If we want to build strong communities, we need strong nonprofits. It’s as simple as that. At the Hispanic Federation, that belief has always been at the heart of our mission. Our work today involves national advocacy campaigns and providing direct services to individuals but, at our core, we are still invested in helping strengthen those institutions that serve our communities.
One way in which we strengthen the Latino nonprofit sector is by providing training to the men and women who run our member agencies. This year we continue to run the Entre Familia Nonprofit Learning Series. Built around a series of workshops and trainings that are geared to Latino nonprofit professionals, Entre Familia covers topics such as event planning, fundraising, financial management, communications, information management, board development and more.
Hispanic Federation’s Grant Making program has always been there for our network of agencies. When traditional philanthropy cannot help support an important project in our network, we often say, ¡presente! To date, we have granted out more than $1.7M to strengthen Latino organizations. And we’re excited to share that much more is yet to come as we get ready to make final determinations in September on new grant proposals from our agencies and distribute the funds raised through our Immigrants: We Get the Job Done campaign.
This year we made an important change to the application process for grants that reflected our feedback from member agencies looking for greater flexibility to secure funding. Rather than have just one annual application deadline we now have two, one in the spring and another in the fall. We’ll be posting information about the fall deadline shortly, so keep an eye out for updates.
Given our expanded presence in Florida, Hispanic Federation is strengthening its capacity building work in the Sunshine State. Soon, we’ll be launching the Latino GROW (GrassRoots Organizations can Win) Initiative. GROW will enable HF to strengthen and develop nonprofit capacity with regard to management infrastructure and civic engagement and leadership development capacity building. That includes providing training by expanding the Entre Familia professional development model to the state’s Latino nonprofit sector.
In addition, Hispanic Federation will provide grants to Latino CBOs to support their work on behalf of Latino Floridians. Grant amounts will range from $5-25K and will be for operational support, civic engagement infrastructure, capital expenditures, fund development, consultants, financial management support, IT management, and succession planning. HF will seed the GROW Fund with $50,000 in HF funding. It will then aim to fundraise for an additional $200,000, for a total of $250,000 in capacity-building grants to be available annually for Latino nonprofits.
Finally, we are thrilled to welcome five new member agencies to the Hispanic Federation family. These agencies reflect our increasing commitment to geographic and programmatic diversity.
Latino nonprofit organizations are on the front lines of some of the most important battles for social justice in our country. We are privileged to be able to partner, strengthen and help them grow.
