$5.4M in Grants, New Guidelines & Staff Sept. 2015

$5.4M in Grants, New Guidelines & Staff Sept. 2015

New grants will:
  • Measure the social and ecological impacts of neighborhood-based green infrastructure installed on vacant lots in Detroit, and the proportional impact of the Detroit River system on toxic algae in western Lake Erie, through two translational research projects by the University of Michigan Water Center. Click here for a press release and video by UM and here to watch the Great Lakes Now recording of a presentation on the vacant lot project featuring UM partners: Wayne State University, Alliance for the Great Lakes, Detroit Land Bank Authority and The Nature Conservancy at the recent Healing Our Waters conference.
  • Help Detroiters transform vacant lots into ecological and social assets with Detroit Future City’s new, user-friendly workbook “Field Guide to Working With Lots” and companion website “A Little About Lots”, with implementation grants to follow.
  • Include robust resident outreach, led by Greening of Detroit, in the City of Detroit’s participatory landscape planning in pilot neighborhoods.
Additional grants will continue our ongoing support for several arts, environmental and special opportunities, including 39 “anchor” arts organizations and the Foundation For Detroit’s Future (the “Grand Bargain”). Please click here for our complete grants list.
As a result of our growing endowment and recently completed strategic planning process, the Foundation also announces new grant guidelines, and welcomes Cris Doby and Melissa Damaschke as program officers and Yolanda Gandy as grants manager. Cris previously was program officer at the C.S. Mott Foundation and Melissa was director of the Sierra Club’s Great Lakes Program. Full announcements on our new staff will follow later next week.