Sovereign Bank: Creating Sustainable Partnerships
Sovereign Bank has partnered with Social Capital Inc., over the past three years by awarding $10,000 annually to strengthen the Mini-Grant Program. The mini-grant program is a creative and innovative approach to youth driven and geographic focused philanthropy. The Youth Council of SCI Dorchester provides mini-grants to local youth for community and civic projects. The program encourages creative solutions to address the needs of the community such as anti-tobacco campaigns, acting out against Teen Dating Violence and ways to decrease gun violence.
The Youth Council members and the youth applying for the grants become intimately involved and gain experience with important skills such as marketing, budgeting, and proposal writing. Council members also learn how to review proposals, budgets, and how to allocate resources to meet the needs of their community.
Since the programs inception in 2006, the council has distributed over $35,000 to twenty five organizations for youth programming. There are three key events that take place surrounding the mini-grants process: 1) Mini-Grant RFP Community Meeting, 2) Mini Grant Award Ceremony, which is a special evening where the grant recipients are publicly announced; and 3) Community Showcase, where the community is invited to celebrate with the Council and the service learning projects implemented by the grantees.
Last year’s mini-grant round resulted in eight funded service projects engaging 176 young participants, who completed over 1,438 hours directly benefiting the community of Dorchester through their youth initiated and youth led projects.
Sovereign Bank is proud to partner with this visionary organization which is providing an opportunity for our young people to become stakeholders in their community through philanthropy.
|