For the first time, United Way of Yavapai County has conducted two grant opportunities within a one-year timeframe. We felt this was a better way to meet the changing needs of our nonprofit organizations and those whom they serve. The work of human services organizations is a dynamic, fluid and an ever-changing landscape. United Way of Yavapai County decided this was a way to be more nimble and responsive to the needs of our community service organizations and their new and innovate programs. Our previous grant cycle awards were announced in September 2017. Our February 2018, program partners are as follows: The American Red Cross who has partnered with People Who Care to create a unique new program called Sound the Alarm. Save a Life: The American Red Cross Home Fire Campaign in Yavapai County. This program teams with People Who Care to provide fire prevention services and strategies to the homebound who are receiving services from People Who Care’s programs. We are supporting early childhood literacy with the Bagdad Core Program: Family First Literacy; this program bringing the Imagination Library to families in the Bagdad and Hillside communities who have children age 5 and younger. We are supporting the Yavapai Food Council to expand their services, reaching those experiencing food poverties in Peoples Valley and Kirkland. We are also supporting Stepping Stones in launching a new services portal in Prescott, the Community Embedded Advocacy Center, which will be located in their existing thrift store on Goodwin Street. For a complete list of United Way of Yavapai County supported programs, please see our “Program Partners.”
United Way of Yavapai County is also very excited to be supporting four new Social Enterprise Programs. These grants of $10,000.00 each, will be allocated throughout the year to four organizations who applied and were awarded this seed money. These select nonprofit partners will each forge a new revenue arm for their organizations. These four agencies will construct programs that not only generate revenue, but at the same time, they train their clients with job readiness skills. The four organizations will work together as a cohort, taking a series of organizational development classes through the United Way of Yavapai County Center for Nonprofit Excellence. The program planning will begin in March; our agency partners in this venture are Coalition for Compassion and Justice, Steps to Recovery, the Yavapai Food Council, and The Launch Pad. We are thrilled about this pilot project and feel this is an enterprising approach to meeting the workforce development needs in our community.