By Lilli Cox | Dir. Communications & Community Investments
On behalf of the Board and Staff of St. Croix Foundation, we wish to express our sincere wishes to our friends and family at GlobalGiving for a safe and happy New Year.
As we usher in 2023, the Foundation is acutely aware of the unfolding potential of all that we have built together since Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Our Community Resilience Hubs, designed to serve in the aftermath of a natural disaster, were effectively activated, tested, and proven to be viable working models through COVID-19, gaining national recognition. Our grantmaking has been leveraged several times over for deeper organizational and programmatic impact – and has quantitatively proven the power of collaboration in our community. But perhaps most importantly, with GlobalGiving as our steadfast partner, we have nurtured and strengthened the relationships needed to build for the future.
Strategic Grantmaking with CARE
As you know from our past reports, our 2021 Sustaining Impact CARE Grant, which awarded 11 organizations in our Nonprofit Consortium a total of $175,000, had multiple benefits. Directly serving over 2,200 children and adults on St. Croix through COVID-19, the Sustaining Impact Grant built organizational capacity for our nonprofits to serve. But it also expanded vital services and, we are pleased to report, opened new doors to reach more of our population.
By themselves, these outcomes would certainly characterize the CARE Grant as strategic grantmaking that does more than support a program for a finite period of time. But our 2021 CARE Grant was also intentionally used as the model for a second grant program, our Sprint to Excellence COVID-19 Education Relief Grant.
Prioritizing collaboration, trust, and impact, the CARE Grant offered flexible open-door funding to serve those impacted by COVID-19, offering up to $15,000 per award. Having been awarded federal funding through the Governors Emergency Education Relief Fund, St. Croix Foundation (SCF) recognized an opportunity to develop complementary grant programs that would run concurrently, filling in gaps where they may exist and combining assets for maximum impact. One month after the launch of our CARE Grant, SCF opened our Spring to Excellence Grant, thereby infusing our community with the maximum amount of resources at our disposal.
Among the federal eligibility requirements for this funding, our Sprint to Excellence Grant also prioritized collective work, used a robust equity rubric, and considered the organization’s ability to sustain the work past the grant period. Using CARE as our model, SCF granted another 15 organizations a total of $1.3 million to deliver emergency education services to the children of St. Croix! Grants ranging from $6,500 to $100,000 were awarded in a competitive process to grassroots projects and established nonprofits delivering arts education, social-emotional learning, academic intervention, leadership development, and arts programming. From afterschool music programs, schoolwide murals, and reading programs for 3rd graders to small neighborhood learning centers, this grant program has truly built capacity within the civic sector!
Of note, among those organizations that received a Sprint to Excellence Grant, 6 were members of our Nonprofit Consortium. They were able to pivot quickly when challenges arose over the shifting conditions around COVID-19; they expanded their programs to new beneficiaries, far beyond their normal scope; and they built organizational capacity as well as programmatic. This marriage of flexible funding with federal dollars allowed organizations to mobilize quickly and allocate resources strategically to serve more.
An excellent example of this is the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts (CMCArts), who utilized their CARE Grant for seed funding for virtual arts education programs in collaboration with at least 5 other nonprofits. Reaching over 1,400 youth through their CARE Grant pilot programs, CMCArts expanded and modified these pilots through the Sprint to Excellence Grant to reach another 950 young people. Resources from both grants were cross-utilized and built organizational infrastructure to apply for and manage diverse programming (and grants) in the future. World Ocean School partnered with Crucian Heritage and Nature Tourism to link cultural education with hands-on STEM experience. Both World Ocean School and Crucian Heritage and Nature Tourism used their CARE grants as seed funding for deeper cross-sector work, and then went on to reach more children and expand services with a Sprint to Excellence Grant.
Today, SCF is working to identify funding sources to support the CARE Fund in 2023, to allow the lessons learned and the capacity that has been built to sustain and grow.
The Alexander Theater Renovation “Healing Humanities” Initiative
It’s been a while since we reported on our Healing Humanities Initiative, but we’ve been busy! As you may recall, in February 2019, the Foundation was awarded a FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant to renovate and retrofit the Alexander Theater in Sunday Market Square, transforming it into a state-of-the-art performing arts center, convening space, and the only downtown Christiansted Community Disaster Safe Room capable of serving 300-600 people. A perfect example of the Foundation’s holistic approach to community development by leveraging scarce dollars for ripple impacts, the Alexander Theater will add to the territory’s depleted disaster shelter pool and will serve as an economic stimulus for Christiansted.
Update at a glance: We are incredibly excited to report that we finalized the RFP process for the selection of an architect for the design of this legacy project. Our architect is Gerville Larsen, of TALLER LARJAS, LLC, a community-rooted, historic preservation and revitalization expert, and author of the award-winning Christiansted downtown plan! Entering the architectural and engineering design phase in 2023, the theater will become the anchor property of a nonprofit incubator and a resilience corridor in downtown Christiansted.
A 20-year vision to revitalize the history of Sunday Market Square, our Healing Humanities Initiative includes the renovation of the theater as well as the development of adjacent properties across the street that will be low-to-moderate-income housing. Serving as a nonprofit incubator and coworking space, these properties will provide opportunities for civic engagement and improve the housing stock on St. Croix, which was decimated by Hurricane Maria. We are incredibly excited to report that we are poised to launch the architectural and engineering phase for these properties in 2023 as well!. In all, these renovations will position Christiansted as an economic and cultural epicenter that is rooted in resilience and the healing power of arts, culture, and humanities.
Today, SCF is leveraging federal recovery resources to cover many of the costs associated with these projects; however, SCF will be required to cover expenses unrelated to the shelter component of the theater demanding that we lean on our partners to contribute to essential project materials such as new projectors, theater curtains, and lighting. Relics such as mid-century projectors still housed at the theater will need to be replaced by state-of-the-art equipment, which is considered an ineligible expense by FEMA.
We hope to rally our community at home and beyond our shores to fill these needs!
The Work Must Continue!
We ended our last report with a short conclusion entitled “The Work Continues,” and so it does. But today, as we continue to watch isolated communities throughout the nation (and the globe) grapple with flooding, tornados, fire, and a myriad of other crises, we add to that statement by saying that “the work must continue.”
Over the past quarter, all of us at St. Croix Foundation have taken inventory of the lessons we have learned in the last five years, and the takeaway is simple. Our partnerships, programs, and investments have taken root and grown and, if watered and tended with “CARE” and intention, they will evolve from programmatic success into a healthy, resilient ecosystem.
For more information on any of St. Croix Foundation’s CARE Fund programming and grantmaking, please contact us – and thank you for standing with us!
By Lilli Cox | Dir. Communications & Community Investments
By Lilli Cox | Dir. of Communications & Community Investments
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can recieve an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
