Marin nonprofits allotted $2.5M through public voting program

Marin County supervisors have authorized $2.5 million in grants to the top vote-getters in the county’s first “participatory budgeting” project.

Twenty-four projects received grants ranging from $10,000 to $250,000. The Marin County Office of Equity and a 15-member committee that included community members selected 24 projects from 104 applications submitted.

Marin community members over the age of 14 were allowed to vote in person or online for their top seven choices. Citizenship was not required to vote. A total of 3,700 ballots were submitted between Oct. 26 and Dec. 29. The top 16 vote-getters received the full amount they requested. The eight projects that attracted the fewest votes received grants of $10,000.

“Part of our work was really making sure that we could give as much money as we could to all of the participants,” said Jamillah Jordan, the county’s equity director.

The $2.5 million came from the $50 million that Marin County received as its share of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, which was passed to support states during the COVID-19 public health emergency.

The grant awards come two weeks after supervisors approved spending $1.7 million over the next three years in an attempt to increase racial equity in the areas of economic opportunity, mental health and housing.

Marin’s participatory budgeting pilot initiative was launched by the county’s Office of Equity in 2022 to invest in equity-centered projects. The project prioritized grants in Marin City, San Rafael’s Canal neighborhood and parts of Novato and western Marin, which scored below 70 on a health index created by the Public Health Alliance of Southern California.

“We wanted to allocate the resources where the needs are the greatest,” Jordan said, “so we focused in on four different communities. We asked community members, ‘What would you do with $2.5 million dollars to advance racial equity?'”

The size of the grant awarded to organizations wasn’t necessarily determined by how many votes they received. Extra Food, which dispatches volunteers to distribute leftover food from local businesses and schools to agencies serving hungry people, was the top vote-getter with 1,442 votes, but it received a $75,000 grant.

Canal Alliance’s “Latino Community Health House” project received a $250,000 grant despite finishing 15th in the voting, with 635 votes. The program will deploy Spanish-speaking outreach workers to offer COVID-19 testing, health information, insurance assistance, behavioral health referrals and community-based education.

According to Marin County public health officials, only 8.7% of Marin’s Latino population is up to date with its COVID-19 vaccinations, compared to 12.3% of the county’s African American population and 32.7% of the white population.

Three other projects also received $250,000 grants: Griot Theater Co.’s Black and Brown Youth Theater project, a “theater-focused learning experience” for marginalized students; Huckleberry Youth Program’s ACE Academy, an academic and career program; and Enriching Lives Through Music’s Canal Culture of Excellence program, which provides free music instruction to participants 8 to 18 years old.

The Multicultural Center of Marin’s “Newcomer” program was among the eight programs that received the minimum $10,000 grant. The program provides enrichment activities for Latino middle schoolers who have recently immigrated to the United States. According to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, 281 unaccompanied immigrant children arrived in Marin during 2023.

Jordan said it was important that all 24 organizations received some cash award because for “many of them this may be the first time engaging with county government in this way.”

There were notable exceptions.

County supervisors awarded Enriching Lives Through Music a $10,000 grant in November as part of its semi-annual community service allocations, and the organization has been a recipient of Marin Community Foundation grants.

The Marin County Bicycle Coalition, which received $88,782 for a program that provides bikes and mentoring to youths in the Canal area and Marin City, was regularly awarded county community service grants until criticism of the grants program led to its reorganization in 2019. During the 14 years leading up to the change, it’s estimated the county paid about $500,000 to the cycling organization.

Several members of the committee who helped select the programs for voting spoke favorably about the experience.

“I personally felt like I grew as a person,” said Nicole Ludwig. “I was able to share my experiences, but more importantly experience different lenses that other committee members shared with me.”

Denia Candela, who works in the county library, said, “It was empowering for me, and I believe other members of the committee because we were given the opportunity to empower other people.”

Shinji Sakai-Egi, one of the people who submitted a proposal that didn’t make the cut, said, “This program reawakened my activism within the community. I personally want to thank you.”

Don Carney, director of Youth Transforming Justice, said, “I want to thank the Board of Supervisors for ponying up the cash. I really appreciate this kind of democratization of government.”