How Are Last Year’s Grant Recipients Using

Their Grant Monies?

Our 2019 grant winners have submitted their year end reports and we thought you’d like to hear about their progress.  Each has a unique story to tell about how the tornado in March and then the pandemic for most of the year have affected their operations and their constituents.  

Family Reconciliation Center.  Among our three 2019 grant recipients, FRC had the most difficulty fulfilling their mission this year.  For most of the year the Tennessee Bureau of Prisons has not allowed family visitation, which means that FRC was not open for business because no one needed overnight lodging to visit a loved one.  But the theme of the year is making lemonade out of lemons; they took the opportunity to focus on improving systems and making capital improvements to the houses in line with their original proposal.  The grant proceeds helped toward the licensing of booking software and a donor database and these are now up and running.  The grant proceeds also helped with a foundation repair, HVAC repairs and improvements, painting and other miscellaneous projects. There is a small amount ($200) of the grant left unused, but it is intended for a mailing to let families know about FRCs services. The Impact100 Nashville Board has voted to allow FRC to hold the funds in reserve until visitation begins again and do the mailing at that time.

Sexual Assault Center.  SAC ran into difficulty with staffing turnover, and unexpected problems with running social media ads during the fall because they were blocked as “political” during the period before the presidential election.  Efforts to improve their website and downloadable educational materials have been big successes and they have website analytics showing increased traffic on the new pages, but there are approximately $8600 in unused funds. The Impact100 Nashville Board agreed to a 6 month extension of the grant so that the SAC staff will be able to run the previously planned social media campaign and finish out their original plan for the grant implementation.

Nashville Peacemakers.  The staff at Peacemakers had to make emergency plans in March and do significant tornado relief services for their families as their part of town was the most affected.  Then the March shutdown came and they had to respond by taking all their programming online.  They were pleased with the results over the course of the year.  Just as many of us found, online meetings are easier to attend and not having to sit in Nashville traffic freed up lots of time to do other things.  The MOM program doubled - growing from 45 to 100 women - and the online format allowed meetings to last as long as needed instead of having to end at a set time.  Other programs were similarly affected but overall the agency saw an increase in their impact across the board and Impact funding helped provide this unexpected change in delivery.