WHITNEYVILLE CULTURAL COMMONS INC

Programs

1. As part of our historic preservation program, we own, maintain, and preserve 1247-1253 Whitney Avenue, Hamden, CT, 06517, a National Historic Landmark, which includes the Whitneyville United Church of Christ built in 1834 and its Church House built in 1924, and continue its legacy as a house of worship while continuing to adapt its use to a broader Community Resources Center and the facility in which we run some of our other programs. We completed an electrical upgrade and HVAC installation to 1247 Whitney Avenue, the historic church building, allowing us to operate a contemporary HVAC system to maintain heating, cooling, and moisture in the building in a more effective manner, thus allowing us to preserve it more easily, and adapt it to contemporary expectations. We have been assisting the First Church of Christ Woodbridge with the adaptation of its facilities for broader community use, while preserving the historic features of the buildings and property, helping them to develop plans for the inclusion of a day care within their facilities in a way which abides by the historic preservation requirements of their Preservation Easement and their Historic District requirements.

   $117,351 spentof which $988 as grants$9,098 earned by the program
   40% of program spending

2. Our Materials and Information Library program allows us to offer a curated repository of items and information for managed public use, both onsite and offsite. It includes books, tables, chairs, multi-media equipment, office supplies, kitchen tools, lawn care tools, and more. It also includes our databases of information about the historic property, Whitneyville, and Greater New Haven, allowing us to slowly build a representation of our community that can let us help people find services and resources that they need that we don't provide. We also document our successes and failures as a social enterprise nonprofit transforming communal, historic space from just its traditional uses to alternative, expanded, and inclusive uses that conserve and preserve the traditional uses and spirit of those uses, while also including new styles of use -- the documenting of this material has allowed us to grow partnerships with organizations around Connecticut where we help them adapt our successes to their own situations, avoid our failures in those situations, and assist them with implementing the adapted plans so their institutions and facilities can serve flourishing community. This year we…

   $57,038 spentof which $584 as grants$94,089 earned by the program
   19% of program spending

3. Our assembly space program continued to allow use of the historic properties in our trust for broad use for community events, nonprofits, and social gatherings. The Red Cross of America ran Mobile Blood Drives, weekly and without fail, at our facilities throughout the year -- we serve as the New Haven Chapter House of the Red Cross. Social gathering incrementally grew from the previous year, but continued to be our most requested program service proving the vital necessity of social infrastructure for our community through high demand. We hosted roughly two thousand community, nonprofit, and social gatherings during 2024.

   $54,171 spentof which $613 as grants$140,160 earned by the program
   18% of program spending

4. Our Coworking Program provides a dynamic shared and private working environment that brings together startups, seasoned professionals, remote researches, freelancers, and solopreneurs, in a public space where they interact more regularly with each other and their community with lower overhead to insure viability of their small businesses, and to give new entrepreneurs a chance to make it in and a reason to stay in our local economy. Our Partner Coworking Organizations: CEIO, Public Allies CT, Black Infinity Collective, Prison2Public Policy, Students for Educational Justice, Real Clear Foundation, Stop Solitary, Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers, and our solo-preneurs, did coworking actiivities in our facilities utilizing both communal spaces and private offices. We also hosted many daytime seminars and presentations from organizations needing short term large spaces to supplement their small offices or work from home teams.

   $28,490 spentof which $317 as grants$69,113 earned by the program
   10% of program spending

5. Our Arts and Culture Program provides studio space for artists, venues for performances and showcases and cultural events, space for arts classes and rehearsals, and tools for artistic productions, produced both in partnership with artists and offering our services as tools for artists to produce their own events. It also provides home for culturally significant programming from sub-cultures across Connecticut, including Christian worship & artistic services across denominations, including Pentecostals, UCCs, Episcopalians, Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, and more, and other significant worship and cultural services from across faith and traditional backgrounds. This year, both our churches and arts programming exceeded pre-pandemic levels proving the vital necessity of social infrastructure for arts & culture in GNH.

   $18,126 spentof which $210 as grants$51,303 earned by the program
   6% of program spending

6. We produce, on our own and in partnership with members of the community and other organizations, a small number of classes and workshops designed to offering education to the community at large, in any topic or area of interest that serves the benefit of our community members. And we added on incubation and acceleration services for nonprofit development, utilizing our vast experience with many kinds of organizations through coworking, our partnerships with other organizations, and by collecting and synthesizing our own lessons learned as a startup nonprofit social enterprise, to help other individuals and organizations starting and operating nonprofit projects to benefit from the lessons of our coworkers -- we've been doing this in partnership with The People's Place in Waterbury to provide these services directly to their fiscal sponsees at TPP. Additionally, one of our sponsored projects, The Winnett Food Forest, became a free standing 501c3 organization and we regranted its remaining assets on our books to it.

   $18,783 spentof which $162 as grants$4,746 earned by the program
   6% of program spending

The 6 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $293,959.