Cap placed on County grant funding

Organizations allowed only $12,500

Community-based organizations in the Gunnison Valley hoping to secure grants from the county will see some new restrictions on this year’s funding application.

“We wanted to place some parameters on the funding requests that we receive this year. One thing we discussed was a cap [on the amount of money requested]. We can’t really consider really large grants,” county manager Matthew Birnie said, “so as a communication tool it might make some sense to tell folks the order of magnitude we’re looking at.”
Last year, the county commissioners had to split $155,000 in grant money between the 48 organizations that applied. Few of the largest grant requests were considered in full; however, the commissioners tried to grant some money to all of the applicants. Of the 48 requests, 15 of them were for grants of more than $10,000.
The largest grant went to the Office for Resource Efficiency, which applied for and received $12,500.
Although the county is just starting to get payroll and revenue projections together, Birnie said, “Our intent is to put the budget together in a way that we’ll have a similar amount [of grant money] that we had last year,” but added that doesn’t anticipate any increase in funding for this year.
Because the grant applications from last year ranged from $500 to $12,500, the commissioners discussed allowing requests as high as $15,000, but there was some concern that more organizations will request larger amounts due to the recently depressed economy.
“I think we’ll get a fair amount of requests for whatever our cap is,” commissioner Jim Starr said.
The amount discussed for a funding cap ranged from $10,000 to $15,000, but the commissioners were wary of setting the limit below what some organizations needed to continue operations. The commissioners agreed that the upper limit of $12,500 set during last year’s distribution would be appropriate as a cap for the next round of disbursement.
Commissioner Hap Channell also asked that language be added to the application that asks applicants to list all other funding sources, so the county can have a better understanding where applying organizations are getting their funding and to make sure the funding effort isn’t being duplicated.
The county finance department sent a letter out to community-based organizations at the end of August so they can begin the application process. Grants will be awarded late in the budget process, at the end of October or November.