I made it to the sec­ond ses­sion of grantee inter­views last night, out in Mt. Pleas­ant. We inter­viewed six grant-​seekers over at three hour period. The seg­re­ga­tion of Cleve­land proper was really brought home to me dur­ing this time. The Neigh­bor­hood Con­nec­tions GMMC is quite a diverse bunch of peo­ple, and by neces­sity. Also by neces­sity, peo­ple that don’t live in the neigh­bor­hoods that send the grants are the ones who decide which grants get funded. This helps avoid con­flicts of inter­est, but also cre­ates some awkward-​feeling sit­u­a­tions. I’m the youngest mem­ber of the com­mit­tee and a minor­ity on it since I’m white and a dude.

The appear­ance of our sub-​committee doesn’t exactly reflect the diver­sity of the whole group, though. I’m afraid that to many of the folks com­ing in, it looked like black folk com­ing to white folk for money. My sub-​group [of which I’m just an alter­nate] is com­posed of 3 smart and expe­ri­enced women, two white and one black. I mainly sit back and let them ask the ques­tions and act like a sponge. It is sur­pris­ingly easy to tell how pre­pared some of the grantseek­ers are, how enthu­si­as­tic they are about their pro­gram, how viable their pro­gram is.

Appar­ently, Mt. Pleas­ant has a lot of crime and a few times the group stopped talk­ing grants and started talk­ing com­mu­nity activism, which I sup­pose should be expected con­sid­er­ing no one is a mem­ber of the GMMC unless they are active in their own com­mu­ni­ties. I’m won­der­ing about the declined grant-​seeker process. I won­der if the com­mit­tee gives rea­sons why a grant is declined. I think it would be use­ful, because some grants would be awe­some if they could be imple­mented or orga­nized a bit better.