IDEA Grants

Creating More Equitable Workplaces and Accessible Services throughout Southern Arizona.

In 2020, The Community Foundation for Southern Arizona, the Jewish Federation of Souhern Arizona (now Jewish Philanthropies of Southern Arizona), The David and Lura Lovell Foundation, Women’s Foundation of Southern Arizona, and Vitalyst Health Foundation entered into a collaboration promoting education, understanding and capacity building around the ideals of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access or IDEA. Legacy Foundation of Southeast Arizona and TEP have also joined the collaborative. This work is intended to serve a variety of Southern Arizona nonprofit stakeholders.

Members of the collaborative make grants for needs assessments and training for nonprofit staff, board members, volunteers, and donors to increase awareness of IDEA in their organizations. Grants also support nonprofits to take action, such as making changes to policy and integrating IDEA into strategic planning. Support has also included funding grantee staff to attend Allyship Training for Individuals and hosting a Learning Community at the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona’s Center for Healthy Nonprofits.

For funding by The David and Lura Lovell Foundation, IDEA grants are by invitation only for current or former Grantee Partners to support organizational change and internal planning and development. Partnering with Vitalyst and the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona has broadened the eligibility of grantees.

Grantees

To date, a total of 25 grants have been awarded to 23 nonprofit organizations. What follows is the list of IDEA grantees and award amounts. While all members of the collaborative participate in decision making, agreements are made with and funds distributed from individual participating foundations. The source of funding is indicated for each organization, abbreviated as follows: The David and Lura Lovell Foundation, LF; Community Foundation for Southern Arizona, CFSA; Vitalyst Health Foundation, Vitalyst.

  • Act One ($15,000 – LF) to provide organizational capacity building in IDEA through training for Act One staff, including Spanish language, Bridges over Poverty, which provides insight to the experiences of people living in situational or generational poverty, and a partnership with Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center.
  • Arizona Community Health Workers Association (AzCHOW) ($12,000 – Vitalyst) to utilize AzCHOW to reduce statewide health disparities, enhance internal structure and policies and to develop and provide training on IDEA.
  • Arizona Theater Company (two $15,000 grants – LF) to develop a methodology to ensure that those with different identities, background and experiences can fully participate; and to engage communities of color at the leadership level and broaden the audience into diverse communities.
  • Boys to Men Tucson ($15,000 – Vitalyst) to advance IDEA work with a focus on mentors, accessibility to underserved youth and internal staff and board development.
  • Catholic Community Services ($15,000 – LF) for the “You Belong” initiative to improve the ability to respect unique needs, potential and perspective of clients, board members, staff, and community partners.
  • Children’s Museum Tucson ($15,000 – LF) to contract with a consultant for an evaluation and recommendations to address IDEA weaknesses and capitalize on strengths.
  • The Drawing Studio ($15,000 – CFSA, $15,000 – LF) for the Be R.E.A.D.I. (Race, Equity, Access, Diversity, and Inclusion) program to increase the diversity of people engaged in arts education; to measure the community impact of Be R.E.A.D.I.
  • El Rio Health Center ($15,000 – LF) to address implicit bias in healthcare, to improve care through training for LGBTQ+ patients and refugees/immigrants.
  • Girl Scouts of Southern Arizona ($15,000 – CFSA) to build on the foundation of “GSSoAz Leading the Way- Expanding and Sharing Best Practices around IDEA” online training for volunteers, girls, and their families.
  • JobPath ($15,000 – Vitalyst) to learn from those who have left the program, to provide workshops to guide the organization in creating an IDEA culture and to incorporate IDEA values throughout JobPath.
  • Lead Guitar ($12,355 – LF) to amplify program benefits for traumatized children in Lead Guitar programs including a professional development resource review and training sessions on trauma-informed learning, social-emotional learning, and culturally responsive instruction for the entire teaching artist staff, adapting learning materials, and developing new evaluation tools.
  • NAMI Southern Arizona ($14,876 – Vitalyst) to design a board development program to provide IDEA training to the board of directors and executive director and to incorporate IDEA strategies into the strategic plan and policy updates.
  • Our Family Services ($15,000 – LF) to continue the internal IDEA initiative, including staff and board training, auditing HR practices and creating an HR plan, translating Center for Community Dialog and Training offerings into Spanish to reach a larger audience.
  • Pima Council on Aging ($15,000 – CFSA) to contract with a consultant to assess and expand HR capacity for ongoing staff training and plan implementation.
  • Scholarships A- Z ($15,000 – CFSA) to sustain leadership of young immigrants, to develop an onboarding program that includes equity training and to ensure programs are meeting needs of a diverse population of immigrant youth.
  • Social Venture Partners ($15,000 – LF) to bring all its people together to create a more equitable organization through education, board diversification and analysis of historic framework.
  • Sound Mind Live ($15,000 – LF) to hire a part-time Community Engagement Consultant who will work over a period of five months to assess and implement changes in key processes and policies, such as vendor and partner recruitment strategy, programming policies, program development, as well as venue location selection for hybrid programming.
  • Southern Arizona Senior Pride ($15,000 – CFSA) to work with IDEA consultants on coaching and support, and to involve more BIPOC community members in key leadership roles, communications, and events.
  • Tucson Jewish Community Center (two $15,000 grants – LF) for policy work and training, including reporting and response around discrimination and harassment.
  • Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block ($15,000 – LF) for implementation of Phase One of its IDEA plan including developing metrics to track progress and execute a year-long internal training program.
  • TuNidito ($5,000 – LF) to offer trainings and workshops for staff, volunteers, and board of directors on topics such as unconscious and implicit bias, cultural awareness and understanding, reducing prejudice, stereotyping, different learning needs and accommodations, LGBTQAI, and awareness of social identities and addressing IDEA in Tu Nidito’s HR and program policies.
  • Women’s Foundation for Southern Arizona ($15,000 – Vitalyst) as part of an ongoing initiative, to provide continued training for staff, board members and donors; prepare staff and board members to lead IDEA work in their respective non-WFSA roles, and promote changes to processes/policies across the organization.
  • YWCA ($15,000 – LF and $15,000 – CFSA ) to create, adapt and implement an IDEA framework within the organization, and to make the campus a community hub for IDEA innovation, education, and advocacy; to institutionalize the IDEA framework into the organization.

If you are an Arizona funder interested in IDEA capacity building, consider joining the collaborative and supporting a grant or co-sponsoring IDEA-related convening promoted by the partners.

We encourage all funders to incorporate questions regarding IDEA into their grantmaking and consider funding IDEA capacity building grants or including these types of activities in their operational, programmatic, or initiative grantmaking.