As the deadline to apply for the city’s annual small grants program nears, it appears things are back to normal following last year’s limited distribution of the funds by the Sedona City Council.
Applications are due by noon on Thursday, April 29, with awards finalized in July by council.
The small grants committee, which received requests totaling $263,860 last year, recommended sticking with 2019’s budget of $166,500 and adjusted the requests to fit that budget. But in the end, Sedona City Council members approved just $45,200.
According to Assistant to the City Manager Megan McRae, who is overseeing the program, this year’s small grants process is progressing well.
“Last year was an anomaly because of the uncertainty of the impact of the pandemic not only on overall city revenues, but also because many of the programs, activities, or events proposed in applications would not have been able to proceed under restrictions imposed by emergency orders,” she said.
Earlier this year, then-City Manager Justin Clifton agreed that among some applicants who did not receive funding, even though funding is never guaranteed, there were hard feelings.
“But keep in mind that many of the applicants were responding to the pandemic just as the city was,” he said. “Some had creative ideas on how to adjust programming but many of those adjustments did not reflect the core programming associated with their original grant request or were seeking funds for activities that would not have been allowed anyway due to limitations on gatherings.”
Grant applications are available for programs, activities or events developed by 501(c) nonprofits that provide a public service or benefit and are consistent with the city’s funding priorities. Individual grant amounts have typically ranged from $2,000 to $20,000.
The Small Grants Review Committee scores each application based on established evaluation criteria that include: Public service or benefit provided; alignment with Community Plan and council priorities; assessment of community impact; the organization’s administrative capacity, financial strength, and financial need; and planned performance indicators to measure outcomes. Together, McRae said, these criteria shape the overall scoring that frames the interviews with applicants and the Small Grants Review Committee’s deliberation discussions to make their recommendations of awards for consideration by city council.
Council members who were in favor of slashing the funding last year said they felt bad for doing so but with the city potentially looking at millions of dollars in sales and bed tax losses over the next year, it was necessary. That ended up not happening as sales and bed taxes remained steady.
Council also brought up the fact that due to restrictions related to COVID-19, some of these programs and events, which applied prior to the pandemic, may not come to fruition over the next year.
City Manager Karen Osburn said last week the unspent grant funds from last year — totalling $121,300 — will be added on a one-time basis to the 2021-2022 grant funding of $166,500. However, she said the $166,500 is a placeholder and since council has not held their budget work sessions yet, they may choose to budget something different when adopting the final 2021- 2022 budget.
“The city tracks requests for applications, and the applications themselves are typically not received until very close to the April 29 deadline,” McRae said. “From the perspective of grant applications requested, last year at this time the city had received 29 requests for applications. For this year’s cycle, as of Monday, April 5, they’d received 43.
“Last year in total we received 47 requests for applications, so I anticipate we will be at or above that number this cycle,” she said.
