I. CHESTER COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION GRANT PROPOSAL SUMMARY SHEET Date: 8/26/15 Contact Information: Organization Name: The Garage Community & Youth Center Address: 115 S. Union St. Kennett Square, PA 19348 (Kennett Garage) 122 S. Rosehill Ave. West Grove, PA 19390 (West Grove Garage) Contact Name: Kristin Proto Contact E-mail: Kristin@garageyouthcenter.org Contact Title: Executive Director Contact E-mail: Kristin@garageyouthcenter.org Phone: 610-869-4400 Fax: 610-869-4405 Website: www.garageyouthcenter.org Year Incorporated: 2001 Has your nonprofit ever applied to the Community Foundation? Yes _X_ No Not Sure Has your nonprofit ever received funding from the Community Foundation? Yes _X No Not Sure X_Donor Advised Fund(s) _X_Fund for Chester County Don t know/not sure Field/s of Interest: Arts, Culture & Humanities Environment/Animal Welfare _X_Education Health _X_ Human Services Religion Organization Information: Geographic Area Served (If not all of Chester County, specify primary Chester County regions served): Southern Chester County Primarily the Greater Kennett Square, West Grove and Avondale areas. Describe Population Served and Annual Number of People Served: The Garage Community & Youth Center serves over 400 middle and high school students each year with an average of 60-80 attending daily. Our students predominantly come from low-income and/or single parent homes with the majority of them being first and second generation immigrants from Mexico. As a result, our students have an increased risk for involvement with the juvenile system, teen pregnancy, drug or alcohol abuse and dropping out of school. Mission: To empower youth to pursue their potential academically, relationally and spiritually. Proposal Summary: The Garage Community & Youth Center respectfully requests $1,500 of Capacity Building Funds to help cover the purchase and start up fees for electronic check-in systems to be utilized at both our Kennett Square and West Grove locations. Electronic check-in will streamline the organization s attendance tracking and enhance our capacity to more effectively evaluate programs, track student and volunteer retention rates, strategize student and volunteer recruitment and identify gaps in volunteer or staffing needs. If Capacity Building Proposal: Mission, Vision & Strategy Governance & Leadership Strategic Relationships Fundraising & Development Operations X Other: Program Evaluation/Technology Upgrade
Annual Budget $565, 856 8 # of Full-Time Equivalent Paid Staff (4 FT, 6PT) 77 % of budget for program expenses 7 # of Board Volunteers 12 % of budget for administrative expenses 160 # of Active Non-Board Volunteers 11 % of budget for fundraising expenses 6,499 # of Volunteer Hours 100 % total Top 3-5 funding sources: The United Way of Southern Chester County, White Horse Charitable Foundation, Exelon, The Philadelphia Foundation, and Marshall Reynolds Foundation. Grant Amount Requested from CCCF: $1,500 II. CHESTER COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION GRANT PROPOSAL NARRATIVE Provide clear, concise information. 3 pages maximum. I. Organization s history, goals, key achievements and distinctiveness The Garage Community and Youth Center is an after-school program located in Kennett Square and West Grove whose mission is to empower youth to pursue their potential academically, relationally and spiritually. The Garage originated in Kennett Square and was literally a vacant car garage until 2001, when a local business leader and youth pastor envisioned its roof sheltering something far more valuable than vehicles. By 2010 the Kennett Garage was serving over 300 students a week, with more than 100 finding rides from the Avon Grove School District. With the help of our many partners, we located another vacant garage in West Grove, raised funds in the community, and opened our second facility in the fall of 2011. We have established a strong report in the community. Our West Grove Garage s Student Advisory Council was the 2014 recipient of the Youth Philanthropy Award presented by the Chester County Community Foundation, which honors young, emerging philanthropists under age 35. The YMCA of the Brandywine Valley also honored the Garage with the 2014 Jody Giordano Service to Youth Award which recognizes individuals and organizations whose dedication and effort have made a significant and positive difference in the lives of children in the community. The Garage is open free of charge, year round, to middle and high school students in Kennett Square and West Grove. Over 400 students pass through our doors each year with an average of 60-80 attending daily. The Program provides the support and resources necessary for young people to make positive life-decisions and to enhance the total educational experience of at-risk youth who are disenchanted with school or isolated from their community. Garage students learn how to persevere through difficult or uncomfortable situations, how to engage in empowering rather than self-destructive behavior and in general, how to achieve success in a society that puts a high value on education and technological know-how. Each of our programs are designed around the following goals and objectives: Create an environment where teens feel safe and supported: The Garage provides a place where teens feel safe and supported by making its space and programs available during the critical after school hours of 3-7PM, Monday-Friday and during modified summer hours of 2-6PM, Monday-Thursday. Promote social and professional development: The Garage matches adult mentors with students. Our mentors meet with students weekly and demonstrate the meaning of professional success for our students and assist with academic goal setting, finding internships, obtaining jobs, and learning how to avoid negative behaviors and make positive life choices. The Garage also provides a number of field trips and skill building workshops including corporate tours, career panels and workshops about financial literacy (budgeting & saving), computer programming or STEM careers, preparing for a job interview, resume writing, communication, relationship building, etc.
Encourage students to stay in school and to continue their studies after graduation: Volunteers provide individualized homework help in specific subject areas, such as ESL. The Garage also takes students to college fairs, on college tours and provides SAT tutoring. Promote positive self-esteem, civility, leadership, respect, and responsibility through our Community Service and Enrichment Programs: The Garage provides community service opportunities to reinforces our commitment to encouraging students to reach their potential both as individuals and as members of their community. Throughout the year, Garage students participate in projects such as tutoring at the Melton Center, repairing homes with good neighbors, or sorting clothes at the Bridge. The Garage also provides opportunities for students to deepen relationships with their peers, staff, and volunteers through two enrichment programs: The Huddle (Boys only) and Girl Talk (Girls Only). These programs meet bi-monthly in an environment where everyone feels safe, supported and accepted. They provide a positive sense of community and support and bring in a variety of special speakers to discuss topics such as bullying, healthy relationships, self-esteem, and nutrition. II. Funding request The Garage Community & Youth Center respectfully requests a $1,500 Capacity Building Grant to help fund technology upgrades for the organization. Funding will specifically be used to cover the purchase and start up fees for electronic check-in systems at both our Kennett Square and West Grove locations. The Garage staff currently has to print attendance sheets weekly for students to sign in daily and then staff manually transfer the information into excel at the conclusion of each week. Withover 400 students passing through our doors each year and approximately 200 students coming in and out weekly, it has become increasingly challenging to maintain an accurate count of ongoing attendance. The process of transferring students daily attendances into excel spreadsheets has become both a daunting and time consuming administrative task that pulls staff (or volunteers) time away from regular programming. We are also an open entry and open exit program, meaning students can come and go as they please. Our current system does not allow us to capture the frequency of student s entry and exit on a daily basis and our excel records have become too extensive for us to accurately track and measure the data. A. Description of key initiatives The Garage is in the final stages of shopping/testing a variety of electronic check-in systems to determine the model that will provide the most value for the organization. Once funding is secured the Garage will purchase the software needed and implement the tracking system at both the Kennett Square and West Grove Garages. When the students first enroll and get entered into the system, it will capture many other facts about them such as age, gender, race, and grade. These extra details will be valuable as we strive to provide more quantified reports to our funders about not only attendance, but how attendance is relates to the socio-demographics of our students. The following are the key initiatives that the Garage will be able to implement with the use of an electronic check-in system: Track Attendance: The system will make daily check-in quick, simple and efficient. The Garage will also be able to track student s participation in varying program activities and will be able to capture the times of day that student attendance is lowest or highest. Having this type of information electronically will enable us to provide more accurate details to funders about the level of participation in each of our programs. Depending on the grant, we are sometimes only being asked to report on attendance during the school year, or summer or fiscal year. With an electronic system we will be able to easily run attendance reports for any specified time period. Additionally, we will also be able to more readily filter our reports to specific demographics to assess the level of participation for girls vs. boys or African American vs. Latino etc. This will add significant value to our program not only as we report to funders, but also as we pursue new funding opportunities. Evaluate Programs: The ability to run reports and filter data that is connected to each student will allow us to better evaluate our programs. We ll be able to more accurately assess what programs are most consistently attended and will be able to evaluate how factors such as race, age, gender, or grades affect attendance rates. We ll also be able to identify attendance trends in comparison to program participation based on varying times of the day, week or year. For example, we might see that we get a greater amount of participation after 5pm and consequently reorganize our schedule and shift our workshop presenters to 5 instead of 4. Measure Retention Rates: With a manual attendance system, the Garage does not have the capacity to track retention rates. It would require extensive hours of administrative work to accurately measure it. An electronic system will allow us to not simply capture the fact that 35 students attended one day, but will enable us to easily run reports to better quantify how many of those students were new first time students and/or how many times a week students averaged attendance or how many students return from one semester or year to the next. The ability to easily run these types of reports will allow us to provide
more quantified outcomes to our funders and allow us to enhance our program by measuring retention rates on an ongoing basis so we can instill retention strategies and maximize our impact on students. Strategize Recruitment: The ability to run detailed reports on our attendance and participants will allow us to better strategize recruitment. We ll be able to better quantify what types of students we are attracting and whom we might be missing. We ll also be able to better strategize our volunteer recruitment efforts by watching for patterns of attendance. For example, if we notice an increase of involvement from girls between 6-7PM, we ll want to prioritize getting more female volunteers during that hour and/or if we identify a significant increase in the number of boys in our program, we ll want to prioritize the recruitment of more male mentors. Identify Service Gaps: We will be able to more easily identify populations of students we may not be serving enough and/or times of day where attendance is higher but programming or volunteer help is lower. By quantifying these details we will be able to maximize our program service delivery and ultimately be able to positively influence and empower the most number of students. B. Specific needs and issues to be addressed Our current strategies for tracking attendance are outdated, time-intensive and limited in the amount of information they can provide. While having students sign in manually and then storing the information in excel might be free, the staff time required to transfer the information to excel and manually filter it for reporting is very costly. With our current system we are only able to quantify how many students attended over a period of time and their gender. Even though our staff is aware of who is a new or recurring student each day, there is no way to easily quantify this data for our entire student population from year to year. As nonprofit funding becomes increasingly competitive it is critical that we streamline our check-in system so we can provide more quantified data to both existing and new funders to better communicate both our successes and needs. C. Organizational impact if initiative is undertaken Investing in an electronic check-in system will save a substantial amount of staff time and resources that can be better invested into the direct planning and implementation of program activities. We will be able to maximize our organizational impact by ensuring that we are growing our student base, retaining students, providing the right programs at the right time and recruiting the right volunteers. An electronic check-in system will enable us to easily and efficiently run reports and measure our progress towards these goals. III. Organization s Capacity A. How will this grant enhance your organization s capacity? The implementation of an electronic check-in system will enable the Garage to better quantify our services and outcomes to funders and will allow us to more efficiently evaluate our programs and better strategize our recruitment efforts for students and volunteers. We will have the capacity to gather significantly more data than we currently can which will enhance our capacity to provide more accurate reporting to new and existing funders and will ultimately enable us to more efficiently assess and refine our programs so we can ultimately empower more students to reach their potential. B. How will this increase in organizational capacity be measured? An increase in organizational capacity will be measured by running regular reports with the new system to asses if there has been an increase in attendance rates, retention rates, increase in volunteer and student recruitment, and an increase in program participation. Staff, students and volunteers will also be surveyed to determine their level of satisfaction with the new system and to ensure the new system is saving the organization time and resources. C. Activities to implement the initiative. Please include a description of the expected activities, timeline and costs to implement the initiative. The Garage plans to move forward with the purchase and installation of an electronic check-in system as soon as funding is secured. The following initiatives will need to be implemented to successfully implement this capacity building initiative: Research & Test electronic check-in systems: Garage staff is in the final stage of this process. Purchase System: Approximately $1,000
Customize & Install System at each center: Approximately $500 Train Staff Register Students and Volunteers into the system Train Students Begin tracking attendance for all Garage programs Measure Outcomes: Ongoing D. Why it is important to fund this now? The Garage s major strength is providing the individualized academic and relational support necessary for each student to reach his or her potential. This strategy requires extensive staff and volunteer time. A significant portion of the funding received for the Garage is restricted to specific program activities or traditional operating expenses. Capacity building funds would allows us the flexibility to direct funding to much need technology upgrades so we can more effectively carry out our mission and allow staff and volunteers to focus more fully on providing individualized support to our students. E. How impact and results will be demonstrated The quantified impact that will be drawn from the utilization of electronic check-in systems will be demonstrated in our ongoing grant applications and reports and will be publicized in our Annual Reports (at conclusion of fiscal year) and Impact Reports (at conclusion of School Year). III. ATTACHMENTS E-mail this support information: 1. Copy of 501 (c) (3) federal tax-exempt letter 2. List of Board of Directors, with their affiliations 3. Most recent annual report and financial statement, audited if available 4. Itemized organizational operating budget with actual results for prior fiscal year and current fiscal year to date 5. If capacity building initiative, itemized budget (including external consultant s proposal if applicable) 6. Current strategic plan. If your nonprofit does not have a current strategic plan, explain why. Note: Philanthropy Network Greater Philadelphia Common Grant Application may be submitted with CCCF Summary Sheet. Visit www.chescocf.org for an electronic version of this application. E-mail applications are strongly encouraged. E-mail completed proposals to grants@chescocf.org Attn: Beth Harper Briglia, Vice President of Donor Services & Grantmaking Chester County Community Foundation Please call or email Beth Harper Briglia at 610-696-8045 or beth@chescocf.org if you have any questions. Connecting people who care with causes that matter, so their legacies make a difference.
CAPACITY BUILDING GRANT PROPOSALS Capacity building is whatever is needed to bring a nonprofit to the next level of operational, programmatic, financial, or organizational maturity, in order to more effectively and efficiently fulfill its mission. National Council of Nonprofits MISSION, VISION & STRATEGY Organizational Assessment & Development Strategic Planning Business Planning GOVERNANCE & LEADERSHIP Board Development Executive Transition/Succession Planning Leadership Development Staff Training & Professional Development STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIPS Coalition Building Collaboration Mergers & Acquisitions Strategic Restructuring CAPACITY BUILDING AREAS INCLUDED BUT NOT LIMITED TO. DEVELOPMENT Donor Identification, Cultivation, Development & Stewardship Development Campaigns (Annual, Capital, Planned Giving, Major Gifts) Earned Income Development Social Enterprise Feasibility & Development OPERATIONS Disaster Recovery Planning Financial Management Human Resources Industry Certification Marketing & Communications Program Development Program Evaluation Risk Management Technology Improvements Volunteer Management