Bank of America’s Neighborhood Excellence Initiative is offering several grants to benefit community outreach organizations, local heroes, and student leaders. Though the grants are not specifically geared toward animal issues, their scope can easily encompass animal advocacy. So get out your philanthropic minds, and write yourself a winning grant proposal.
From their website:
We have long held the belief that a healthy community is a healthy place to do business. To be successful, we are committed to creating real impact in those places where we live, work, and do business. That’s why we developed the Neighborhood Excellence Initiative, our signature philanthropic program, which recognizes, nurtures, and rewards community-based organizations, local heroes and student leaders working to improve their communities. We focus on areas such as: education, community development/neighborhood preservation, arts and culture, and health and human services. In order to address critical neighborhood needs, we work with local community leaders to identify economic and social priorities, and the visionaries working to sustain, strengthen and grow our communities.
The grants are broken up into three categories:
Neighborhood Builders – Provides $200,000 in general operating
support grant funding and leadership training over two years to two
neighborhood non-profit organizations working to promote vibrant
neighborhoods.Local Heroes — Recognizes and honors five community heroes per year;
recipients are able to direct a $5,000 contribution to an eligible
non-profit of their choice.Student Leaders — Recognizes five exemplary junior or senior high
school students with a passion for community service. Each student
participates in an eight-week paid summer internship with a
community-based organization, as well as a week-long Student
Leadership Summit in Washington , D.C.
For those of us invested in animal rights issues, the more that we can identify (and take advantage of) “real world” opportunities such as this one, the more we will continue to mainstream our message.