The program – which awards grants to nonprofit organizations across the fields of early learning, career pathways, financial empowerment, and community resiliency – has undergone significant transformation to shift focus from annual metrics to shared knowledge
PHILADELPHIA – (July 5, 2023) – United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey (UWGPSNJ) is pleased to announce the first 100 grantees of its Partnership Grant Program. Grantees were selected from a pool of more than 500 applicants across a nine-county footprint and will each receive a grant of $50,000 in the program’s first year.
The Partnership Grant Program is a departure from United Way’s past grant programs. The program’s application process focused on what United Way can learn from organizations, not strictly on the organization’s demonstration of outcomes. By design, small organizations with deep roots in their communities or expertise in an emerging topic were selected alongside larger nonprofit service providers.
This shift better serves United Way’s new impact model, which deprioritized the selection of individual organizations and focuses on the identification, implementation, and evaluation of large-scale poverty-fighting initiatives. Grantees of the Partnership Grant Program will help keep United Way, and each other, informed about challenges and opportunities across the sector.
The newly designed program limited its grantees to 100 organizations that fall within United Way’s key focus areas: early learning, career pathways, financial empowerment, and community resiliency. While funding has traditionally varied among the pool of grantees, each grantee will now receive the same amount of $50,000 of unrestricted funding.
Throughout the grant cycle, particular focus will be placed on research and development, as well as knowledge sharing.
“Today, our donors invest in us to lead bold solutions that address poverty and create opportunities for all. The Partnership Grant Program will help us sustain close ties to the communities we serve and learn from organizations and leaders in our priority focus areas. We found that the outcomes-centered application and reporting expectations of our past grant programs didn’t foster the high-trust relationships that we need in order to learn from and truly partner with nonprofit leaders.” said Bill Golderer, President and Chief Executive Officer of UWGPSNJ. “Our comprehensive strategy to end poverty and expand opportunity will be strengthened by learning from this diverse network of grantees.”
The mission of the Partnership Grant Program is to further high-trust relationships, productive knowledge sharing, and diverse perspectives. To support this, the decision process prioritized diversity of the group as a whole, including fields of practice, geographies served, size and age of organizations, and leadership diversity. The revised direction is designed to prioritize learning and foster relationships, and to support grantees in their poverty-fighting efforts.
“As our impact model shifts, our grant programs need to shift with it. The success of the Partnership Grant Program will be based on the quality of what we learn and the collaboration between UWGPSNJ and the grantees, moreso than on grantees’ annual metrics,” said Kate Houstoun, UWGPSNJ's Chief Impact Officer. “We have the opportunity to not only support well-known anchors of our sector, but also smaller or lesser-known nonprofit organizations who have so much to contribute, but may not have been competitive in the past.”
The 2023 grantees represent nine counties and dozens of communities and neighborhoods across the region. The pool includes many organizations that are new to the Partnership Grant Program; nearly half of the final slate had not received grants in the past grant cycle and 30 had not applied for a grant from United Way before.
The 2023 Partnership Grant Program grantees include:
EARLY LEARNING
Partners help ensure academic success, with services including early childhood education, out-of-school-time programs, literacy programs, career preparation, student resilience, and advocacy for equitable education and access.
- ACLAMO
- Big Brothers Big Sisters Independence Region
- Big Brothers Big Sisters of Atlantic & Cape May Counties
- Black Child Development Institute - Philadelphia & Vicinity
- Boys & Girls Club of Chester
- Burlington Community Action Partnership, Inc.
- Cape Assist
- Catholic Partnership Schools Camden NJ
- Children First PA
- Children's Village
- Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) for Children of Atlantic, Cape May, & Camden Counties
- Cumberland Empowerment Zone Corporation
- Educating Communities for Parenting
- FathersRead365
- First Up
- HopePHL
- Maternal and Child Health Consortium
- Neighbors Helping Neighbors on the Main Line
- One Accord Inc. - Kids Alley
- ParentChild+ Philadelphia
- Reading Allowed
- The Foundation for Delaware County
- UrbanPromise Ministries
- Wonderspring
- YWCA Tri-County Area
CAREER PATHWAYS
Partners support economic mobility through career readiness, adult education, workforce development, industry partnerships, and entrepreneurship services.
- Along the Way
- Attic Youth Center
- Chester Education Foundation
- Coded by Kids
- Cross County Connection Transportation Management Association
- Entrepreneurs of the Future
- First Step Staffing
- Graduate Philadelphia
- Haitian American Caucus
- I-LEAD, Inc.
- Mentor for Philly, DBA College Together
- MudGirls Studios
- Multicultural Community Family Services, Inc.
- Opportunities Industrialization Center Inc
- People Advancing Reintegration
- Revive South Jersey
- Social Responsibility Through Me
- The Arc of Cumberland County
- The Center for Black Educator Development
- The Merchants Fund
- The Work Group
- UIH Family Partners, DBA The Father Center of New Jersey
- University City Science Center
- VestedIn
- Williamson College of the Trades
FINANCIAL EMPOWERMENT
Partners help people experiencing poverty increase their income, decrease debt, increase short-term savings and access to asset building, such as homeownership, through services including financial counseling, tax preparation, benefits enrollment, and matched savings programs.
- ACHIEVEability
- Affordable Housing Centers of Pennsylvania
- Believe in Students
- Campaign for Working Families, Inc.
- Ceiba
- Compass Working Capital
- Consumer Bankruptcy Assistance
- Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Delaware Valley d/b/a Clarifi
- Cumberland County Habitat for Humanity, Inc.
- Financial Wellness Institute
- Habitat for Humanity of South Central New Jersey
- Holly City Development Corporation
- Hopeworks Camden
- Latin American Economic Development Association, Inc.
- Media Fellowship House
- Newfound RiseUp Fund
- Open Hearth, Inc.
- Parkside Business & Community In Partnership
- Penn Asian Senior Services
- Pennsylvania Horticultural Society
- Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations
- Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC)
- Saint Joseph's Carpenter Society
- Why Not Prosper, Inc.
- Women’s Opportunities Resource Center
COMMUNITY RESILIENCY
Partners build more resilient communities by helping to meet residents’ basic needs, including food distribution, violence prevention, healthcare access, digital inclusion, rent/mortgage/utility assistance, legal aid, and referrals to social services.
- African Family Health Organization
- Bebashi - Transition to Hope
- Broad Street Ministry
- Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia
- Cape May Community Food Closet
- Centro de Apoyo Comunitario
- Community Food Bank of New Jersey
- Food Bank of South Jersey
- Friends Association for the Care and Protection of Children
- Greater Harleysville and North Penn Senior Service
- HIAS and Council Migration Service of Philadelphia, Inc.
- Homeless Advocacy Project
- Jewish Family Service of Atlantic and Cape May Counties
- Making A Change Group
- Manna on Main Street
- Murphy's Giving Market
- New Kensington Community Development Corporation
- Nueva Esperanza, Inc.
- Pathways to Housing PA
- Philabundance
- Public Interest Law Center
- Southeast Asian Multicultural Assistance Coalition (SEAMAAC)
- Share Food Program
- The Heart of Camden, Inc.
- Veterans Multi-Service Center
To learn more about the Partnership Grant Program and its partners, visit https://unitedforimpact.org/nonprofit-partners/.