@MattTheG @itssohiniii In today’s meeting Sohini shared how there are two different types of grants we’re going for. 1) Movement/Organization Focused and 2) Research Focused
Here are existing materials from Youth Power Coalition on Movement/Organization Focused grants.
North Star Fund (we received the grant so we must have done something right here 
)
Most relevant excerpts below, slightly edited based on updates in our language, full grant language here.
Briefly describe your organization’s mission, social justice vision, and accomplishments.
Youth Power Coalition’s mission is to build an intergenerational movement for youth-led collective impact so that ALL of New York City’s young people are equipped to thrive.
Youth-led collective impact is both outcome and process. The outcome is every Black teenager is safe, every child has housing, every young person can shape the world. The process is young people and adults governing together, money flowing directly to young people, and young people setting the agenda at every level from nonprofit boards to city hall.
Our framework is the 7C’s of Collective Impact, where systems change initiatives are 1) community-led, 2) comprehensive, 3) co-creative, 4) equity-centered, 5) well-capitalized, 6) caring, and 7) courageous.
We officially launched February 2020 and have since doubled our membership, was featured on CBS for our strike for safer school reopening, and implemented radical organizational practices like governance by consent.
Describe the most pressing issues or problems that the community your organization serves is facing.
New York City has an abundance of resources but is deeply inequitable for young people. We spend $800,000 per student incarcerated compared to $25,000 per student in school. We are the center of finance, technology, culture, and more, yet the youth unemployment rate in University Heights, Bronx is 28.5% compared to only 3.5% in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. We have 35,000 nonprofits, the largest percentage of which are human services or education, yet only one in four students graduate high school ready for college.
A root cause of our city’s inequity is that young people currently don’t hold decision-making power in spaces where decisions about us are constantly being made. Youth are accountable for “citizen duties” like taxes and Federal law allows youth to vote at local and municipal elections. Yet, when we ask for a seat at the table, we are usually given a non-voting one. In our city’s Community Education Council, for example, only one out of the 12 seats is open to a young person. This council member must be a high school student and has no voting power. This is not how we deserve to be represented. As a result, decisions that are made do not reflect our needs or realities.
We can do better because when young people do build power, we win.
Take school integration, for example. New York City is the most diverse school district in the country but for 50 years, it has also been one of the most segregated. Recently though, after years of protests, teach-ins, and advocacy, including by our founding partner IntegrateNYC, it was students that got our mayor to finally accept 66 desegregation policies. As Eliza Shapiro wrote in the New York Times, “The most prominent — and sometimes most effective — movements for change in the nation’s largest school system have been created and fueled by those with the most at stake: students.”
So how might we make youth-led collective impact the norm and not the exception? That is our question.
Pitch Deck
This is a total draft. Currently working on language. The design hasn’t been created.
Most relevant exerpts below, full pitch deck here.
WHO We Are
We’re youth leaders and adult allies building an intergenerational movement for youth-led collective impact
Intergenerational = young people, adults, elders, we all contribute
Movement = self-organized, action-oriented, at scale
Youth-led = young people most impacted by inequity lead
Collective impact = both outcome and process. The outcome is every Black teenager is safe, every child has housing, every young person can shape the world. The process is community-led, comprehensive, co-creative, equity-centered, well-capitalized, caring, and courageous
WHY We’re Building a Movement
- Young people of color are most impacted by issues like education and climate change, so why aren’t we in the rooms where decisions about us are being made?
- Even when we’re in the rooms, from classrooms to city hall, we’re invited as advisors, feedback givers, and photo op participants; we don’t actually get a vote.
- So we organize, we advocate, we create our own spaces, but we’re starved for resources. Less than 10% of funding goes to Black, Indigenous, and people of color-led nonprofits.
- We need a movement, we need you, to invest your time, money, and talents directly in our efforts, our priorities, our leadership. We’re the ones who truly know what’s going on.
HOW We Build the Movement
Movements need community, leadership development, resources, information, and advocacy to succeed. We provide this through the following initiatives
- Youth Voting Rights: Lowering the Voting Age to 16
- Youth Power Hub: Online community for youth leaders and adult allies
- Mass Training: Creating accessible and peer-to-peer leadership training
- Youth Power Consulting: Guiding organizations that are shifting from being adult-led to intergenerational
- Innovation Network: Sparking and supporting new initiatives