The Burgess Urban Fund (BUF), a grants program of the Episcopal City Mission supports grassroots community organizing in response to social injustice in Massachusetts. For close to 30 years BUF has supported the work to improve the lives of those in need.
BUF understands community organizing as a process that develops the power and capacity within a community to improve members’ lives.
Strong organizing work includes:
- Engaging members of the community in identifying shared concerns and setting goals for social change
- Developing new leaders, especially among those affected by social inequality, and including them in the leadership of a movement
- Undertaking projects that are likely to result in concrete results for the core constituency.
- Articulating both the immediate and root causes of the problem. Working to change the unequal relationships and social patterns that underlie the issue.
- Collaborating with other organizations, regional or statewide organizations/initiatives
Applicants must be non-profit 501(c)3 organizations.
Grant-seekers may send a letter of intent (no more than two pages) describing the organizing initiative for which funding is sought and how the project relates to the BUF guidelines for community organizing and the priority areas. BUF will review letters of intent and request full proposals from a small number of prospective grantees. Final funding decisions for grants are made by the Executive Committee of the Episcopal City Mission.
2012 Dates:
- Letters of Intent due by 5:00pm, Friday, June 1, 2012
- Applicants will receive an Invitation to submit a Full Proposal by Friday, July 6, 2012
- Full Grant Proposals due by 5:00pm, Friday, October 12, 2012
- Grantees will be notified by Friday, December 14, 2012
For more information contact:
Katie Campbell Simons
Episcopal City Mission
kcsimons@diomass.org
617.482.4826 ext 224
2011 Funding Areas:
2011 Grantees:
This year’s Burgess Urban Fund grantees are:
- Alternatives for Community and the Environment: T Riders Union, Boston
- Boston Workers Alliance, Boston
- Brazilian Immigrant Center, Boston
- Brazilian Women’s Group, Boston
- Bread and Roses Housing, Lawrence
- Brockton Interfaith Community, Brockton
- Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores, New Bedford
- Centro Presente, Somerville
- Chelsea Neighborhood Developers, Chelsea
- Coalition Against Poverty, New Bedford
- Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation: Youth Force
- Essex County Community Organization, Lynn
- Ex-Prisoners Organizing for Community Advancement (EPOCA), Worcester
- Massachusetts Senior Action Council, Boston
- Merrimack Valley Project, Lawrence
- Metropolitan Interfaith Congregations Acting for Hope (MICAH), Framingham
- Student Immigrant Movement, Boston
- United Interfaith Action, Fall River
- The Worker Center for Economic Justice, Lynn
- Worcester Homeless Action Committee, Worcester
BUF focuses funding to organizations working to address social injustice and poverty related issues. We are a Boston based organization but support organizations working on statewide issues. Historically we have focused funding in the following areas: Affordable Housing, Workers’ Rights, Immigration, and Access to Employment. BUF also accepts applications from groups organizing around other poverty and social justice related issues. Grants are awarded up to $20,000 per year.
Past BUF Grantees
2010
2009
2008
BUF “Out of Cycle” Grants
ECM is always looking for new ways to partner with the community and to expand and deepen our impact in the field of community organizing. In the last two years ECM has begun awarding some small out of cycle grants to initiatives, events, etc… that do not fall under our annual grant cycle but are exciting and impactful events that ECM wants to support.
Past Out-of-Cycle Grantees:
The Massachusetts Census Equity Fund
With a special grant from the Burgess Urban Fund, Episcopal City Mission joined with several local and national funders to award $500,000 in grants and resources to nonprofits to promote census participation. These grants provided funding and educational resources to organizations throughout Massachusetts to more accurately count underserved communities in the 2010 Census, and to ensure a transparent, fair and non-discriminatory state redistricting process.
The Drawing Democracy Project (DDP)
ECM joined a collaboration of funders to support DDP, an initiative working to promote a transparent and accountable redistricting process and to empower communities to create fair voting districts. The impact of these new districts will shape critical policy and neighborhood decisions for the next 10 years. DDP has awarded a total of $195,000 in grants to provide financial and technical support to 13 community-based organizations in Massachusetts. These organizations represent people who have historically been underrepresented in the redistricting process, such as low-income individuals, people of color, immigrants, and former prisoners in numerically significant regions of Massachusetts.
National Immigration Integration Conference
ECM donated funds to support this national conference, held in Boston in the fall of 2010. The conference was a strategic effort to assemble concerned policy makers, providers and concerned allies to help forge an agenda for the welcome, naturalization and economic advancement of immigrant America.
Freedom Rides
During the summer of 2010 ECM helped to send 20 delegates from Massachusetts organizations to The United State Social Forum, held in Detroit, MI. The US Social Forum is a movement building process, a gathering of community organizers from across the country. It is a key step in the struggle to build a powerful multi-racial, multi-sectoral, inter-generational, diverse, inclusive, internationalist movement to transform this country and change history.