Town of Essex awards $153,322 to local nonprofits

During a recent meeting, the Town of Essex Selectboard awarded $153,322 for FY21 Essex Human Services Funding to local nonprofit organizations.  As in previous years, Essex provides 1% of their annual budget to community agencies that align with prioritized focus areas of need for Essex residents.
 
The Town received 33 applications totaling $241,865 in requests, which is $84,165 more than last year--a 53% increase. A long-time goal for the Town of Essex to promote awareness of the funds available for nonprofits has likely contributed to the 27% growth in the number of applications over the past two years and has successfully brought a diverse pool of applicants and programs to apply. Two-thirds of the applications were partially funded from what is becoming an increasingly competitive grant process. This resulted in prioritized funding to organizations providing the most benefit to Essex residents.
 
The Selectboard also approved the focus areas for the next funding cycle, which will remain unchanged from last year.  The FY22 funding cycle has an appropriated budget of $159,261, approved by Essex voters this past March as a part of their annual budget. Nonprofit organizations operating programs that fall under one or more of the following focus areas will be able to apply:  Access to Health & Behavioral Health; Affordable Housing or Housing Assistance; Child or Family Support for Healthy Relationships; Emergency Food & Disaster Relief; and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, which was added in 2020. This new category provides support for initiatives to build diversity, equity and inclusion into the community or for program enhancement to build diversity, equity and inclusion into nonprofit program services, operations, board recruitment and staff hiring. 
 
For more information on the next funding cycle and to sign up for email updates, please visit www.essexvt.org/humanservices.