Community Foundation of Broward offers $1 million Be Bold prize

The Community Foundation of Broward wants to get Broward back to work—and it’s supporting organizations who want to help.

The organization recently announced its $1 million Be Bold Prize grant to encourage Broward organizations to move beyond traditional workforce development programs and embrace an innovative idea and solution for transformative community impact. The grant is open to nonprofit, government and for-profit organizations, which are also allowed to collaborate.

“Our goal is to tackle COVID-19 job losses in Broward County and their amplified impact on communities of color,” said Sheri Brown, Community Foundation of Broward Vice President of Community Impact. “We want to help affected Broward County residents to gain stable employment within the next two years.”

These goals correlate to how the pandemic has affected workers. Broward’s unemployment rate stood at 7.3 percent in November 2020, representing 73,879 unemployed Broward residents, according to the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. Workers in leisure and hospitality have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, with a loss of 187,500 jobs statewide, or 14.9 percent, according to the state report. Unemployment among African-Americans in Broward has historically been higher than unemployment among the general population.

Community Foundation of Broward is currently accepcting proposals for the challenge to create new initiatives or scale up proven initiatives with specific objects such as employment for a significant portion of currently unemployed Broward residents, a focus on employment for people of color and creation of a unique or scalable idea which is sustainable beyond the 2-year time period of the grant. Applications are due April 9 at 11:59 p.m. and the winner will be announced in May. Learn by clicking here or by contacting Brown at sbrown@cfbroward.org or 954-761-9503.