Ready for Kindergarten Fund
Our Ready for Kindergarten Fund seeks to be a catalyst for effective, enduring investment in getting Portland-area children physically and emotionally ready to thrive in school and life by kindergarten. We especially seek investment opportunities in organizations that benefit children most at risk of failing to thrive in Portland, by addressing:
- Early learning, development and education
- Economic, health, social and environmental risk factors
- Parenting education and support
Our model for making a difference in this area means we must be selective about the opportunities we pursue. We are looking for nonprofit organizations and schools that have effective programs and strong leadership, but which could advance to a higher level of impact and effectiveness by strengthening the underlying organization. These investments offer:
- a modest unrestricted grant – $15,000 in year one; $10,000 in year two
- a structured assessment of organizational capacity;
- volunteer support from SVPP Partners in identified strategic and operational areas;
- assistance in defining, measuring and developing a system to track outcomes; and
- leverage/assistance with funding requests to other capacity-building grantmakers.
We expect these to be 2-3 year investments, depending on the Investee’s needs.
Partners offer a range of professional volunteer assistance to Investees including, but not limited to: financial, strategic, and project management, planning, marketing, information technology infrastructure, real estate and legal affairs.
Investment Dates and Documents
We anticipate beginning a search for our next nonprofit investment in late summer/early fall 2012. Nonprofits interested in learning more about our typical investment funding round may review our 2011 investment guidelines/proposal documents here:
Any nonprofit representative that is not already registered with SVPP’s database and wishes to be notified of future news and requests should submit contact information here: Contact Us
More information is available on our Frequently Asked Questions page.
