EVERYDAY CANVASSING

Programs

1. The Montgomery County Planning Department, a government-affiliated organization responsible for land-use and infrastructural design in Montgomery County, sought representative data about the needs of Gaithersburg, Shady Grove, Rockville, Clarksburg, and University Boulevard residents. In particular, there was historically a lack of input from community members that rented their homes. That's where we came in. At the core of our approach is the belief that real community engagement, which meets people where they are - quite literally at their doors - is an excellent tool to shape local government's work. We collected the stories of renters in the aforementioned areas by: Knocking on about 8,000 doors and talking with over 700 renters in English, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Korean, and Amharic. Distributing 8,000 multilingual flyers with a short website link to a survey about desires and concerns. And with every conversation, we connected renters to services and organizations to meet their needs: everything from rent relief assistance, to Chinese cultural organizations, to English as a second language classes. The bulk of interviewees shared contact information for follow-up, which…

   $32,558 spent$28,042 earned by the program
   18% of program spending

2. Along with our project specific accomplishments, we always work to connect community members with public resources, engage in open-ended conversations around how our community could improve, and introduce community members to one-another. For example, outside of county master planning efforts like Fairland and Briggs Chaney master plan and the University Boulevard sector plan, we have canvassed people in White Oak, Downtown Silver Spring, Gaithersburg, Long Branch, Rockville, Montgomery Village, Aspen Hill, Wheaton, Germantown, Takoma Park, Fairland, Burtonsville, Clarksburg, and more. In 2023, we knocked and left flyers at about 20,000 doors to have conversations one-on-one with residents. We also navigated people through accessing resources and introduced them to resources at food distribution events in community settings like churches, parks, and private rental properties with residents of mostly low and moderate incomes. This year, we added Emmanuel Walker and Angela Rivera as permanent part-time members of our team. Emmanuel and Angela's work is having conversations with residents at food distribution events and connecting government to community members in their efforts to…

   $41,958 spent$158,034 earned by the program
   23% of program spending

3. For the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Montgomery County Collaboration Council for Children, Youth, and Families (MCCC) we developed infrastructure and facilitated the first iteration of community member policy and program creation in their organizations. For DEP, we co-created the Climate Justice Co-Creation Initiative, where we developed a team of community based organizations and individual stipended community members to co-develop policy and program solutions to climate-related issues in Montgomery County, MD. The Climate Justice Co-Creation Initiative will focus on climate change mitigation and prevention strategies over the next several years with growing involvement and decision-making from individuals most directly impacted by climate-related challenges. As for MCCC, we began and finished the Out of School Time focus groups, while beginning the Community Needs Assessment for Children, Youth, and Families. Out of School Time was a pilot project with MCCC where we recruited low income community members through canvassing to take part in suggesting the next generation of out of school programming and policy development. The focus groups…

   $77,969 spent$50,485 earned by the program
   43% of program spending

4. Extending a contract with Manna Food from 2022, we continued distributing information about where to get emergency food in our community. With the thousands of doors we knocked in 2023, we also informed and shared info about calling Manna Food to reserve free boxes of groceries. Our team personally made calls and deliveries to hundreds of families who could not transport themselves to food distribution locations.

   $30,938 spent$33,464 earned by the program
   17% of program spending

The 4 programs described on its FY2023 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $183,423.