Last week Mayor Martin Walsh announced that the East Boston Social Centers and 17 other nonprofit organizations across the city would share in $550,500 in grant funding through the City’s Partners with Nonprofits Program (PNP).
The funding will allow the Social Centers and others to make public facility upgrades and on-site physical improvements, and will help them leverage more than $1.7 million in capital improvements.
“I am proud that the Partners with Non-Profits program invests directly in organizations that offer so much to the people of Boston,” said Mayor Walsh. “The commitment of the community service organizations receiving these grants is what helps make our city so strong. This program is an important tool we use to ensure that these organizations are able to continue their work that benefits our neighborhoods and our residents.”
Executive Director of the Social Centers Justin Pasquariello said his agency would be using the funding to remove and replace windows at the Central Square location.
“The City of Boston’s Partners with Nonprofits program continues to provide critically needed funds for maintenance of our facilities, and we are deeply grateful to Mayor Walsh, Chief Dillon, and all who have made this possible,” said Pasquariello. “This investment in window replacement will help us prevent water damage to our building and will improve our building’s energy efficiency–enabling us to continue to provide highest quality services to the nearly 600 people we impact on a typical day.”
Since 2014, the Partners with Nonprofits program, operated by the City’s Department of Neighborhood Development (DND), has awarded more than $2.8 million in grants to neighborhood non-profits.
The program provides funding of up to $40,000 for capital improvements, such as handicap accessibility upgrades, code repairs, or other infrastructure renovations, to neighborhood-based non-profit organizations through a competitive Request for Proposals process. Grants are made possible by the City’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).