Local First Arizona’s Economic Recovery Center Helps Land Grants of $4.6M
In its first six months, Local First Arizona’s Arizona Economic Recovery Center has assisted a multitude of rural towns, nonprofits and tribal organizations to win grant awards surpassing $4.6 million.
Local First Arizona launched the center to assist organizations and small rural towns statewide with building their capacity for small and large projects that have the potential to grow, contribute to, or transform the economic health of Arizona.
Services provided at no charge include researching opportunities, identifying and connecting funding sources to communities in need, grant writing, facilitation and management projects. The State of Arizona, Vitalyst Health Foundation, Freeport-McMoRan Foundation, SRP, Arizona Complete Health, Arizona Community Foundation and Arizona Generation and Transmission Cooperatives are funders of the program.
Katie Boddy, Local First Arizona’s senior manager of economic development for the center, said “Grants are difficult to win. Organizations and communities need someone — sometimes a team — to assist with developing material, writing narrative content and navigating the submission processes in order to request available funding. And even then, they’re highly competitive.”
The initiative was created to enable qualified Arizona cities, towns, counties, tribal communities and nonprofits to win competitive federal, state and foundation grants. To date:
• More than $4.6 million in awards has been funded to organizations using the Arizona Economic Recovery Center’s capacity building resources.
• 215 organizations from all 15 counties in Arizona have been assisted, resulting in successful grants in 13 counties.
• 108 consultants have been deployed to assist grant efforts of rural and tribal towns and organizations in every county.
• 100 percent of participants to date have found the expert consulting and processes provided were helpful in increasing their capacity – not just now, but into the future.
“The Arizona Economic Recovery Center was integral to our grant writing process,” said Kathleen Yetman of the Prescott Farmers Market. “[They] connected us with a consultant who provided guidance, resources and data to make our case stronger. Thanks to [this] help, Prescott Farmers Market was awarded a grant of nearly $350,000.”
