Marin County supervisors award $950K to nonprofits
Marin County supervisors have allocated $950,000 to 76 nonprofit organizations as part of the county’s “nonprofit community partners program.”
The grants were announced on June 22 during the Board of Supervisors’ budget hearings.
“Last year for the first time, we revamped the program and made it much more transparent with online applications,” County Administrator Matthew Hymel told supervisors.
“This funding is awarded on a one-time basis for projects that don’t clearly fit within the activities of a single county department,” he said.
In 2019, the county revamped its community service contracts program after a series of online posts authored by resident Bob Silvestri criticized the way the program was run.
The articles asserted that the program’s allocations were miscategorized as contracts because there were no requests for proposals or any other form of solicitation for competitive bids.
Silvestri argued there was nothing to prevent supervisors from using expenditures to curry favor with groups in hopes of garnering their political support.
Now nonprofits seeking funding through the program have from Dec. 1 to Feb. 19 to submit applications. Hymel recommends funding levels to the Board of Supervisors for approval as part of the budget process in June.
This year the county received 77 applications seeking a total of $2.38 million.
This year’s grants ranged from $10,000 to $40,000. The Marin Foster Care Association received $40,000. In Spirit, a program to help quadriplegics, was given $37,000.
Six nonprofits — the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, Cool the Earth, the Agricultural Institute of Marin, Huckleberry Youth Programs, Marin Villages and the Marin Brain Injury Network — received $30,000.
Most of the money, $650,000, came from the county’s nondepartmental funds account. The county also used $250,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds.
Marin supervisors approved a $716 million budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year on June 22.
Supervisor Katie Rice, the board president, called the pandemic relief money “an incredible opportunity right now to make headway on our top community priorities.”
Last year, the supervisors allocated $950,000 to 48 nonprofit organizations. The grants ranged from $10,000 to $40,000. Three organizations received $40,000: Marin Villages, for membership expansion and volunteer development; North Marin Community Services, for its weekly food pantry; and Youth Transforming Justice, for a youth court and Latino volunteer recruitment.