Spark MicroGrants

Spark’s mission is to catalyze community action. We live in a world where billions of people cannot meet basic needs despite billions of dollars spent to assist them. An uncomfortably large percentage of this funding goes to foreign ‘experts’ to assess local needs and design solutions. They are working to shift resources to fuel community-led innovation in a systematic and scalable way. The goal is not new; many foundations aspire to give small grants effectively. They are figuring out how to, and passionately proving it can be done.

Spark offers a dynamic model for community organizing and granting.

Their process taps into the knowledge and imagination of communities in need. They work with local facilitators (often university students or NGO leaders) with connections to under-resourced communities. With their guidance, the facilitator organizes a series of meetings where the community develops a project proposal. We arrange for comments on each proposal from field advisers. When proposals are well developed we help fund them with up to $5000. Rather than come up with ideas to help a specific community from the outside, they are developing a streamlined approach for stimulating innovative community-led projects and their realization.

Each project has its own metric for success, timeframe, and sustainability plan. In Mekelle, Ethiopia, for example, the community installed two water points and set up a committee to collect fees for sustaining the taps. They recorded that daily distance walked to water was reduced from 640 to 145 meters. Throughout the process we collect information on community empowerment using surveys, visits, and discussion groups.

www.sparkmicrogrants.org