Once a proposal is submitted, the Neighborhood Connections staff will complete a preliminary review of the proposal to check to see that the application is complete. Then, Neighborhood Connections staff enters the proposal into our database and sends the proposal to the Grant Making and Monitoring Committee. You should receive an acknowledgement letter from Neighborhood Connections notifying you that we received your application.

The Grant Making and Monitoring Committee reviews each proposal and then meets as a full Committee to determine which applicants they would like to interview. The Grant Making Committee makes every attempt to interview each organization, but because of the volume of applicants, they can only interview the groups that meet the basic criteria.

The Grant Making Committee will interview a number of grant seekers in the weeks after proposals have been submitted.   Organizations are interviewed for 20 to 25 minutes. The interviews will be held at convenient and accessible locations in various Cleveland neighborhoods.

If you are chosen to be interviewed, you will be called to schedule an interview by Neighborhood Connections staff.  Up to three individuals associated with the group or proposal may attend that meeting.  At these interviews, groups will have several minutes to amplify on the ideas presented in their proposal, and then will have the opportunity to answer questions from members of the Grant Making Committee.  Grantees are permitted to bring supporting materials to the interview, including charts, photos, or other materials produced.   No funding decisions will be made or communicated at these interviews.

The Grant Making Committee will reconvene a week after completing the neighborhood interviews and make final funding decisions. Groups will be notified in approximately 3 months after submitting their proposal whether they received funding.

For those who receive funding, prior to fund release, grantees and their fiscal agent will be required to attend an orientation session.  These sessions will provide assistance with the implementation of the grant proposal.  Additional technical assistance will be available during the grant period on a routine and as-needed basis. Neighborhood Connections will monitor grant recipients and will make occasional unannounced visits to grantee site locations.

Once grant activities are completed, grant recipients will be expected to complete a written final grant report regarding outcomes and accomplishments or participate in a Final Report Party. The Final Report Party is an opportunity for grantees to talk about their project with other grantees. A small number of grants will be evaluated on an in-depth basis. If chosen for this assessment, a grant recipient will be expected to cooperate with all evaluation requests.