IDF News

November 3, 2009 IDF Hosted Press Conference and Grantee Meet & Greet

September 22, 2009 Media Advisory: IDF Awards Over $175,000 in First Year of Social Justice Grants: 19 Local Community Organizations Will Be Recognized for Receiving Grants

April 2, 2009 Press Release: Illinois Disciples Foundation Announces New Social Justice Grant Funding Program

March 30, 2009 The Nation features Perfect Storm by Eyal Press

IDF Hosted Press Conference and Grantee Meet & Greet
19 Local Community Organizations Recognized for Receiving Grants

On October 1st, over forty people came to the IDF press conference and Grantee Meet & Greet. The event recognized the nineteen Champaign County community organizations that were awarded over $175,00 in total through the IDF Social Justice Grant program. These nineteen organizations represent a strong selection of Champaign County's social justice and social service organizations that serve the underrepresented and struggle for social justice in our community. To view a list of the 2009 IDF Social Justice Grant Recipients, click here.

The press conference featured a multitude of speakers including: IDF Executive Director Jen Tayabji and five grantee speakers includind Dr. Howard White of Wesley Evening Food Pantry, Patricia Avery of Champaign Urbana Area Project, Stephanie Record of Crisis Nursery, Dawn Blackman of Motherlands Culture Club, and Nancy Greenwalt of SmileHealthy.

State Senator Mike Frerichs and State Representative Naomi Jakobsson also spoke at the end of the press conference, congratulating the recipients, and recognizing and celebrating the social justice work being carried out in Champaign County.

Immediately following the press conference portion of the event, representatives from the grant organizations participated in a Meet & Greet. Grantees had an opportunity to meet each other, share organizational literature, and network.

The IDF Staff and Board would like to thank the event's speakers, including Dr. Howard White, Patricia Avery, Stephanie Record, Dawn Blackman, Nancy Greenwalt, State Representative Naomi Jakobsson, and State Senator Mike Frerichs! Also, we would like to thank Wesley Evening Food Pantry and Wesley Foundation for hosting the event!

IDF Awards Over $175,000 in First Year of Social Justice Grants:
19 Local Community Organizations Will Be Recognized for Receiving Grants

On Thursday, October 1 at 10:30am, the Illinois Disciples Foundation (IDF) will be hosting a press conference to announce and recognize the nineteen Champaign County community organizations that were awarded over $175,00 in total through the IDF Social Justice Grant program. These nineteen organizations represent a strong selection of Champaign County's social justice and social service organizations that serve the underrepresented and struggle for social justice in our community. And that is what IDF's newly launched grant program is here to do—put the community first.

The press conference will feature six speakers—representing the Illinois Disciples Foundation, Wesley Evening Food Pantry, Champaign Urbana Area Project, Crisis Nursery, Motherlands Culture Club, and SmileHealthy—to discuss the new grant program and the impacts of the 2009 grants. Following the press conference—which all grantees are invited to—will be a Meet & Greet session for the grant recipients to talk, share resources, and work towards building a year-long effort to strengthen the community's social justice movements.

During the economic downturn locally and nationally over the past year, non-profit organizations are finding grants harder to come by, even losing once-regular funding. The IDF recognizes the unique situation community organizations are in with today's economy: the need for services is on the rise but the funding to operate is dissipating. The IDF is pleased to offer the Social Justice Grant program to help keep social justice alive in our community.

This press conference signifies the success of IDF's yearlong strategic transition from a direct action emphasis to a social justice grant-making organization. The IDF's mission is informed by its legacy of campus ministry, direct action for social change, and the radical traditions of the Disciples of Christ. The IDF continues its activist legacy by supporting efforts to further the struggles for systemic change to attain social justice.

WHAT: Press Conference To Announce 2009 Social Justice Grantees, To Be Followed By Grantee Meet & Greet

VISUALS: Grant recipient speeches; representatives from grantee organizations with
literature and resources; displays from recipient Wesley Evening Food Pantry

Illinois Disciples Foundation Announces
New Social Justice Grant Funding Program

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Jen Tayabji, Executive Director and Campus Minister
(217) 840-8248 or tayabji@shout.net

This April, the Illinois Disciples Foundation (IDF)—a non-profit organization committed to the struggle for peace with social justice—is kicking off its new Social Justice Grants funding program aimed at supporting and strengthening local organizations working for peace, justice, and systemic change.

IDF Board Chair, Joe Miller, stated that, "We are in difficult economic times, and the economy also affects non-profit organizations. We are pleased that at this time of economic downturn, we are in a position to provide an alternative source of funding to some social justice organizations that might otherwise experience devastating funding cuts."

Jen Tayabji, IDF Executive Director, commented, "The IDF has a unique opportunity to help advance the cause of social justice in these dire times. Our new Social Justice Grant funding program can help support and strengthen the vital social justice work that progressive and non-profit organizations do for our community and for the cause of justice. We are excited to begin this new funding program."

Starting this spring, the IDF will begin offering grants of up to $50,000 to qualifying charitable and progressive organizations committed to long-lasting change to the power structures that perpetuate injustices. The Social Justice Grants will be awarded with preference given to those organizations working on issues of economic justice, peace and anti-war, health care justice, and education. In addition, the IDF strongly believes that societal change starts locally at home and will therefore prioritize grants for organizations and projects based in Champaign County.

Any organization interested in applying for an IDF Social Justice Grant must first submit a Letter of Inquiry to the Foundation by April 30, 2009. Information on the grants, its guidelines, and how to apply are available on the IDF website at www.ildisciplesfoundation.org/grants.html.

For more information about the Illinois Disciples Foundation and its Social Justice Grants, please contact: Jen Tayabji, Executive Director, at (217) 352-8721 (tel/fax), (217) 840-8248 (cell), or idf@ildisciplesfoundation.org.

The Nation published this article on 3/30/09 by contributing writer Eyal Press about the state of non-profits in today's economy.

In the days between Christmas and New Year's Eve, Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, sat at his desk in Lower Manhattan and reached out to people who had lavished generous donations on his organization during the long, benighted tenure of George W. Bush. It was a heady moment: the era of Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales was winding to a close, and Barack Obama was about to assume office, having vowed to rescind some of his predecessor's more egregious assaults on civil liberties.

But Romero wasn't phoning his supporters to share the joy--he was calling to plead for cash after a season (actually, several seasons) of thwarted solicitations. Throughout the spring and summer, would-be donors had explained, over and over again, that they were too busy writing checks to the Obama campaign. By the time Obama mounted the stage to deliver his acceptance speech in Chicago on election night, many had become preoccupied with something else: the implosion of the economy. As Romero worked the phone from his office on the nineteenth floor of the downtown high-rise, around the corner from the New York Stock Exchange, he could feel the aftershocks of the collapse.

The most expensive presidential campaign in history and the cataclysmic financial meltdown of the past few months combined to produce a "perfect storm," Romero told me recently. The storm blew a $19 million hole in the ACLU's budget, resulting in a hiring freeze and the cancellation of various projects, followed by the announcement, in January, that 10 percent of the national staff was being let go. Employees with decades of experience were told to clear out their offices; no department was left unscathed.

Founded in 1920, the ACLU boasts a membership of 530,000 and assets of more than $200 million. However dire the economic downturn gets, Romero, who has weathered his share of controversy at the ACLU but also presided over a period of impressive achievements and growth, can rest assured his organization will be around in a couple of years. It's an assumption a growing number of his peers in the nonprofit world can't make. At a forum in New York City in November, Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University, predicted that "at a minimum" more than 100,000 nonprofit organizations would be wiped out in the next two years. Light asked the audience members whether any of them had tuned in to the recent hearing in Washington on the impending nonprofit upheaval. The room fell silent. Light then admitted he'd missed the deliberations as well, because, alas, there hadn't been any. "We should demand a hearing immediately on the state of the nonprofit sector--immediately," he declared.

Not everyone believes the fallout will be quite so cataclysmic--historically, the nonprofit sector has proved surprisingly resilient, even growing during some recent recessions--but the scale and scope of the current downturn is clearly different. And its reverberations will likely extend far beyond the world of high-profile advocacy organizations like the ACLU. From the arts to education, soup kitchens to housing organizations, nonprofits perform an array of functions that shape the texture of daily life in communities across the country, often by helping people whose situations were precarious even before the economy crashed. Now, with foundations watching their endowments shrivel, many individual donors maxed out and states across the country staring at massive budget deficits, nonprofits are scaling back their services at the very moment when the need for them is escalating.

The Greater Hartford Legal Aid agency occupies the third floor of a boxy glass-and-concrete building a few blocks down from the University of Connecticut School of Law. Its executive director, Elam Lantz Jr., doesn't like to talk about the ripple effects that the financial crisis has had on his agency. "I would not use the word 'ripple'--it's more like a tsunami," Lantz, a mild-mannered man with a clipped gray beard and wire-frame glasses, tells me. "It's more dire than it's ever been--this is a sharp plummet, not a decline."