Project Helps Small, Local Minority Nonprofits Survive and Prosper

January 26, 2005 — A project led by the University of Central Florida has helped small, local nonprofit organizations get more than $600,000 in grants to help provide health care to minority communities.

During the past year, a team of mostly faculty members and graduate students from UCF's Department of Public Administration has helped eight nonprofits write and submit grant proposals for funding and provided business training. One organization has had a four-fold increase in its annual budget.

“We're here to help them do the business part of running a nonprofit,” said Montgomery Van Wart, chair and professor of public administration and the project manager. “We want to give them a higher chance of 'staying in business' so they can continue to help people.”

Van Wart explained that the project, which is funded by the Office of Minority Health in the Orange County Health Department, offers the university a rare opportunity to work with a number of community organizations struggling to provide direct services to the county's minority communities. Many of the services are related to AIDS and HIV prevention and education.

“These agencies are working to prevent one of the most ravaging diseases in our society, as well as to provide support services for those who are infected,” he said.

With assistance from UCF, the Orlando-based nonprofit organization N.E.E.D., or Nehemiah Educational and Economic Development, secured a one-year grant for $328,436 in August from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development through the Health Council of East Central Florida. The funding supports the nonprofit's mission of “identifying and responding to the needs of underserved, unserved, disenfranchised, low-income individuals who have been disproportionately impacted by an increasing rate of infection by HIV.”

N.E.E.D. also recently received a one-year award for $122,678 from the Florida Department of Health as part of its Minority AIDS Initiative. The award, which is renewable for up to three years, will fund FACTS, or Facilitating ACcess To Services, a program designed by N.E.E.D. to encourage black men who are newly diagnosed as HIV-positive or who have fallen out of care to seek supportive services. Encouraging this early linkage to medical care will help prevent HIV transmission while reducing the person's risk for HIV-related illness and death.

“These grants have more than quadrupled our budget and will allow us to help the people of Central Florida that struggle daily with HIV and AIDS,” said Christine Farquharson, executive director of N.E.E.D. “Words can't really express what this program has done for us. It has brought us to a higher level of understanding for the accounting system and helped with our vision, things a big agency already knows.”

Another nonprofit, the Center for Multicultural Wellness and Prevention in Orlando, received a $167,890 yearlong grant in November from Florida Hospital's CHIC Foundation. The money will go directly to “Asthma Connect,” a new program providing education and support to Orange and Osceola County African-Americans, Hispanics and Haitians. UCF project members aided in writing and editing the grant and continue to work with the agency on other grant proposals.

The UCF team also has provided the nonprofits with training sessions on topics such as financial management, strategic planning, public relations, board development and volunteer management. Graduate students from the team are also assigned to work with each nonprofit to provide more individualized attention.

“This project offers custom-based, one-on-one training for the nonprofits and provides extensive hands-on training for graduate students,” said Naim Kapucu, assistant professor of public administration and faculty adviser. He sees the project as an opportunity to develop and maintain lasting community partnerships.

This is a great opportunity for UCF to “do the right thing for the neediest in Central Florida,” Van Wart said. Both he and Kapucu hope to continue similar collaborations in the future.

— Karen Guin and Sara Cooper