Aug. 14, 2018

Kerr Putney and Willie Ratchford made a pitch Tuesday for help reshaping how Charlotte deals with community challenges.

Using a new round of micro-grants to area grassroots groups, CMPD Chief Kerr Putney said his aim was to force small groups working on similar problems to work together. He said the goal was not necessarily to get small groups to work with larger ones, but to encourage groups working on different parts of the same challenge or on the same challenge in different neighborhoods or schools to work together.

About last year’s grants, Putney and Community Relations Director Willie Ratchford provided some numbers: About $20,000 from last year’s $50,000 pool remains. City staff received 108 grant applications; 60 grants were approved. No explanations were offered about the reasons why the city was unable to make grants on any of the remaining 48 applications.

City Council recently approved $100,000 for the second phase of the program. While the first phase was limited to $500 grants to be used within two months, Putney and Ratchford said the second phase might award some larger grants for capacity-building among community groups.

Below the video of Tuesday’s presentation are the slides projected during Ratchford’s presentation. They are downloadable here as a PDF.

Ratchford encouraged participants to hand in their e-mail addresses to receive updates on the program. Readers might e-mail program manager Lacey Williams with that request.

In the video below, the presentation begins at minute 7:02. The Q&A begins at minute 18:40.