nahant Marsh has partnered with Spring Forward and the Rock Island/Milan School District to offer after-school programs, field trips, and summer learning opportunities to provide high-quality, hands-on learning. Many of the students we encounter have never visited a natural area or park like Nahant Marsh. Their visits create moments of joy and curiosity as they walk the prairies, examine macroinvertebrates from the docks, and enjoy activities in the education center.
Clock, Inc.
The existence of a safe space vastly improves the quality of life for many of the LGBT+ youth served, who would not be able to express themselves in other aspects of their lives the way they can express themselves at Clock, Inc. We provide a place where LGBT+ youth can meet other youth to forge strong connections. When given a space in which to thrive and freely express themselves, these individuals are more empowered to become leaders and work toward change in their community. Along with enhancing community well-being, Clock, Inc promotes empowerment to stand up against oppression. Clock, Inc strives to work with LGBT+ youth to increase self-esteem, develop confidence and empowerment, and implement change and social skills that will allow them to feel secure about themselves and their identity. The skills and resources that Clock, Inc provides for LGBT+ youth will give them the tools to promote change, success, self-worth, motivation, and leadership.
Western Illinois University
Degree Attainment Assistance
Western Illinois University Quad Cities Degree Attainment Assistance - Preference is given to residents in Rock Island and Rock Island County. Academic programs and experiences on the Quad Cities campus are strategically focused on cultural, community, and workforce needs throughout the region and beyond. The Quad Cities campus is the destination for quality, applied academic programs that meet Quad Cities regional workforce demands through emphasis on practical, hands-on experiences, research, workforce preparation, and career placement with a commitment to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Putnam Museum
The Putnam Museum's Community Access Fund provides subsidies that help low-income youth, families, individuals, and the nonprofits that serve them engage in our myriad of offerings. Assistance provided includes such vehicles as:
*school/youth group subsidies for study trips based on the number of students in the federal free-and-reduced-price school meal programs/at-risk students;
* transportation subsidies for school groups;
*individual scholarships for youth to participate in summer camps and workshops;
* subsidies for outreach visits to schools and community events;
* helping to underwrite the cost of our IMMERSE week-long residency for classes from schools with particularly high percentages of low-income students;
*$1/person exhibit hall admission for members of households participating in the federal SNAP federal food program;
*subsidies for nonprofits (e.g., those serving marginalized populations) who want to hold family events/otherwise make use of Putnam or options such as free memberships to Big Brothers Big Sisters adult-child pairs.
Friendship Manor
Re-Establishing Friendship
Simply put, we must Re-Establish our census to Re-Establish momentum, long-term viability, and sustainability. Our Board has approved a $10,000,000 Re-Establishing plan to draw new residents to Rock Island, specifically to a section of Rock Island that has long been distressed and neglected, including recent announcements of two for-profit businesses pulling up their anchors. Frankly, Friendship Manor is the largest and most valuable employer in western Rock Island. However, drawing residents to the Manor requires us not simply to be competitive in our service industry, but to be the best...and beyond the best. That's why our Re-Establishing Friendship plan is crucial.
Nest Cafe
Nourishing the community through general operating support
Nest Cafe's mission is to nourish bodies and community by providing delicious, sustainably sourced food to all who enter, regardless of their means. The cafe strives to create a welcoming, healthy, and economically strong community by providing real, locally sourced food on a pay-what-you-can basis.