Stephanie Judson
The South Dakota Community Foundation and nonprofits across the state have one year under their belts since the South Dakota Nonprofit Enhancement Project began.
Those belts are tighter now, too, as the past year has brought an even closer relationship between the nonprofits according to Stephanie Judson, vice president of the SD Community Foundation.
Judson was in Watertown yesterday addressing about 30 area nonprofit leaders during a technical assistance workshop sponsored by the Watertown Community Foundation through a grant from SDCF as part of the nonprofit enhancement effort.
It's workshops like these, Judson said, and the intermediary partnerships like that between the Watertown Community Foundation and the SDCF that have brought this initiative success.
"We exceeded our expectations of what we thought we would accomplish this first year," she said. "The South Dakota Community Foundation has been overwhelmingly pleased with the non-profit sector's response to this project."
The project, supported by the Bush Foundation, is a two-year effort to accomplish six main goals in the non-profit sector, Judson explained.
1.) Provide intermediary grants
2.) Provide internal capacity building grants
3.) Support the newly established SD Nonprofit Association
4.) Conduct surveys
5.) Conduct convenings to provide education & information
6.) Increase the capacity of the SDCF
"Working with intermediary partners like the Watertown Community Foundation has been essential," Judson added. "We (SDCF) couldn't have carried this through without those intermediary partners. Jan DeBerg has been essential in bringing quality programs to Watertown area nonprofits.
We learned this first year that there is a great need for capacity building, she continued. SDCF received nearly 200 grant requests in 2009 which added up to $1.8 million. It was extremely hard to narrow the recipients as the organization only had $350,000 to award. Judson expects this year to be no different. SDCF will be accepting new grant requests from June 1 to August 1.
"We'll try to award more," Judson said of the coming year's grants. We still want to work closely with intermediary partners and we will plan for more nonprofit convenings across the state.
Judson said SDCF will gain more knowledge of the nonprofit enhancement program's success thus far when the SD Nonprofit Advisory Council meets next Friday, Feb. 5, in Chamberlain. Likewise, the meeting will lay more groundwork for 2010.
