Marin County supervisors are merging the two programs they use to dispense grants to nonprofit organizations and boosting funding for the grants by $500,000 for the fiscal year that begins Tuesday.
One of the programs, called Community Service Projects, allowed supervisors to provide small grants of $10,000 or less per organization biannually. The other program, called Non-Profit Community Partners, permitted supervisors to award grants from $10,000 to $30,000 once a year.
Combined, the programs dispensed $1.15 million to local nonprofits in fiscal year 2024-25. The Board of Supervisors has increased that amount to $1.65 million in fiscal year 2025-26.
Josh Swedberg, the county’s budget director, said proposed federal funding cuts are likely to affect local nonprofits.
“The county does not have an ability to backfill those revenues on an ongoing basis,” Swedberg said. “That said, recognizing the need, your board made a recommendation to expand the program on a one-time basis by $500,000.”
Swedberg said supervisors directed staff to look at ways to combine the two programs after hearing from nonprofit managers and other members of the public during budget hearings earlier this year.
Chandra Alexandre, director of Community Action Marin, said Monday that her organization is feeling the strain of government funding uncertainties.
“If the county’s consolidation of funding creates efficiencies for us, then that will help us maximize already stressed staff resources,” Alexandre said.
Katelyn Willoughby, a spokesperson for the Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership, said, “We applaud the move toward a single, unified application process. This will reduce administrative barriers and confusion that historically hampered nonprofits seeking smaller grants, as well as larger allocations.”
Omar Carrera, the director of Canal Alliance, said, “While efforts to consolidate and streamline grant programs are a welcome step toward greater efficiency, this moment calls for more than administrative improvements.”
“With rising community needs and reduced federal support,” Carrera said, “local governments must take bold action, by increasing investment and forging deeper coordination with philanthropic partners, to ensure essential services remain accessible and equitable.”
The new unified program, called the Community Grants and Investment Program, will allocate grants ranging from $1,000 to $50,000 once a year. All nonprofits will be eligible, although local organizations will get preference. Funding will be awarded to one-time projects or initiatives that provide measurable benefit to the community but don’t fit within existing county operations.
The county will accept applications from Tuesday through Aug. 31. County staff will present supervisors with recommendations for awards on Oct. 21, and supervisors will vote on whether to approve the grants on Nov. 5.
The biggest change will be the added input that supervisors will receive on which projects should be funded. Swedberg said the plan is to create a review panel that will include aides to the supervisors, members of the county’s Department of Health and Human Services and possibly representatives from the Marin Community Foundation and the West Marin Fund.
Currently, supervisors review grant applications for Community Service Projects and make recommendations to County Executive Derek Johnson, who chooses the recipients. For Non-Profit Community Partners grants, Johnson formulates recommendations and supervisors make the final decisions.
The protocols reflect the Board of Supervisors’ long history of dispensing grants to nonprofits and the fact that the board’s earlier procedures were criticized for a lack of transparency.
At one time, each supervisor was given a certain amount of money annually to award as grants to whichever organization or civic project the supervisor deemed worthy. The grants were routinely approved on a consent calendar without public discussion. This system was in place for decades and at one point supervisors were dispersing as much as $600,000 a year by these means.
In a 2012 report, the Marin County Civil Grand Jury recommended changes in the grants program.
“Among the criticisms of these types of programs are the lack of transparency and the appearance of quid pro quo in fund disbursements,” it said.
The system was altered to its current form in 2015. The program was initially capped at $300,000 but has since increased.
The Non-Profit Community Partners program was created in 2019 after the Marin Post, an online publication authored by resident Bob Silvestri, ran a four-part series pillorying its predecessor, a community services contracts program.
Silvestri criticized the program for not requiring requests for proposals or any other form of solicitation for competitive bids for the services contracted. The decisions regarding who received funding was at the sole discretion of the Board of Supervisors and the county administrator.
Silvestri wrote that over the previous 14 years the county had paid out approximately $500,000 to the Marin County Bicycle Coalition under the community services contracts program.
In fiscal year 2021-22, after the process had been changed to its current form, county administrator Matthew Hymel recommended allocating $650,000 to the Non-Profit Community Partners program, but supervisors decided to provide $950,000. The extra $300,000 came from $25 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds the county was receiving.
The new Community Grants and Investment Program will retain the transparency introduced by past reforms, but it will also once again give supervisors the final say on which nonprofits receive the money.
Supervisor Eric Lucan said Monday that it might be preferable if the review panel did not present supervisors with recommendations for the exact dollar amount of grants in October. Lucan said that would make it difficult for the supervisors to “make any adjustments or tweaks at that point.”
Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters agreed with Lucan.
“I do want to clarify,” Moulton-Peters said. “This is not a budget program. It’s a Board of Supervisors community grant program.”