Federal Government Announces Promise Neighborhood Grant Winners

Editor’s Note: This story is part of an ongoing series.

The federal government on Tuesday announced the names of 21 organizations that won up to $500,000 each in grants to plan comprehensive antipoverty projects modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone.

The Education Department unveiled a total of $10-million in “Promise Neighborhoods” planning grants for projects to provide educational, social, and other services to children in distressed neighborhoods from birth through college.

The winners came from big cities like Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, as well as from smaller cities like Athens, Ga.; Little Rock, Ark.; and River Rouge, Mich. The Boys and Girls Club of the Northern Cheyenne Nation, in Montana, also won money.

Examples of winning organizations include the Abyssinian Development Corporation (New York), Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools for Public Policy (Washington), Morehouse School of Medicine (Atlanta), and United Way of Central Massachusetts (Worcester). All are working with other nonprofit groups, school districts, or colleges and universities on the Promise Neighborhood projects.

Groups in more than 300 communities applied for the planning grants. Arne Duncan, the education secretary, said the federal government did not have enough money to pay for all of the excellent applications it received — and urged philanthropy to step in.

“There were at least a hundred we would have loved to have funded and felt very, very good about,” he told reporters during a conference call.

Despite that fact, two nonprofit experts who follow the Promise Neighborhoods project said they were pleased by the diversity of the winning applications. Many people think poverty is concentrated in big Northeastern cities, but the selections show that children also need help in the South, the West, and native American communities, said Angela Glover Blackwell, chief executive of PolicyLink, a social-justice research group.

At the same time, she said she was pleased that some “tried-and-true” groups like the Abyssinian Development Corporation and Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, in Boston, won grants because their previous work will help ensure that the first Promise Neighborhood projects are successful.

Patrick Lester, senior vice president for public policy at United Neighborhoods Centers of America, an umbrella group for neighborhood social-service centers, said he was glad, however, that not all of the grant money went to big, well-financed groups since he had been worried that “little organizations would be left behind.” One member of his alliance, Neighborhood Centers Inc., in Houston, won a grant.

Mr. Lester said he was also heartened that Mr. Duncan was joined in making the Promise Neighborhoods announcement by Melody Barnes, a top White House aide; Shaun Donovan, secretary of housing and urban development; and Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services. He said that shows the administration recognizes poverty must be attacked in coordinated way that “breaks down silos” between government agencies.

The Education Department said the Promise Neighborhoods effort would be closely tied to the White House Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative, which is working to align federal housing, education, justice, and health programs to fight poverty.

Education-department officials said during the call that they plan to post the applications of all 21 winners online, as well as the names of peer reviewers and their comments. They said they will also post information about all of the nonwinners that won scores of at least 80 out of 100. Abstracts of all applications are already posted on the Web.

President Obama has proposed spending $210-million on Promise Neighborhoods in 2011, but Congress does not seem inclined to budget that much. The Senate Appropriations Committee has proposed spending $20-million, and a House Appropriations subcommittee $60-million.

Mr. Duncan said he plans to continue fighting for the president’s request, saying otherwise “a lot of communities will lose out and a lot of children won’t have the opportunities they desperately need to build a better life for themselves.”

(See also, “Promise Neighborhoods Winners — and Losers — Get New Aid.”)