November 22, 2024 | Sarasota
Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation’s Board of Directors recently approved $3.2 million in grants.
The funding includes big investments to expand access to quality early learning for vulnerable children and to strengthen programs that help women who are struggling on the edge of poverty achieve financial stability for themselves and their families. Barancik Foundation also awarded major support to enhance environmental resiliency and improve water quality along Sarasota’s bayfront.
Barancik Foundation awarded the following grants this month in its five impact areas:
Education Access & Quality
Children First, the Head Start and Early Head Start provider in Sarasota County, will use a $900,000 grant to add three new classrooms so it can serve more children and their families with its nationally recognized early learning and childhood development program. This grant will primarily fund the qualified staff who will operate the new classrooms and provide additional family-support services for which Children First is known. The expansion will help the organization reduce a growing waiting list.
Economic Stability
Women’s Resource Center (WRC) was awarded $400,000 to support its core programming and build its organizational capacity, particularly in the areas of fundraising and data tracking and analysis of its programs. WRC will focus the funding on serving women in Sarasota and Mantee counties who are single heads of household, a demographic that is overrepresented in poverty and faces steep hurdles to financial security. The grant includes $50,000 that will be leveraged as a match to encourage support from others in the community.
Healthcare Access & Quality
Pines of Sarasota Foundation will receive $255,000 to support healthcare career education programs and provide childcare scholarships for staff at Pines of Sarasota. Pines of Sarasota, a nonprofit senior care community, offers its healthcare staff access to free, on-site educational programs, so they can earn professional certifications and advance to higher-skilled positions while continuing to work. Pines also offers staff affordable childcare at its on-site center, reducing a common and often insurmountable challenge for many working families.
Social & Community Well-Being
Manatee Children’s Services was awarded a $320,000 grant to make critical security and infrastructure upgrades at its Child Advocacy Center in Bradenton. The center, which serves as a hub where child-abuse victims can receive comprehensive services—including intervention, therapeutic treatment, and prevention—will get new security fencing for the safety of both visitors and staff. The grant also will fund needed building enhancements to ensure its long-term sustainability. MCS’s Child Advocacy Center is the only facility of its kind in Manatee County.
Neighborhood & Environment
The Bay Park Conservancy was awarded $1 million to help fund resilient shoreline and water quality improvements at The Bay, the signature public park that is transforming 53 acres of city-owned land along Sarasota Bay. This funding complements state and federal environmental grants and will help pay for design, planning, and development of a contiguous, mile-long environmentally resilient shoreline as part of Phase 2 of the park. The ability of the completed first phase of The Bay to fare well following this year’s hurricanes proved the effectiveness of resiliency measures already in place. The more expansive Phase 2 project will build on best practices, including more advanced strategies and features for shoreline resiliency.
Southface Institute will use $200,000 to help area nonprofit organizations perform energy and water efficiency upgrades to reduce their utility costs and environmental impact. Southface will deploy the funds through its GoodUse program, which provides matching grants and technical assistance to nonprofits to implement targeted improvements identified through professional building-performance audits. The organization seeks to expand GoodUse locally from Sarasota County to neighboring Manatee and DeSoto counties.
Through its Emergency Responder Initiative, Barancik Foundation awarded $115,750 to the Longboat Key Police Department to purchase a driving simulator for emergency vehicle operations and defensive driver training. The Foundation previously funded two driving simulators at the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, which are available for use by nearby municipal law-enforcement agencies. The new, dedicated simulator on Longboat Key will reduce the time officers there have had to spend away from duty to utilize the off-island simulators.
Other funding
Barancik Foundation also earmarked funding to pilot a board-governance training program for community members from groups that are underrepresented in nonprofit and civic leadership roles. It will team up with Gulf Coast Community Foundation to customize two sessions of the latter’s Gulf Coast Board Institute for this purpose. Participants for the two classes will be invited in collaboration with existing Barancik Foundation grantees and other partners.
Barancik Foundation’s fall round of grant awards brings its total grantmaking this year to more than $27.5 million.
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