UWGPSNJ supports 100 agencies with Partnership grants

United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey (UWGPSNJ) is pleased to announce the first 100 grantees of its Partnership Grant Program. Grantees were selected from a pool of more than 500 applicants across a nine-county footprint and will each receive a grant of $50,000 in the program’s first year.

The Partnership Grant Program is a departure from United Way’s past grant programs. The program’s application process focused on what United Way can learn from organizations, not strictly on the organization’s demonstration of outcomes. By design, small organizations with deep roots in their communities or expertise in an emerging topic were selected alongside larger nonprofit service providers.

This shift better serves United Way’s new impact model, which deprioritized the selection of individual organizations and focuses on the identification, implementation, and evaluation of large-scale poverty-fighting initiatives. Grantees of the Partnership Grant Program will help keep United Way, and each other, informed about challenges and opportunities across the sector.

The newly designed program limited its grantees to 100 organizations that fall within United Way’s key focus areas: early learning, career pathways, financial empowerment, and community resiliency. While funding has traditionally varied among the pool of grantees, each grantee will now receive the same amount of $50,000 of unrestricted funding.

Throughout the grant cycle, particular focus will be placed on research and development, as well as knowledge sharing.

“Today, our donors invest in us to lead bold solutions that address poverty and create opportunities for all. The Partnership Grant Program will help us sustain close ties to the communities we serve and learn from organizations and leaders in our priority focus areas. We found that the outcomes-centered application and reporting expectations of our past grant programs didn’t foster the high-trust relationships that we need in order to learn from and truly partner with nonprofit leaders.” said Bill Golderer, President and Chief Executive Officer of UWGPSNJ. “Our comprehensive strategy to end poverty and expand opportunity will be strengthened by learning from this diverse network of grantees.”

The mission of the Partnership Grant Program is to further high-trust relationships, productive knowledge sharing, and diverse perspectives. To support this, the decision process prioritized diversity of the group as a whole, including fields of practice, geographies served, size and age of organizations, and leadership diversity. The revised direction is designed to prioritize learning and foster relationships, and to support grantees in their poverty-fighting efforts.

“As our impact model shifts, our grant programs need to shift with it. The success of the Partnership Grant Program will be based on the quality of what we learn and the collaboration between UWGPSNJ and the grantees, moreso than on grantees’ annual metrics,” said Kate Houstoun, UWGPSNJ's Chief Impact Officer. “We have the opportunity to not only support well-known anchors of our sector, but also smaller or lesser-known nonprofit organizations who have so much to contribute, but may not have been competitive in the past.”

The 2023 grantees represent nine counties and dozens of communities and neighborhoods across the region. The pool includes many organizations that are new to the Partnership Grant Program; nearly half of the final slate had not received grants in the past grant cycle and 30 had not applied for a grant from United Way before.

The 2023 Partnership Grant Program grantees include:

EARLY LEARNING

Partners help ensure academic success, with services including early childhood education, out-of-school-time programs, literacy programs, career preparation, student resilience, and advocacy for equitable education and access.

ACLAMO
Big Brothers Big Sisters Independence Region
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Atlantic & Cape May Counties
Black Child Development Institute - Philadelphia & Vicinity
Boys & Girls Club of Chester
Burlington Community Action Partnership, Inc.
Cape Assist
Catholic Partnership Schools Camden NJ
Children First PA
Children's Village
Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) for Children of Atlantic, Cape May, & Camden Counties
Cumberland Empowerment Zone Corporation
Educating Communities for Parenting
FathersRead365
First Up
HopePHL
Maternal and Child Health Consortium
Neighbors Helping Neighbors on the Main Line
One Accord Inc. - Kids Alley
ParentChild+ Philadelphia
Reading Allowed
The Foundation for Delaware County
UrbanPromise Ministries
Wonderspring
YWCA Tri-County Area

CAREER PATHWAYS

Partners support economic mobility through career readiness, adult education, workforce development, industry partnerships, and entrepreneurship services.

Along the Way
Attic Youth Center
Chester Education Foundation
Coded by Kids
Cross County Connection Transportation Management Association
Entrepreneurs of the Future
First Step Staffing
Graduate Philadelphia
Haitian American Caucus
I-LEAD, Inc.
Mentor for Philly, DBA College Together
MudGirls Studios
Multicultural Community Family Services, Inc.
Opportunities Industrialization Center Inc
People Advancing Reintegration
Revive South Jersey
Social Responsibility Through Me
The Arc of Cumberland County
The Center for Black Educator Development
The Merchants Fund
The Work Group
UIH Family Partners, DBA The Father Center of New Jersey
University City Science Center
VestedIn
Williamson College of the Trades

FINANCIAL EMPOWERMENT

Partners help people experiencing poverty increase their income, decrease debt, increase short-term savings and access to asset building, such as homeownership, through services including financial counseling, tax preparation, benefits enrollment, and matched savings programs.

ACHIEVEability
Affordable Housing Centers of Pennsylvania
Believe in Students
Campaign for Working Families, Inc.
Ceiba
Compass Working Capital
Consumer Bankruptcy Assistance
Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Delaware Valley d/b/a Clarifi
Cumberland County Habitat for Humanity, Inc.
Financial Wellness Institute
Habitat for Humanity of South Central New Jersey
Holly City Development Corporation
Hopeworks Camden
Latin American Economic Development Association, Inc.
Media Fellowship House
Newfound RiseUp Fund
Open Hearth, Inc.
Parkside Business & Community In Partnership
Penn Asian Senior Services
Pennsylvania Horticultural Society
Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations
Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC)
Saint Joseph's Carpenter Society
Why Not Prosper, Inc.
Women’s Opportunities Resource Center

COMMUNITY RESILIENCY

Partners build more resilient communities by helping to meet residents’ basic needs, including food distribution, violence prevention, healthcare access, digital inclusion, rent/mortgage/utility assistance, legal aid, and referrals to social services.