Historical total for Bloomington’s Jack Hopkins social services funding nudges past $5M

A second round of Jack Hopkins social services funding this year has pushed the historical amount of awards to $5,006,856. The program started in 1993.

On Monday night, the Bloomington city council’s Jack Hopkins committee made recommendations for awards to 25 different local social services nonprofits totaling $224,905. A total of $591,599 had been requested by the applicants.

The five largest awards are recommended to go to Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard ($19,100), Shalom Community Center, Inc. [Beacon] ($17,500), Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Indiana ($15,000), Bloomington St. Vincent de Paul ($15,000), and New Hope Family Shelter, Inc. ($14,020).

The city council will have the awards on its Nov. 18 meeting agenda for final approval.

An additional $200,000 in funding for Jack Hopkins social services this year was a part of the $2-million Recover Forward package proposed by Bloomington mayor John Hamilton’s administration and approved by the city council at a mid-August meeting.

The extra funding is meant to shore up nonprofits for the additional work they are doing this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The extra $200,000 in funding for Jack Hopkins social services funding, like the rest of this year’s Recover Forward initiatives, came from reversion money, unspent in the 2019 budget.

The regular round of annual Jack Hopkins social services funding, approved by the city council in June,  totaled about $319,000. The normal round of funding is allocated from the general fund. In the 2021 budget, approved by the city council two weeks ago, the usual Jack Hopkins social services funding is approved in one line item at $311,000  with a supplemental line, parallel to this year’s supplemental round, with another $200,000.

That means in 2021, about a half million dollars in awards could be made all in one round.

The second round of funding this year totaled $224,905, which is more than the extra allocation of $200,000. According to city council administrator/attorney Stephen Lucas, there was an extra $25,000 available, because South Central Community Action Program was not able to follow through with the program for which the nonprofit had received funding in the first round, due to some unexpected staffing changes.

It’s common for the committee to recommend partial awards for approved applications. So the committee’s approach to the second round of funding was a hybrid between considering re-applications from first-round applicants for complete funding and new applications from scratch.

For the extra, special round of funding, 36 agencies submitted applications, of which 26 were “express applications” from applicants earlier this year. Ten were full applications from new agencies.

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.

Table: 2020 Second Round Recommended JHSS Funding