As communities prepare for state and federal funding through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), a CMF member partnered with their local municipality and area organization to administer a portion of the incoming funds. 

The Kalamazoo Community Foundation (KZCF) collaborated with the city of Kalamazoo and the United Way of the Battle Creek and Kalamazoo Region to administer $1 million of the city of Kalamazoo’s Federal ARPA State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds. 

These partnerships first emerged in 2020, during the onset of the pandemic, when KZCF identified emerging and urgent needs in their community nonprofit sector. The community foundation reopened its Community Urgent Relief Fund, with support from its donor relations department, to help address the needs of nonprofits.

Amid the pandemic, KZCF teamed up with its local United Way and created a team approach to addressing these needs. Together, the organizations created a single application and review process for both funding streams and created a joint process for reviewing requests and issuing funds into the community.

“This process was so successful that we offered to help manage some of the ARPA funds as they came into the city of Kalamazoo. We explained to the city what the partnership had accomplished and offered to utilize the same team and system to expedite the distribution of ARPA funds into community,” David Feaster, community investment officer at KZCF said. 

The organizations used the same system as before while adding what was needed for federal requirements. Through the Urgent Relief Fund process, the teams already understood the process and had gained insight into the community needs that were exacerbated by the pandemic. 

“Our working knowledge of the local nonprofit landscape and COVID-related needs in the community and the stresses to our local systems that those imposed, all helped inform how we evaluated the ARPA funding requests that we reviewed together. We saw how this understanding and our relationships with agencies in community brought an added level of trust to our process,” Feaster said. 

Feaster shared that when the ARPA application process was announced, the organizations shared it with their networks which included grassroots agencies that were not as familiar with seeking grants connected to federal funding. 

“Through our partnership with United Way, we were able to offer some supports to help ensure that these smaller agencies could keep up with the federal reporting requirements for the grants. I believe this increased trust and support allowed us to go deeper into community and allowed smaller agencies to have the confidence to apply,” Feaster said. 

According to Feaster, involving a diverse group of nonprofit partners allowed them to more effectively identify community needs community needs and resulted in a more holistic response that addressed the needs of a greater diversity of community members. 

This kind of partnership is something the community foundation hopes to continue.

“We recognize that moving forward we can provide services such as this to other entities with the knowledge that this team brings, a certain insight and community trust as well as an equitable process to the table,” Feaster said. 

Want more? 

Learn more about how other CMF members are partnering to ensure their communities are prepared for incoming ARPA funding. 

Through the guidance of CMF’s Michigan Philanthropy COVID-19 Working Group and approval of the Board of Trustees, CMF established the Statewide Equity Fund (SEF) Strategic Support Pilot in May 2021.
The SEF Strategic Support Pilot is a $2 million CMF member-driven pooled fund aimed at providing the infrastructure needed to help shape incoming ARPA and other federal dollars toward equity-centered approaches to advance economic prosperity in communities. 

Learn more about the work the SEF Strategic Support Pilot is supporting on page 17 of CMF’s 2021 Annual Report: Together on the Journey.