Welcome back members! Grassroots Grantmakers is pleased to unveil our new website. While our new website may look similar to the previous website aesthetically, it is philosophically different and reflects the core value of our membership – residents matter.
We plan to leverage our new site to enhance our ability to publish stories of resident-led efforts and impactful place-based investment our members have made in their respective communities. Our new site will primary feature stores about communities that have coalesced around specific community improvement efforts that have enhanced the quality of life of residents. We will also feature stories where philanthropic organizations have engaged residents and partnered with communities to improve neighborhoods.
Today, over 85% of Americans use mobile devices to receive their news and to access information. Our new site not only is mobile friendly, Grassroots Grantmakers plans to place the storytelling in the hands of residents, civic leaders and our members by encouraging communities to share short videos of resident-led community improvement efforts. No longer is it necessary to have stories crafted by professionals; rather, technology has allowed for the democratization of telling and publishing stories. We call this grassroots journalism, or the ability the shape one’s own narrative.
“As the nations’ leading philanthropic membership and professional development organization that connects place-based funders and residents to develop effective and sustainable community improvement strategies, we are striving to improve our membership services and this is the first step towards our goal focusing on membership value,” says Gordon Martin, board member and Executive Director of the Neighborhood Connections Fellow Prince of Peace Outreach and Deliverance Ministries in Cleveland, Ohio.
Our goal is to bring unique stories and authentic community stories to the forefront of our field and to use this as a platform to change how we view communities, especially communities facing significant social-economic challenges. Our goal, as a membership organization, is to use our voice and leadership capital in the areas of community organizing and community investment to shift how we classify communities facing social-economic challenges from a deficit model to an asset-based philosophy; by telling stories. We believe that communities should not be defined by outsiders, nor should they be defined by what they lack or do not have. Rather, communities and resident narratives should come from the residents themselves. Through such storytelling, we will discover the people, assets, resources and histories that make all communities uniquely different and filled with tremendous value.
As a growing membership organization, Grassroots Grantmakers has made it much easier and secure to accept financial transactions. Our members will noticed we have moved from an unsecured to a secured platform, allowing our web viewers to safely view content and make online payments. Our new E-commerce features allows for safe payment for memberships, webinars, events and other professional development opportunities. While we are pleased with the new layout and functionality our new website provides, we are strategically developing other features to enhance our members experiences, including exploring ways to cost-effectively add a virtual social networking function to allow our members to build relationships with other grassroots grantmakers. We are also planning to build out a members-only section to offer exclusive access to resources, trainings and professional development materials for current members.
If you would like to join Grassroots Grantmakers or renew your membership, please contact amanda@grassrootsgrantmakers.org.
