Foundation Grants, May 2011

The following major grants were made in May 2011.

Arts and culture

Americans for the Arts - $15,099.
Americans for the Arts Local Arts Index
This grant will support data analysis as part of Americans for the Arts Local Arts Index – a national effort to tell the story of arts vitality on the community level. The Local Arts Index complements Americans for the Arts' National Arts Index, a highly distilled annual measure of the health and vitality of the arts in the US using 76 equal-weighted national-level indicators of arts and culture. While there are many measures of artists, markets, and audiences that are used to track aspects of the arts industries, there are very few that track the whole arts system. The National Arts Index addresses that gap by aggregating a wide range of indicators about the arts into a single annual measure providing an evidenced-based look at key issues such as the growing number of artists and arts organizations, changing audience demand, the impact of technology, personal participation, and the relationship of the arts to the economy. In an effort to pull maximum value from the data and with funding from Kresge Foundation, Americans for the Arts is working with 100 partners, including the City of Providence, over two years to develop the Local Arts Index. This grant supports the expansion of the work currently underway with the City of Providence to the rest of the state.

FirstWorks - $60,000.
General Operating Support
FirstWorks requested general operating support to build infrastructure and capacity needed for both stability and future growth, particularly in the areas of staffing and fund-development. Launched in 2004 and reaching 15,000 people annually, FirstWorks has refined its program model that combines quality arts experiences with community engagement. Board members have taken a more active role in relationship building activities with the community, and the establishment of a community engagement committee will give the organization longer lead time to involve stakeholders in dialogue around signature projects. With the managing director now in place for nearly a year, the organization boasts a strong leadership team. The success of Sweet Honey and the Rock last fall and a sold out performance of Alvin Ailey at PPAC in May position the organization to end its fiscal year with a surplus. The organization continues to collaborate with local artists and arts organizations, and increasingly FirstWorks plays a mentoring role in these relationships. With a diverse stream of funders that includes the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, FirstWorks is well poised to use this grant to move from operating as a start-up organization to the next stage of development as a mature nonprofit arts organization.

Providence Plan - $6,808.
Americans for the Arts Local Arts Index
This grant will support local data collection statewide as part of Americans for the Arts Local
Arts Index, a national effort to tell the story of arts vitality at the community level. The overall Local Arts Index project is described above.

Community and economic development

Riverwood Mental Health Services - $200,000.
Housing First Rhode Island
This grant was will support the Riverwood Mental Health Services' Housing First Rhode Island (HFRI) program in expanding into new communities throughout the state. Housing First is a groundbreaking new effort designed to end chronic homelessness in our state. The chronically homeless, those who are homeless for extensive periods, sometimes years, have complex needs that service delivery systems have been unsuccessful in meeting. The Housing First model has been field-tested in our state and other communities and has produced consistent, outstanding results during a four-year period. With Foundation support, Housing First will be able to serve an additional 240 clients, and using conservative estimates, save Rhode Island taxpayers more than $2 million in service costs annually. HFRI has developed the right kind of framing and communications strategy to convey the idea that tough social problems can be solved. Given the scale of the chronic homelessness issue in our state (approximately 725 individuals), the HFRI program offers the right solution-based approach to end chronic homelessness in Rhode Island.

Education

Community Preparatory School - $20,000
Summer Programs
Community Prep, a well-known independent school, will utilize this grant to open its successful summer program to students from its South Providence neighborhood who attend public school. The effects of summer learning loss are well-established. They are particularly concerning for children in poverty whose parents are not available or able to reinforce learning. Many of these caretakers are struggling to provide for their families. Therefore, their availability is limited. By inclusion in a quality standards-based summer experience in a safe atmosphere, the learning loss should be somewhat mitigated.

Harmony Hill School - $89,175.
Moving Up SmART: Meeting High Standards at the Secondary Level
This grant supports a new secondary-focused SmART Schools effort in Rhode Island. SmART Schools is dedicated to creating arts-infused schools and classrooms where students of all backgrounds are inspired to meet high standards of performance in the arts and across all core academic subjects including English and language arts, history, math, science, and technology. This proposed project will center around a five-day Summer Institute that will train 125 urban teachers to utilize the arts in their academic classrooms, to initiate interdisciplinary curriculum built around the Rhode Island and NECAP standards, to instill culturally responsive practices, and to build professional learning communities within their schools. SmART: Meeting High Standards at the Secondary Level teacher leaders will engage in daily studio-based, hands-on workshops in arts disciplines (music, theater, and visual arts) facilitated by SmART Schools master teaching artists and key staff. In addition, participants will have the opportunity to build an understanding of how to meet the expectations of NECAP and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) during the institute's daily common planning time. Following the August institute, there will be follow-up activities with participating schools and teachers including work within each school, as well as mini-institutes, led by the same teaching artists who provided professional development in August. The scope of this added support will depend in part on future funding.

President and Fellows of Harvard College -$50,000.
Pathways for Prosperity in Rhode Island
The Pathways to Prosperity Project, partially supported by Harvard, will organize a Rhode Island Pathways Summit and help begin development of a long-term plan for responding to the Pathways challenge. While most reform efforts, to this point, have concentrated on college readiness in the traditional classroom, this summit and subsequent project will provide a blueprint for Rhode Island schools to address the needs of all students who may not be college bound, interested in technical post secondary training, and those who can move directly into the workplace. The summit, which will take place in the beginning of June, will be attended by educators, federal and state representatives, business leaders, and other stakeholders. The summit will highlight the state's failure to prepare many young people to lead successful lives as adults and discuss promising solutions to this challenge. Following the summit, a representative steering committee will begin developing a long-term response to the challenge and help disseminate the findings from the summit around the state.

Rhode Island Center For School Leadership - $50,000
Growing As Leaders through Leadership Performance Coaching
The Rhode Island Center for School Leadership will continue and broaden its work with school leaders, supporting the work of the leaders, connecting the leadership standards to upcoming leadership evaluations, and expanding a network of coaching opportunities to assist new and struggling leaders throughout the state.

Rhode Island Mayoral Academies - $50,000.
Rhode Island Mayoral Academy operations
Rhode Island Mayoral Academies (RIMA) will continue the process of launching its first two mayoral academy regions (Blackstone Valley and Cranston-Providence) according to a standardized five-year "regional launch" strategic plan. RIMA will also pursue a plan to launch three to four additional regions, relying on three fundamental drivers to govern its decision: 1) the relative need for high-quality public school options in the region; 2) support from municipal leaders and other elected officials in the region; and 3) a promising environment for the identification and/or development of adequate school facilities at a reasonable cost. In addition, RIMA will continue its effort to improve the local, state, and federal climate for high-quality charter school growth by: building staff capacity; developing rigorous accountability systems; developing school operator recruitment tools; and advocating for better education policies at all levels. They are an essential investment in the growth of a smarter, more flexible, high-performing public education system that could serve, in its first phase of growth, as many as 12,000 students.

RI-CAN (The Rhode Island Campaign for Achievement Now) - $75,000.
RI-CAN (The Rhode Island Campaign for Achievement Now)
The Rhode Island Campaign for Achievement Now (RI-CAN), modeled after the successful
Connecticut model, is the state's only organization whose only task is to advocate for the improvement of education in Rhode Island. The grant review process allowed the grant program officers to assist the organization to better focus on planned activities including legislative priorities. The Walton Family Foundation will match the Foundation's support and any other contributions.

Westerly Public Schools - $35,500.
Doors Wide Open - Summer Learning for All
The Westerly School Department will pilot a summer learning program that has the potential to be a state model. The summer learning gap and its effect on graduation rates is well documented. The gap is even more difficult to overcome when students who need support cannot get access to even the most basic learning opportunities. They are limited by family income, almost no access to public transportation, and dismal programming options. By innovative programming options, enhanced access to public and private transportation, and by eliminating the block of income requirements, students will have access to high quality standards-based learning experiences all summer. Students will receive credit once they achieve mastery. In other words, the model will move away from the established "seat time" models to one based on attaining the knowledge and skills required for the subject.

Environment

Farm Fresh Rhode Island - $25,500.
Harvest Kitchen
This grant, from Foundation discretionary funds and co-funding from the Foundation’s George M. and Barbara H. Sage Fund, supports Farm Fresh Rhode Island's Harvest Kitchen apprenticeship project. The Harvest Kitchen is a work experience and job training program for adjudicated youth that develops the local food system by creating high-quality products from locally grown fruit and vegetables. The project is a partnership between Farm Fresh Rhode Island and the Department of Children, Youth and Families. In addition to training youth in culinary skills, the Harvest Kitchen places youth in service opportunities at meal sites and in internships related to their training. This second-year funding supports project management, program supplies, and helps the program advance towards self sufficiency. Farm Fresh is effectively utilizing consultants to evaluate the initiative from both the programmatic side (impact on trainees) and from the business and sustainability potential of the program. Farm Fresh's business plan includes an increase in earned income through co-packing contracts (a contractor which processes food for a farmer) and expanding the food product line. Increasing options for farmers to earn year-round income and extending the harvest season in a state like Rhode Island where the growing season is short-lived is an essential component for a viable local food system and healthy agricultural sector. The project is aligned with grantmaking priorities in the environment sector that support strengthening local agriculture and the development of a local food system in Rhode Island. Advancing these systems has multiple environmental benefits for Rhode Island.

Health

Rhode Island Hospital - $35,000.
Enhancing Mental Health Care in the Primary Care Setting
Grant funds will support the creation of a curriculum to teach basic mental health care interventions to primary care physicians. For the past five years, Rhode Island Hospital’s Dr. Elizabeth Toll and others have been learning to integrate mental health care with primary care. Over the past year, working with two psychiatrist colleagues, she has developed a curriculum to teach clinic doctors and nurses to do this kind of work. The team proposes to take their experiences and revamp the curriculum, expanding it to include case studies and references to teach the primary care physicians of Rhode Island how to deliver basic mental health care. Support for this effort aligns with the health sector priority of the integration of mental health with primary care.

Human services

Kent County ARC/J. Arthur Trudeau Memorial Center - $43,170.
Pathways Vocational Educational Program
The J. Arthur Trudeau Memorial Center has been in existence since 1964 with the vision of providing services for adults with developmental disabilities. Through the years, the Trudeau Center has expanded its services and currently has a day school for children with autism, the Pathways Strategic Teaching Center (Pathways) which serves elementary and middle school age students. Pathways will expand programming to include high school age students while also adding vocational programs. Pathways will design an evidence-based vocational educational program and will provide students with the opportunity to experience work tasks across a variety of industry clusters and increase the skills required for a variety of vocations and industries including hospitality and tourism, manufacturing and construction, retail and consumer services, horticulture, and information technology. This grant supports consultant fees to design the curriculum; train the staff and family members; and provide onsite vocational, educational and behavioral consultation. Additionally, this grant supports the purchase of curriculum and assessment materials.

Rhode Island Kids Count - $125,000.
Public policy work on behalf of children and families
This general operating support grant provides core support for Kids Count’s operations, in particular its advocacy efforts. The evaluation plan for this grant focuses on whether Kids Count's advocacy efforts can move progress on 12 child and family policy issues and includes a key informant study conducted by a consultant firm. This grant represents approximately 6% of Kids Count’s overall budget.