Young Adult Friends
of the Philadelphia
Yearly Meeting

Friends Institute

Friends Institute calls Requests for Proposals

Purpose:

Friend’s Institute’s (FI) vision is to build the young adult Friends community in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM).  FI’s mission is to serve the needs and interests of the young adult Friends for the 3,000 Quakers who are ages 18-40 across the 104 Quaker meetings in PYM.  It operates as a PYM Working Group to build fellowship, community and leadership.

Selection Criteria:

In an idea-outline of two pages maximum, please share how your Working Group will:

1.  Identify and create innovative solutions to meet the needs of young adult Friends.

2.  Build community within the young adult Friend’s community at PYM.

3.   Demonstrate the team’s ability to effectively lead and manage a project including a description of specific roles and expertise of team members and advisors.

4.   Describe the impact (quality of impact as well as number of people affected) that the project will have and how it will be measured.

5.   Demonstrate that the project has potential for sustained support and growth.

6.   Address the ability to create long-term impact among young adult Friends.

7.   Demonstrate enthusiasm to connect existing groups of young adult Friends within the PYM community.

8.   Outline a six month and one year budget that shows uses of funds for amounts up to $10,000.  Preferred projects will meet their goals with proposed amount of funding or identify matching funds.

Eligibility:

Ø   Applicants must be members of a PYM Working Group and need to apply in teams or on behalf of a Working Group.  Team participation is a requirement and, at a minimum, partnerships of at least two individuals may apply.

Ø   Applicant teams must be the primary decision makers for the project’s development and management. 

Ø   Applicants agree to a project timetable that runs within the PYM fiscal year 2003/2004, and will return any funds not spent at the end of that period.

Ø   Innovative projects that are at the idea stage or are early and in the development stages are preferred but this is not a requirement. 

Out of eleven “ideas” presented by various PYM Working Groups, six were selected to proceed as full proposals to the second round of evaluation.  On June 21st, each project team presented to the FI selection team and answered questions. Part of the selection day also included a presentation by Hal Taussig.  Hal is a Pastor at the Chestnut Hill United Methodist Church and Graduate Faculty at Chestnut Hill College and Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Hal  told participants about his for-profit media company where he puts 100% of the profits into a not-for-profit foundation that then supports disadvantaged entrepreneurs. (Read more here:  www.untours.com/idf)

Below you will find a short summary of the project, links to the proposals and an excerpt of the FI grant letter.

Thanks to all who made this exciting granting process possible !

·        Library Services Working Group: Library services for YA Friends 

     This proposal is formed with the objective to find out what Young Adults Friends want, to develop relevant resources to serve this group, and to build a strong communication system for reaching these members effectively.  Click here to read the proposal

    "For the “YAF library services” project, we offer a grant of $5,150 for the fiscal year 2003-2004.  We are very excited about this project and feel comfortable funding the purchase of new resources adapted to YAFs needs. As per your presentation, we anticipate that the majority of these funds will go toward the compensation for an intern who will work toward cataloguing YAFs materials and presenting them to the YAF community through the web site or other creative means. We encourage your working group to pursue coordination with other working groups and projects such as the digital media center and the Environmental Working Group." (excerpt from FI grant letter).

·        Friends Schools Working Group: Teachers’ aide

      The Friends Schools Working Group requests a grant to provide financial aid for PYM members and attenders, ages 18 to 40, who teach in Friends schools to attend workshops and peer network meetings given by the Friends Council on Education (FCE) during the 2003-2004 school year. Click here to read the proposal

      "For the “Teachers’ workshops” project, we offer a grant of $8,000 for the fiscal year 2003-2004.  We are very excited about this project and feel comfortable funding Quaker teachers participation to Friends Council on Education (FCE) during the 2003-2004 school year."  (excerpt from FI grant letter).

·        Adult Religious Education Working Group: Connection with College Students

      The Adult Religious Education (ARE) Concerns Group of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting hopes to initiate a two to three-year exploratory project focusing on college students. Click here to read the proposal

     "For the “Connection with College Students” project, we offer a grant of $5,500 for the fiscal year 2003-2004.  We are very excited about this project and feel comfortable funding workshops, events-related expenses and scholarships for the Building Bridges conference(s). The synergies of these events with the efforts at Horsham and Haverford Monthly Meetings are also encouraged."  (excerpt from FI grant letter).

·        Web Working Group: Digital Media Center

      To enable young adult and other Friends to communicate about their faith in any commonly used format of digital media.To design, purchase and offer training workshops and borrowing privileges to young adult and other Friends for production of digital media targeted toward youth and young adults via the internet, in a collaborative arrangement between the PYM Web Working Group and the PYM Library. Click here to read the proposal

"For the Digital Media Center project, we offer a grant of $5,000 for the fiscal year 2003-2004.  We are very excited about this project and encourage the interactions with the PYM library in establishing the digital media center and addressing the digital needs of YAFs."
(excerpt from FI grant letter)

·        Environment Working Group: Interactive Information Network Initiative

     Many people are seeking ways to participate in transforming our society’s ecological, economic, and social relationships, but do not have the means or time to make moves by themselves. By gathering the concerns and ideas about problems and solutions from smaller, diverse groups, we hope to help people connect to others that share interests or run programs that support a cause of importance to them. . . to help people help each other, so to speak. Click here to read the proposal

     "For the “Interactive Information Gathering” project, we offer a grant of $2,000 for the fiscal year 2003-2004.  We are very excited about this very ambitious project." (excerpt from FI grant letter).

·        Support and Outreach Standing Committee: Friends In Performing Arts and Culture

      Pilot project to promote cultural events at Quaker Meetings to attract and build community among Quaker Youth and Young Adults. Create a directory and referral service of Friends and kindred spirits who perform or lead cultural events, for use by Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly Meeting event planners.  Provide matching funds as needed to enable Meetings to engage quality talent for First Day events or coffeehouses intended for youth and young adult audiences. Click here to read the proposal

      "For the Friends in Performing Arts and Culture, we offer a grant of $4,700 for the fiscal year 2003-2004.  We are very excited about this project and feel comfortable funding four performances for this year as well as the online directory of talents and the promotion of the events. " (excerpt from FI grant letter).

"Thank you so much for hearing our concern and for supporting our project! We are thrilled!  We will be excited to work with Friends Institute this year!"  Helene Pollock, ARE Working Group.

"My first reaction to the idea, when I heard we all had to go and sit at tables in a circle and “defend” our proposals, was that it sounded threateningly competitive, even though all the people I had worked with seemed strictly supportive. It was clearly announced that the group as a whole was requesting more money than was available. 

The actual experience of it was truly excellent.  It turned out to be richly collaborative instead of competitive.  We all had a chance to visit each others’ tables, hear the exciting things others were proposing, and to discover many areas where we could work together and bring costs down.  I also found many ways to plug into the projects of other people, and they saw ways they want to use the library.  The creative energy zinging around in that room was exciting and energizing. 

This process looks like a possible model for the Standing Committees to use in order for us all to hear each other, and come into balance.  I would suggest that this model be used once a year, as part of the budget process.  PYM desperately needs a more positive approach to the whole budget and this experience was very positive, forward-looking, optimistic, creative, literally joyful!  The way Friends Institute managed this event created a communion experience, for me—with a spiritually sound as well as financially practical result. " Rita Varley, Library Services Working Group.