Champions in Action example for corporate donors

With the giving season in full swing, it’s a good time to remember not just the largest, widely recognized nonprofits, but also the smaller organizations that help those in need right in your backyard.
My organization, RiverzEdge Arts, is such an organization – small by the standards of the big nonprofits, but vital to the communities we serve. We run a social enterprise program for at-high-risk teens in Woonsocket, an Expanded Learning Opportunity Center at Woonsocket High School and deliver highly enriched, applied-arts learning programs in underserved schools around the state. To better meet the needs of artists and entrepreneurs in northern Rhode Island who face barriers to economic success, we recently launched an Arts & Business Opportunity Center in our Main Street Woonsocket studios. These highly effective arts-intervention services reach more than 600 youth and adult learners each year.
We believe we do good, vital work. But we do so – like many small organizations – outside the limelight and often far away from the corporate-giving network.
That’s why we’re lucky Citizens Bank has taken a different approach to corporate donations and support through its Champions in Action Program, which focuses solely on groups like mine.
The Champions in Action award RiverzEdge Arts received in 2007 propelled the transition of RiverzEdge from a single-program, single-city organization in Woonsocket, to a multiprogram statewide problem-solver in education and economic development. The $25,000 unrestricted grant we received as a Champion in Action came at a critical time in the development of our Arts & Business Entrepreneurship Program, allowing us to increase the number of youths working four afternoons per week in small arts and design businesses year-round.
The media attention and video created by the Champions in Action program’s media partner NBC 10 WJAR further provided us statewide visibility and a new tool for communication. It was the first time in our history that we had a professional video that told our story, and it provided the model for future RiverzEdge-produced videos.
Together, the investment in our work and new visibility helped us dramatically increase our income generated through social enterprise, and to share our success on a national platform. We received national recognition for our work in 2009 and 2010 when RiverzEdge was awarded a MetLife Foundation Afterschool Innovator Award by the Afterschool Alliance and a National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award by the President’s Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Between 2007 and 2012, our generated income from social enterprise rose from $8,000 per year to now more than $170,000 per year. This meant many more jobs coming into each studio which increased program slots; and the launching of multiple new programs with in-depth training opportunities.
Citizens’ Champions in Action program helped to take us to the next level by giving us the resources to expand our services and become better known as a innovative change-maker for urban youth and their communities. That’s why we’re excited to help celebrate its 10th anniversary, to bring its vital mission to light and encourage other corporations to take a similar approach to giving.
Our organizations depend on grants and donations from the public, from the government and from the business community. But, according to a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy study on corporate giving, corporations tend to partner with larger, more high-profile organizations.
In 2005, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recognized Citizens Bank with its Corporate Stewardship Award, specifically citing Champions in Action for its unique approach to building lasting, meaningful relationships with local nonprofit organizations. Not only does Citizens support us but they also help to build a lasting “fraternity” among Champions in Action winners, bringing us together each year with new winners so we can share our experiences and learn from one another.
Whether it’s RiverzEdge Arts, or the hundreds of fellow, local nonprofits doing good work in our state, we urge corporate donors to find out more about programs such as Champions in Action and to take a similar approach – target the local organizations that carry so much of the charitable load in your community. You’ll develop deeper, more lasting bonds, and the community will benefit greatly. •


Rebekah Speck is executive director of RiverzEdge Arts in Woonsocket.

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