:: The Cricket Island Foundation ::

Our Grantmaking

Since 2001, we at Cricket Island Foundation have learned the following lessons from working with nonprofit organizations:

Nonprofit organizations benefit from long-term support. They are better able to plan for the future, develop infrastructure and grow strategically when limited resources are not diverted toward short-term fundraising. With the added vote of confidence that comes with attaining large multi-year grants, organizations are better able to leverage other substantial grants.
General operating support is necessary and vital to the success of nonprofits. This type of support offers the ability to respond rapidly to urgent organizational or community needs. It also allows organizations to invest in organizational capacity that can increase sustainability and program effectiveness.
Grantmaker success requires that grantmakers fully engage with their grantees as partners. We become more effective and responsive as grantmakers only when we learn alongside our grantees.

Because of these lessons, the Foundation began a strategic grantmaking program with the following components:

Support to Emerging Organizations: We invest three years of support to five startup organizations that showed a potential to impact their youth participants, their communities, and the broader field of youth led social change.
Support to Established Organizations: We provide multiyear grants of larger amounts to organizations that have demonstrated impact and that employ programmatic practices that are valuable to other organizations and the broader field.
Additional Grants Programs: We provide grants to past and former grantees to build organizational capacity, address unexpected challenges and to advance the field of youth led social change.