The Truth Staff
The Monthly Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance meeting was held on Monday April 6 at Mt. Nebo as dozens of individuals and community organizations had the opportunity to explain to a wide ranging audience of clergymen, residents, business owners, government officials and interested observers, the services and programs they provide.
As usual, Pastor Cedric Brock, pastor of Mt. Nebo and president of the IMA, presided over the proceedings and ushered speaker after speaker to the podium to have a chance to describe their programs.
The IMA meetings offer attendees a unique opportunity to hear from the representatives of numerous groups in the city – government, non-profit, business – and gain insight on services available that those in the audience might not have known of.
Last week’s meeting presenters included the Area Office of Aging, the NAACP’s ACT-SO, Connecting Kids to Meals, the Caregiver Experience, Stayce Fowler and Keegan Zimmerman from Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur’s office, Women of Toledo, La’Shardae Scott of the Scott Center for Observation, Treatment and Transition, the Toledo Realtists, State Rep. Josh Williams, Toledo Library, Deborah Barnett of Getting Your Affairs in Order, City of Toledo Economic Development, Toledo Metroparks, among other individuals and groups.
Of particular interest was the presentation by the Toledo Rotary Club and the impact the club is attempting to have on the community.
Rotarian Curt Church presented the following information
“Recently, the Toledo Rotary Club has preliminarily provided funding for 13 local organizations to assist in fulfilling their missions. The amount of funding in this round was just over $115,000. These funds were distributed to through six different services committees within the Rotary club.
Committees vetting grant requests through administrative overview of the project, conducting site visits, and a prioritization process with each committee.
“The service committees are focused on several areas: Community, Disability, Youth, International, Vocational and Environmental. Projects and programs focused on agriculture and gardens, organizational needs to fulfill its mission, exposing challenged children to sports and the outdoors, letting youth have hands on experience in the STEAM fields, and sending urban students to Camp Miakonda to experience the joy of camping!
“The Toledo Rotary Club holds two rounds of funding each year, providing approximately $250,000 in grants to organizations in our community. The process starts with submitting a grant application through the Greater Toledo Community Foundation’s portal. There you will find the Rotary club’s guidelines for requesting funds and the Club’s granting priorities. At this time, $10,000 is the ceiling for funding any one organization’s request. The next round has a deadline of August 31 for our next fiscal year which starts on July 1.
“I have provided this information every quarter to the IMA in attendance over the years. In my experience, there have been less than five organizations’ request funding, even though I will provide help in getting through the process, writing a grant, or researching ideas to see if it might fit Rotary’s priorities.”