City Council
MEETING DATE: 12/9/2015
TITLE:
Title
Discussion of the Community Assistance Grant Program
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FROM:
Charlie McClendon, City Manager
RECOMMENDATION:
Recommendation
Staff recommends the City Council receive the report, discuss and provide direction to staff.
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BACKGROUND:
The City Council has historically provided support to some community non-profits by way of an appropriation in the budget. Recent Council discussions involved considering additional requests from both the Cathedral Center and the Boys and Girls Club. Additionally, throughout the year requests are received from non-profits for sponsorships or other contributions; often these are small dollar requests. Council asked staff to place an item on a future agenda to allow a discussion of a more comprehensive manner to consider and fund requests from non-profits.
DISCUSSION:
The City currently provides support to non-profits through the FY 15-16budget as follows:
Agency Name General Fund Support CDBG Support
Boys and Girls Club $45,000 0
Cathedral Center $18,500 $21,500
CVAG Bus Program $ 3,000 0
Shelter from the Storm $ 3,000 0
Roy's Desert Resource $ 0 $51,500
Due to Federal guidelines, CDBG funding is restricted to programs serving low and moderate income persons so not all non-profits qualify. CDBG procedures also require a new application and funding decision each year.
In addition to the contributions listed above, there is a $7,500 line item in the general fund which is used for sponsorships primarily and some contributions. This year, so the City has provided a sponsorship to the ACBCI for the Dinner in the Canyon and for the Legacy Hike for Humanity. Other recent sponsorships from this line item included the Cathedral City Historical Society, the Mayor's scholarship awards to High School seniors, the Palm Springs Equality Awards and the Valley Crime Stoppers.
Staff was asked to try to design a more comprehensive program, where non-profits would be asked to apply once a year, for the upcoming fiscal year, and funding decisions could be made with all applications on the table. A total funding allocation of about $80,000 per year would fund a comprehensive program with all those currently receiving funding being required to reapply each year. Another option would be to continue with the two large awards, the Boys and Girls Club and the Cathedral Center in the budget as they are and have a separate small awards program of about $20,000 per year with a limit of $3,000 or so per applicant.
Under either scenario the program would operate under the following schedule to make awards available for the FY16-17 funding year:
January 2016 - Advertise the application process, send letters to existing recipients.
February 2016 - Application submittal period with a deadline of 2-29-16.
March 2016 - Appoint a Council subcommittee to review the applications and make a funding recommendation to the full Council.
April 2016 - Council approves the funding awards for FY16-17. This would then require the political will to say no to any requests received outside of this process and to applications not funded or only partially funded due to all the funds being allocated to others. There is reason to believe that a program opened up to all community non-profits may generate more in requests that what recent experience would indicate.
Staff requests direction on the following policy questions:
1. Does Council want to reestablish a comprehensive Community Assistance Program with funding requests only accepted and considered once a year?
2. If so, does Council want to put all non-profits into a single program (+-$80,000) or continue to separately fund the large contributions (Boys and Girls Club and Cathedral Center) and have a small grant program with a cap of +-$3,000 per award or another cap as approved by Council.
If direction is provided to proceed with any of these options, staff will prepare the necessary application documents and publicity materials to proceed with the program after the first of the year.
FISCAL IMPACT:
The City currently spends about $80,000 per year on assistance to non-profits. This is in the approved budget.
ATTACHMENTS:
None