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Mayor Ras Baraka has announced a second round of funding through the city's Creative Catalyst Fund that will provide artists and art groups with flexible grant support during the coronavirus crisis and beyond.
In January 2020, Mayor Baraka announced a broad vision for the city's cultural sector that encourages equitable funding for the arts and the kind of investment that will help sustain the creative community and grassroots arts organizations. The Creative Catalyst Fund launched in April 2020, in the early part of the COVID-19 crisis that took an enormous financial toll on the creative sector.
"Newark has been a center for the arts throughout its history," said Mayor Baraka. "COVID-19 has severely impacted our arts community – creating economic loss for artists and galleries. It has also provided them with a new canvas of experiences to document creatively. It is both a moral and economic imperative for us to support our local arts community by helping them regain their footing and continue to curate and tell the stories of Newark and its people."
I Am Trenton Community Foundation is proud to announce awarding $135,000 total through the recent “Making Trenton Even Better” grant program to community champions transforming vacant lots, encouraging art and artists, teaching new skills and providing compassionate support with respect and dignity.
“These community groups will make a real impact across our city and we are excited to support their work,” said IAT Co-President Marelyn Rivera. “Our community faces challenges together, and working together we make Trenton even better.”
Grant Committee Chair Regina Podhorin-Zilinski noted that more than 100 applications were received – and many worthwhile projects were not able to be funded. “This was our most generous grant round ever – with more funding and more applicants than ever before,” she said. “Our only regret is that many good ideas did not receive support – this time.”
BD contacted the Corporate listserve to ask questions to benchmark Community Service/Volunteer Paid Time Off Policy & Internal Company Guidelines for Volunteer Councils. They are formalizing some of their programs and wanted to see what other companies are doing.
Community Service/Volunteer Paid Time Off Program – BD allows US employees 2 days off for personal volunteer time with several restrictions on organization types. We have guidelines but no formal policy. Currently we don’t track participation or hours. To help us, please answer the following questions:
Do you have a Community Service/Volunteer Paid Time Off Policy/Program? If so:
- How many paid days off per year are given to employees?
- Is your program limited to just US employees or are International employees included?
- Are there any limitations to the types of volunteer projects/organizations that are acceptable?
- Is the time off limited to company-sponsored projects or is it open to individual employee volunteer experiences?
- Is manager approval required and if so, how is this tracked?
- How do you track the volunteer hours?
- Does the policy fall under the responsibility to Human Resources or Corporate Social Responsibility?
- Would you be willing to share your policy please?
Company Employee Volunteer Councils – BD has groups of employees at most of our sites who organize volunteer projects for local employees to participate in. We call these groups Volunteer Councils. We do not have any written guidelines for the Volunteer Councils but feel this would be helpful especially in reporting outcomes to our Corporate Social Impact Team. To help us, please answer the following questions:
Do you have Volunteer Councils who coordinate and manage volunteer activities for your site locations? If so:
- Do you have guidelines on how these Volunteer Councils should operate?
- Are there any restrictions on the type of volunteer projects that associates can manage on behalf of the company?
- Do you provide any Corporate grant dollars for the Volunteer Councils to use to support their nonprofit partners?
- Would you be willing to share your guidelines please?
Responses came from 17 corporations from the CNJG community and other corporate giving programs from different areas of the country.
CNJG’s first-ever Policy Agenda that includes our approach to the policy work, and five policy priorities.