29 PALMS OFFERS $50,000 IN GRANTS FOR EVENT FUNDING
Grant awards may lack transparency but could bring much-needed special events to the community. Applications due July 5.
The City of Twentynine Palms is stepping up its community funding by offering a first time ever granting opportunity—$50,000 for local events. The pdf application can be downloaded from the City website and is attached to this article, above. You don’t need to be a City resident to apply, but all events must take place within City limits.1 Funded events are to take place between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024.
The application is due at 6 pm on July 5 and can submitted via regular mail or via email and will be reviewed by an events subcommittee consisting of Council members Daniel Mintz and Octavious Scott. The grant application is to be used for all cash and in-kind funding requests for the next fiscal year.
The need for community events, especially arts and cultural events, was raised during the Equity and Social Justice Workshops held earlier this year, and was also a theme in City Council strategic planning sessions, making the top 10 needs for the City.
The City’s events application is very easy to fill out — there are just three questions: a description of the event, other sources of income, and a list of requested in-kind services. The budget is three lines (permits, insurance, marketing) and no project budget or list of personnel costs is required. The application was updated after release to include a resume or description of prior events organizing experience.
The brevity of the application makes for easy filing but it’s short on the details granting agencies usually require to make an informed judgement. That grant applications require a comprehensive amount of information is for the benefit of the applicants and the panel members reviewing the grants. Comprehensive information creates an even playing field for applicants being judged on the same set of information and criteria. And comprehensive information presented with uniform formatting enables panelists to easily compare proposals and assess their viability. It also ensures that public money is being spent wisely.
By comparison, Indio’s grant application asks how the funds will be used, who will benefit and how, whether admission will be charged, how many people will be served, marketing and promotional strategies and requires a budget, including specifying the number of paid positions and volunteers. Although intended for non-profit organizations many of these questions are clearly relevant to an event funding request.
The City of Twentynine Palms often expects culture and arts related work to be done for free, so it’s not surprising that payment for the labor of organizing the event is excluded from City funding. When asked about this, Community Events Coordinator Scott Clinksdales replied, “The intention of this grant is to cover the costs of hosting an event, not to provide income to an organizer. It is permissible for an event to profit from or the organizer to get paid for the proposed event, just not out of City funds.”
Regarding the lack of line items for other personnel he replied, “The City recognizes that there are many types of event costs. Rather than breaking those down line by line, in an effort to avoid limiting the creativity of event expenses (face painting and balloon arches come to mind), we are asking only for the requested cash amount and event description to determine if the project falls within the intended scope of the grant.” Clinksdales added that additional information, such as a project budget, may be requested by the subcommittee reviewing the applications.
While the subcommittee can request additional information from applicants, this is not a fair process unless the same information is requested of all applicants. It also opens the panel up to accusations of favoritism because lacking sufficient information on the application, they are left to rely on their own knowledge of the applicant or other details not a part of the official process. In fact, when asked what criteria would be used to evaluate the applications, Clinkscales replied, “The Ad Hoc Committee will identify the best match for City engagement initiatives using a variety of criteria including, but not limited to event description, grant amount requested, event viability and event organizer.“
The two member review committee consisting of Mintz and Scott also raises questions. Generally grant panels are drawn from the local community and represent a range of viewpoints and experience, including members with expertise in the field being funded. It is redundant to include Council members on the review panel as the general practice is for a community-based committee to recommend grant awards to the governing body, which then gives its final stamp of approval to recommended projects and grantees.
Of course, this is the first year the City is offering community event funding and it’s a much needed new initiative. We hope the application kinks will be ironed out in future rounds, and a community-based committee with expertise in event organizing will be formed to review the applications. For now, we have the beginnings of a process that will could result in much-needed events in our City.
For additional information about the Community Events Grant Application, please contact Community Events Coordinator Scott Clinkscales at sclinkscales@29palms.org
Two other grant opportunities available in the City are offered by the Tourism Business Improvement District (TBID) and the Public Arts Advisory Committee (PAAC). The PAAC has the longest running City supported grants program, which funds Youth in the Arts and, as of 2023, cultural arts events. TBID offers funding on a sporadic basis for activities that promote tourism.
Disclosure: Desert Trumpet co-founder and editor Cindy Bernard is a member of the Public Arts Advisory Committee, which is a part of the City of Twentynine Palms. She has 30 years of grant writing and grant panel experience.
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Per email exchange with Community Events Coordinator Scott Clinkscales.
These things always need refinement, but at least it’s a start, so good for them.
My biggest concern, unless this grant opportunity has already been open for awhile, is that 2 or 3, or even 6 weeks until deadline is not long enough to organize and plan an event worthy of receiving a grant. Hopefully there will be several months lead time next time, or a promise from the city that this will be available next year, so people and can plan and organize.
Some solid points made in this piece. I was pleased when the City opened up the $50K grant dollars, encouraging those outside of City Staff and Parks & Rec department to put events together but can see that the lack of call for details is indeed a bit light. Having so little information about the projected event is just asking the sub-committee to dig deeper, or worse, skim past without giving each request the attention deserved.
It's a win for grant money and acknowledgement of more neighborhood activities using local organizers. The next step would benefit a second, more thorough round of the application procedure.
edit: the Indio app link is broken but found https://cityofindio.seamlessdocs.com/f/mkzqqosugw1s