Educational Incentive Challenge Grant

The Middletown Youth Services Bureau Advisory Board is pleased to announce the opening of the Educational Incentives Challenge Grant for the 2016-2017 fiscal year. The grant is coordinated by the Youth Services Bureau Advisory Board on behalf of the City of Middletown. The YSBAB would like to make note that funding for the grant program has been reduced from $49,500 to $24,750 making the process more competitive than in prior years. 

The Educational Incentives Challenge Grant looks to fund program activities for children in Grades K-12 that help support at-risk, under-represented youth who traditionally are not involved in programming outside the regular school day. These activities may be of academic, recreational, cultural, physical, psychological, and/or emotional benefit to the child. 

The minimum grant award is $1,000 and the maximum is $10,000. Any organization placing a grant request of $5,000 or more is required to provide a 1 to 1 ratio match. Organizations with total budgets of $75,000 or less, may apply for “match-free” grant if the request is between $1,000 and $4,999.  Organizations with budgets over $75,000 may petition the Youth Services Bureau Advisory Board via email by noting the circumstances and why they are requesting to qualify for a $1,000-$4,999 “match-free” award.  Please allow for a 72 hour (business day) response time. The match was lowered to a 1 to 1 to help open up the process to smaller youth programs in the Middletown community. In-kind donations will not count toward the match.

Additionally, the Middletown Youth Services Bureau utilizes a framework called Developmental Assets which identifies 40 “Assets” that provide the building blocks for children to grow up well. Priority developmental assets have been identified by members of Daniel T. Drew’s Mayoral Youth Cabinet. The following assets must be addressed as part of the narrative. Please identify two of the four within the category that your program will work to build and include both actionable items and how they will be measured.

• Positive Identity Category - Personal Power, Self-Esteem, Sense of Purpose, Positive view of personal future.
• Planning and Decision Making Asset - Young person knows how to plan ahead and make choices.
• Youth as Resources Asset - Young people are given useful roles in the community.
• Role Models Asset (both adult and peer to peer) - Parent(s) and other adults model positive, responsible behavior.

For information of Developmental Assets please visit www.assetpromise.org or call us at (860) 854-6030.

Applicants must target two of these assets and describe how they will work toward promoting those assets as well as how they plan to measure their outcomes.

The YSBAB would also like to inform applicants that due to the limited amount of funds available to distribute they will be placing extra emphasis on outcome data showing both qualitative and quantitative measures of success. We also encourage applicants to detail how they are serving underserved populations.

Challenge grant applications are due Monday, August 15^th, 2016 and must be submitted to the Middletown Youth Services Bureau by 4:00 p.m.. Additionally, applicants will be asked to give a short (three minute) presentation to the Youth Services Advisory Board on the evening of Tuesday, August 30^th at 5 p.m. 

A bidders conference will be scheduled for August 2^nd at 10am. You must RSVP at the address below to attend.

The RFP itself can be downloaded HERE.

For any questions please contact:

Justin Carbonella

Email: carbonellaj@mpsct.org

Phone: 860-854-6030