article by: Abby Wright
For a year and a half, CEDA’s Community Grants Bulletin (CGB) has been shared each month with CEDA staff and many of their EDA Boards and city officials to help devise a fundraising strategy for their community and economic development needs.
“Now that we have well over a year of research-based, annual grant deadlines for CEDA communities in a collective list, the Grants Department can start making it even easier for the team to match grant opportunities with their community projects,” says Abby Wright, CEDA Community Grant Specialist. Wright plans to do this by adapting the CGB into a live, easy-to-use digital spreadsheet, which will enable each CEDA contract in the Community Support Program to have its own annual list of grant deadlines tailored to its geographic location; Wright will work with colleagues to keep the records as comprehensive, relevant, and updated as possible.
The new CEDA Community Grants Database (CGD), expected to be up and running in early summer, will also include a section where CEDA staff can enter grant questions and research assistance requests so that team members can be aware of other team members’ similar projects for potential collaboration and information-sharing. This section will also organically create records that include a real “tally” of the most common fundraising needs among CEDA communities.