Promise Neighborhoods Grant Winners—and Losers—Get New Aid

Now that $10-million in Promise Neighborhoods grants have been announced, a new group is standing by to give advice to the winners—and to help out the many applicants that did not get any money.

The Promise Neighborhoods Institute—operated by PolicyLink, a social-justice research group—has been set up to provide services like consulting, Webinars, e-mail updates, and networking meetings to groups working on Promise Neighborhoods projects.

The institute has already planned a November meeting in Washington for the 21 grant winners, which won up to $500,000 each to plan comprehensive antipoverty projects modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone.

Angela Glover Blackwell, chief executive of PolicyLink, said the institute will also offer help to the more than 300 applicants that did not win money, advising them on how to keep their projects going, strengthen them, and raise money. “I know there’s a lot of disappointment,” she said.

She noted that the Education Department said that it had received many excellent applications that would have won grants if more money had been available.

The Promise Neighborhoods Institute has a budget of $3-million over the next 18 to 20 months, with money from Atlantic Philanthropies, the California Endowment, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and the Walmart Foundation.

United Neighborhoods Centers of America, an umbrella group for community social-service centers, has also planned some activities to keep the Promise Neighborhoods momentum going. It will offer Webinars, conference calls, and advice to members involved in neighborhood antipoverty projects, whether or not they won grant money.

It has also started a new group, the National Neighborhood Alliance, to unite groups that are working on Promise Neighborhoods projects or other efforts to fight poverty in specific neighborhoods or geographic areas.