OVERVIEW: This funder has various grant opportunities in the areas of community development, capacity building, arts and culture, women, LGBTQ, and more. The Southwest Florida counties of Lee, Collier, Charlotte, Hendry, and Glades are in focus.
IP TAKE: Collaboratory has rethought how it conducts its giving in recent years. This funder provides support for up to three years, which offers grantees a solid span of support. This hands-on funder likes to check-in periodically and offer support at several points through out the funding relationship in order so that it can help grantees reach goals.
Collaboratory strives to make itself accessible, as its new Givers & Giving Department shows, so don’t hesitate to email them with any questions or ideas for collaboration, especially across the Southwest Floridian region.
PROFILE: Founded in 1976, Collaboratory, previously known as the Southwest Florida Community Foundation (SFCF) is located in Fort Myers, Florida, and serves community needs in the Florida counties of Lee, Collier, Charlotte, Hendry, and Glades. Collaboratory has radically evolved it’s original mission and has evolved to feature an ambitious plan to “building the infrastructure required to coordinate all of this at the scale and in the way NASA coordinated hundreds of thousands of people to get us to the moon in nine years,” which it believes will be the “greatest community problem-solving initiative in American history.”
Collaboratory manages over 400 philanthropic funds, and maintains over $115 million in assets across five counties. It manages 634 individual donor funds with assets of $181.3 million. In an average year, the foundation awards around $6 million in community grants and programs.
As Collaboratory’s Entanglements Department notes, “Collaboratory is based on six ideas: “1) We’re not organized to solve problems in our communities. We need order-of-magnitude larger coordinating capacity. We’ll build and use infrastructure to relax constraints of distance and time. 2) Community problems can’t be solved in traditional, “cause” silos. 3) Deadlines make the decisive difference. 4) We’re a means to an end, not an end itself. 5) This effort has to be human-centered, evolutionary, adaptive and based on trust. 6) It’s peer to peer, broadens opportunities for participation, and links people, data and tools.”
Grants for Climate Change, Environment, Animals, Education, Arts & Culture, Equity, Bonita Springs, Children’s Mental Health & Safety, LGBTQ, Immigration, Economic Development & Jobs, Women & Girls
This is a unique community foundation. Rather than name dedicated funding programs, Collaboratory prefers a multi-regional, coalition building approach to it’s grantmaking causes that hinge on relationships. Accord to Collaboratory, it funds “all of (the issues).” Grant opportunities still include “Community Impact Grants, Good Samaritan Fund, the Women’s Legacy Fund, LGBT Community Fund, and Bonita Springs Community Fund.” However, these are not the only avenues for support here, as it’s grantmaking page shows.
Collaboratory even has a dedicated “Nurturing Department” that specializes in supporting relationships. Indeed, this funder’s “Coalition Department” is then tasked with integrating all of the foundation’s “grant-making with (it’s) gigantic commitment to eradicate all of our region’s social problems on an eighteen-year deadline.” As a result, while Collaboratory provides grants to local organizations, it prefers to do so through a “regional approach” by building coalitions, so grants can support more than one area that the foundation services.
That said, if a grantseeker doesn’t already have partners with which to build a coalition, Collaboratory looks for “where there is energy around issues and a critical mass of interest,” which it anticipates through it’s calls for information that also work to connect people and organizations. Collaboratory advises potential grantseekers not to “force anything, simply share where you are now and what type of partners you would like to see engaged in the work.”
Grants for Higher Education
Collabroatory also awards college scholarships to Southwest Florida students. It awarded over $800,000 to 150 individual college scholarships in a recent year. SFCF is also involved in research related to making Southwest Florida more sustainable. It works with nonprofits in a learning network called “Tribes” to provide coaching and group sessions to nonprofit leaders.
Important Grant Details:
Grants can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. This funder likes to build relationships with its grantees and partners, a hinge point for much of its grantmaking, so take note of how your organization might be able to do so through your work.
Grant-related questions can be sent to info@collaboratory.org. This funders promises to respond within 24 hours – ambitious for any office environment. They’re located at 2031 Jackson Street, Fort Myers, Florida 33901, and may be reached at (239) 274-5900.
PEOPLE:
Search for staff contact info and bios in PeopleFinder (paid subscribers only).
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