Community Investment Process

The Community Investment Process is currently suspended.  No new idea letters will be accepted until further notice.

Those idea letters currently under review will still complete the process.

 

In early 2005, the Nevada Community Foundation launched the Community Investment Process through which a Community Conference of local residents convene monthly to articulate the fundamental challenges facing our community and to help the Community Foundation award millions of dollars in grants to address those issues.

Download The Idea Letter Guidelines

Fundamentally, the Nevada Community Foundation and its Community Conference members want to know how an investment in your idea will foster:

• People becoming more engaged and involved in their community
• People building stronger relationships
• People investing in one another
• People reaching across their own boundaries and interests
• People growing a shared sense of responsibility to one another

Through the Nevada Community Foundation's Community Investment Process a diverse range or organizations and groups is invited to apply for a grant by submitting an Idea Letter. Whether you are an opera company, a homeless shelter, a parent teacher association, a group of neighborhood residents or just about any other charitable activity, if you're doing good work and in the process, helping build a stronger sense of community, we want to hear from you!

Deadline for Submission

Idea Letters are reviewed by the Nevada Community Foundation on a rolling basis. There is no specific deadline for submission of Idea Letters. Small requests are typically expected to be adjudicated within 6 weeks of submission based solely on the information provided in the Idea Letter. However, Idea Letters, which request larger amounts will normally be invited to present a formal Proposal. The Proposal will ask additional questions and provide the charity or community group an opportunity to more thoroughly discuss their ideas. Decisions on proposals will normally be available within 3 months of submission of the proposal.

A History of the Community Investment Process

In early 2005, the Nevada Community Foundation launched the Community Conference – a project in which local residents would articulate the fundamental challenges facing our community and help the Community Foundation award millions of dollars in grants to address those issues. This new process takes a radically different approach from the Community Foundation's Traditional Grant Process.

Thousands of email and paper invitations to participate in the Community Conference process were distributed throughout the community. They were distributed through libraries, schools, community centers, places of worship, corporate human resource departments, and charities. From the pool of applicants, a group of citizens ultimately served as the initial members of the Community Conference. Members of the Community Conference are chosen not for their views, nor to represent any particular constituency, but because collectively they reflect the great diversity of our community. The group closely aligns with the demographic data of our region by many measures including household income, educational attainment, lengthof residency, ethnicity, religion, physical disability, sexual orientation, nation of origin, and others. However, no member is ever asked to represent any group or constituency. They are asked to speak as individuals, for no one but themselves, but by nature of their collective life experiences, their voices reflect much of the great diversity of our community.

The first Community Conference began in the Spring of 2005, meeting monthly for an entire year. Its initial discussions did not debate specific funding priorities but focused broadly on the group's aspirations for the community. This incredibly diverse group of volunteers found that they had common desires for the place in which they live. Ultimately, they articulated their shared aspirations for the greater Las Vegas community where:

• People in Las Vegas feel heard
• People call Las Vegas home
• People have hope for the future
• People are stimulated to think in new ways
• People feel a sense of unity in the community

The discussions of the Community Conference members were so enriching for the participants that one member suggested, "What if our job here is really to spread these conversations throughout the community – to pass on this challenge so more people discuss their community together?" Echoing this realization another suggested, "What if this is really about building community – as opposed to just funding a project?"

Certainly the Nevada Community Foundation's Community Conference volunteers and its professional staff all recognize that there are real challenges facing southern Nevada which call for action, not just mere conversation. But rather than simply making traditional grants, the desire for this group became to make investments which encourage a broader sense of community in the course of traditional charitable work.

The hope is that charities and civic groups would better engage with their respective communities making their work more effective at addressing their communities' specific needs. At best, encouraging this engagement could foster a shared sense of responsibility to one another so that we could collectively confront any issue that might come before us.

Both organized charities and informal groups of citizens are invited to submit an Idea Letter –a simple document that explains what you want to do, and how doing it will help build and strengthen community. No organization need abandon their operational work to access the millions of dollars that will be distributed in this process. Rather, they should consider how they can incorporate community building into their existing activities. Even better, the Nevada Community Foundation is looking for innovations in how to integrate civic engagement work into specific programmatic objectives.

Fundamentally, the Nevada Community Foundation's Community Conference wants to know how an investment in your idea will foster:

• People becoming more engaged and involved in their community
• People building stronger relationships
• People investing in one another
• People reaching across their own boundaries and interests
• People growing a shared sense of responsibility to one another

Some investment decisions will be made solely based on what is contained in the Idea Letter. Others will be invited to submit a lengthier Proposal which seeks out more detail.

The Community Investment Process is guided by the following principles in both its work and decisions:

• We value the knowledge rooted in the community – an understanding of people, their lives, where they live, their aspirations and concerns
• We genuinely listen to the community in an ongoing way
• We set realistic expectations for change and make progress on actions that really mean something to people
• We work towards generating hope
• We emphasize collaboration, leverage and sustainability