CITY COUNCIL AGENDA ITEM
ACTION REQUESTED:
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Approve the FY20 Social Services grant funding allocations, direct staff transfer eligible grant activities to the PY19 CDBG program as allowed, and reallocate remaining Social Services grant funding appropriately
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DEPARTMENT: City Clerk’s Office
SUBMITTED BY: Ruth Broder, Community Grants Coordinator
BOARD/COMMISSION REVIEW:
N/A
BACKGROUND:
The City Council established a $250,000 SSG program in 2005 to enhance the ability of local not-for-profit social service agencies to provide needed services to the community. In 2012, the Council increased funding to $300,000 to allow for a set-aside for projects that target current community needs. Grant funding was increased to $500,000 in FY 2015, and remains today, using a portion of the Food and Beverage Tax funds.
Of the total allocation, $400,000 is set aside for agencies that provide services that address one of the program’s five general funding priorities below:
• Emergency Services - including emergency shelter, food and personal care items, and emergency assistance.
• Seniors - including respite care, meal delivery, home sharing, mental health counseling.
• Self-Sufficiency - including financial counseling, education, childcare, employment services, and substance abuse services.
• Special Populations - including persons with physical, developmental or mental health disabilities.
• Youth - including mentoring, counseling, pregnancy prevention/education.
A total of $50,000 is allocated to programs that address mental health community awareness and prescription drug abuse prevention. The remaining $50,000 is reserved for the City Council to allocate.
Applications are evaluated based on the extent to which they meet the following criteria:
• Project goals and objectives are clear, measurable, realistic and address the Social Services Grant Priorities and documented community need.
• Project need and community benefit are justified and fully documented.
• Project provides a new or improved service to the target population that does not duplicate existing services and encourages collaboration with other organizations.
• Project provides services to Naperville residents conveniently and in sufficient numbers or provides crucial services to a subset of Naperville residents.
• Agency has sufficient experience, resources and staffing to successfully implement the project within a one-year timeframe and manage the grant, including documentation of benefits, compliance and reporting.
• Applicants has made efforts to secure other funding for the activity.
• Completeness of the application.
DISCUSSION:
The City received requests totaling $1,032,690 for FY20. A total of $950,590 was requested from 34 applicants for programs addressing the five general funding priorities. Six applications for Mental Health Community Awareness/Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention funds were received which totaled $82,100. Of the 40 applications, 30 projects had previously received funding and ten were new requests.
A seven-person evaluation team of representatives from the City Clerk’s Office, Advisory Council on Disabilities, Housing Advisory Commission, Naperville Police Department, and Senior Task Force reviewed and scored the applications based on the criteria described above. Of the 34 Social Services grant applications, 19 had total scores of at least 625 out of 700 points and had mean scores ranging from 90-95. Overall, there were more new applicants in FY19, while returning applicants demonstrated success in achieving their goals and requested higher levels of funding.
The evaluation team applied the following methodology for funding allocations:
• Prioritize existing grantees with high scores and demonstrated success.
• Maintain a minimum funding level of $4,000; but applications that received support from City Council were also funded.
• Scores of 95 were funded at 70% of requested funding; scores of 90-94 were funded at 60%; scores 80-90 were funded at 30% of prior year’s funding if prior year exceeded $10,000 or $4,000 if prior year was less than $10,000.
Two of the six Mental Health Community Awareness/Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention applications had mean scores of 93. These two projects were awarded the full amount of their request. Three applications had mean scores of 84 and received approximately 50% of the requested funding. One project received a mean score of 48 and was not funded.
In addition to the $450,000, a total of $50,000 was reserved for Council award and allocated as follows:
• The mean recommended increase in funding was calculated for each project that more than one Councilman recommended for an increase. If a single Councilmember recommended an increase, that figure was used.
• The resulting increase was multiplied by a factor based on the number of Councilmembers who recommended increased funding for a project. The factor was determined by dividing the number of Councilmembers recommending the funding increase by the total number participating in the allocations. The resulting number was rounded to the nearest hundred dollars.
Two programs, Loaves & Fishes CARES Emergency Financial Assistance Program and DuPage PADS Olympus Place Supportive Housing Program, are eligible for Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding. The CARES Program will be fully funded through CDBG and the PADS Program will receive $10,500 from SSG and additional funding from CDBG. If CDBG funding received is sufficient, the entire Olympus Place Program will be funded by CDBG with additional funding to be applied to other SSG programs, as directed by City Council.
Staff and City Council recommendations together resulted in $439,700 in funding for Social Services programs and $60,300 in funding for Community Mental Health Awareness/Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention programs.
As has been past practice, staff requests approval of the FY20 SSG funding allocations and the authority to transfer eligible SSG activities to the PY19 CDBG program if the federal award exceeds the estimate of $450,000. By doing this, additional SSG funding will be available for qualifying social service programs.
FISCAL IMPACT:
$500,000 from annual Food and Beverage Tax revenue will be allocated to Social Services Grant recipients.