For Community By Community
Community First Fund seeks to collaborate with New York City’s diverse stakeholders to fund and guide innovative, community-led projects with the aim of improving quality of life in New York City neighborhoods.
Importance of CFF
Many excellent ideas to improve local quality of life in New York City neighborhoods come from the people who live and work in those neighborhoods — community-based businesses and organizations, residents, community boards, and other local stakeholders. These ideas often struggle to be realized for reasons of funding and coordination. The Community First Fund (CFF) provides financial and advisory support to bring ideas to reality.
CFF’s goal is to guide neighborhood-originated projects that aim to combat community deterioration, improve local quality of life, and support the efforts of local governance. CFF also provides development and implementation support and helps investigate whether the idea is feasible and can be successfully implemented.
CFF Funding Strategy
CFF funds projects that are neighborhood-originated in nature and derive from the community. In particular, CFF seeks out projects and ideas that are timely, have an opportunity to affect deep change, and may have challenges securing other funding. Furthermore, CFF is interested in projects that are potentially scalable and stand to generate deep impact in communities. Issues of interest to CFF include but are not limited to mental health, environmental justice, and neighborhood safety and improvement.
Criteria For Funding
In considering projects for funding, CFF evaluates ideas based on the following criteria:
Early-stage: We favor projects that are in early inception and to which an infusion of grant funding can make a significant difference in getting things off the ground.
Systems changing: We seek projects that stand to make deep change in the community, at a systems level. Projects that shift the paradigm, result in reallocations of resources and opportunities to those historically left out, and that address persisting societal issues will be prioritized.
Community empowerment: We believe those in the community know what’s best for the community. Community empowerment is a critical aspect of our funding. Projects proposed should be from the community that will benefit from the idea.
Forward-thinking, innovative: We look for projects that are thinking ahead, seeking to solve issues before they become issues or that are using innovative, new ways to address long-time challenges.
Timely, necessary, address needs not being met: We favor projects that reflect a community’s current needs and are responsive to issues that are not being adequately addressed through other funding or support services.
Effective, logical: We seek projects that have clearly considered how to be effective in reaching their outcomes and can relay a logical course of action to take in achieving them.
Efficient: We look for projects that can make a rapid impact on the community, noting that we understand change takes time and deep investment. That said, we seek projects that are actionable and have established timelines to community impact.
Please note, with its focus on projects and ideas, CFF does not fund general operating support. We are open to individuals and organizations applying — you need not be a non-profit to submit an idea.
CFF Priority Neighborhoods
CFF selects priority neighborhoods for its cycles of funding, which are chosen based on public data, including resident income levels, public housing availability, and crime. In its first cycle of funding, CCF is prioritizing projects in Harlem, Chinatown, Lower East Side, and Lower Manhattan. If your project falls outside of these areas but has the potential to scale in impact to these locations, it may still be considered. In the long-term, CFF plans to support and fund projects in all five boroughs of New York City.
CFF’s grants range from $5,000 – $250,000, depending on the project budget and needs.
The majority of CFF’s funding is by invitation, however, organizations that have a project that fits the criteria may send a brief letter of inquiry through the website at any time.
Inquiry Form can be found HERE
About
CFF is a 501(c)(3) organization founded by Elizabeth Lewinsohn, a graduate of Yale Law School, Cambridge University, and Barnard College. She was appointed in 2012 by the Manhattan Borough President to Community Board 1 (CB1) and was elected to the Executive Committee in 2016. Her work includes issues relating to land use, zoning, resiliency, budget, and service delivery in Lower Manhattan. As a member of the community board, Elizabeth has seen firsthand the ingenuity and excitement local residents have for their neighborhoods. This has influenced her deep interest to support important, potentially impactful community improvement ideas.
Prior to serving on the community board, she was the Director of Policy and Plans for the NYPD’s Counterterrorism Bureau, leading the analysis and development of policy initiatives and legislative matters related to counterterrorism and homeland security. She was previously a Senior Policy Development Advisor for the State of Illinois, overseeing public safety and homeland security policy matters for the Governor’s Office. Elizabeth lives in Tribeca with her husband, Jonathan, and their children.
Initiatives
Brooklyn Bridge Manhattan
Brooklyn Bridge Manhattan envisions unlocking the potential of the forgotten spaces under the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, creating a new type of urban community park that nurtures connection, curiosity, wonder, and resilience.
