Applicants for $500K in social services funding from Bloomington make pitches to committee

On Thursday evening, Sam Ujdak, who’s the grants manager for Middle Way House, described a truck the nonprofit is hoping to replace: “Our current truck is a 1996 Chevy S-10 with an indeterminate amount of miles. Significant parts of the dashboard are broken.”

Ujdak continued, “I’ve driven the truck several times over the last couple of years with a significant payload. And it is terrifying. And it’s a pretty liberal use of the word ‘truck’.”

Middle Way House helps find permanent housing solutions to support survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking.

The nonprofit was one of 32 local organizations that on Thursday presented their pitches for project funding  from the Jack Hopkins social services funding committee. It’s a city council and citizen committee that will be awarding about a half million dollars in funding this year.

The committee will be making decisions on this year’s grants in mid-May.

The annual grants from the city to local nonprofits have added up to more than $5 million since 1993.

This year, the amount available to the committee to award is $511,000. That’s $200,000 more than has been awarded over the last few years.

The extra funding was allocated as part of the 2021 budget, in the second phase of Bloomington mayor John Hamilton’s Recover Forward initiative, which is meant to help Bloomington bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic.

That follows an additional $200,000 that was allocated for Jack Hopkins funding last year, after the usual cycle of awards was complete.

The committee is chaired this year by city councilmember Susan Sandberg, as it has been for the last few years.

The total amount of requests this year was $648,197, which is in line with the average over the last three years, which has been about $690,000. Historically, the $5 million in grants were made based on $10 million in requests.

Even with the extra $200,000 this year, the amount of initial requests exceeded the amount available by $137,197. The total requests from the 32 applicants who are still in the mix, and gave presentations to the committee on Thursday evening, added up to $546,793. That means there’s still a $35,793 gap between requests and available funding.

Next steps in the process include a pre-allocation committee meeting on May 11, an allocation hearing on May 18, and city council approval of the awards on June 16. Before the pre-allocation committee meeting, members will work out their individual recommendations for grant amounts to each applicant, and those recommendations will form the basis of deliberations.

Thursday’s presentations offered some newsy information about changes in the local nonprofit world, and the numerical impact that some of the nonprofits have on the Bloomington community.

Lindsey Dominguez told the committee that her organization had recently incorporated as an entity with the state of Indiana as Hotels for Hope, Inc. That reflects a change from the name that the group has been using: Hotels for Homeless. The organization is set to apply for official status as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and that seemed like a good time to change the name and “rebrand a little bit and make it a bit more inclusive,” Dominguez said.

Julio Alonso, with Hoosier Hills Food Bank, told the committee that the food bank had distributed 7 million pounds of food in 2020, after having distributed 5 million pounds the year before. The increase was due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Alonso said.

Amanda Nickey, with Mothers Hubbard’s Cupboard, told the committee that in 2020, MHC distributed nearly 1 million pounds of food. The group is still operating in its emergency COVID response mode, she said, by distributing pre-packed boxes of groceries outdoors in a limited-contact drive-thru model.

Carrie McHaley, with Meals on Wheels, said on Thursday that every month, Bloomington Meals on Wheels provides over 4,000 medically-tailored meals to 96 Bloomington residents who are homebound.

Community Kitchen’s Marty Schick told the committee that in 2020, the group served over 256,000 meals and snacks. Half of the people they served were children, she said. Another 28 percent were experiencing homelessness at that time they were served, Schick said.

Jess Marchbank, with All-Options Pregnancy Resource Center said that since May 2015, the center has provided 2 million diapers. The center is currently distributing between 8,000 and 10,000 diapers per month, Marchbank said.

Jill Robinson, with Pets Alive, Inc. reported that since 2005, the group had done over 160,000 spay and neuter surgeries.

Indiana Recovery Alliance’s Christopher Abert told the committee that a few weeks ago, the group had administered its 100,000th dose of Naloxone. That translates into a reversal of 5,000 potentially fatal overdoses, Abert said.

The basic criteria for Jack Hopkins social services funding were first written down in a 1993 letter by councilmember Jack Hopkins, after whom the fund was named. The resolution that named the fund after Hopkins, who was a professor at the Indiana University’s public and environmental affairs, was approved by the city council in 2002, the month after Hopkins died.

Presentations on April 29, 2021 sorted by amount requested