Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

of the Religious Society of Friends

Full Overview of Application Guidelines

For Friends submitting work & witness and/or funding applications

Quaker Life Council Mission Statement

With divine assistance, the Quaker Life Council maintains the health and integrity of the community, supports spiritual depth, and cultivates relationships within Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. The council is a steward of yearly meeting activities, nurtures meetings, supports corporate work for peace and justice, and brings together members across meetings to collaborate on projects of common interest. The council maintains PYM’s relationships with other organizations.

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Strategic Directions

The Quaker Life Council’s work is guided by the Yearly Meeting strategic directions, which are:

  1. Connect Friends and meetings to one another so that we may experience a vibrant, Spirit-led faith community.
  2. Connect Friends across the yearly meeting through effective communications and technologies.
  3. Develop and widely communicate clear messages about Quakers and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
  4. Simplify and focus on governance and administration.
  5. Broaden engagement and deepen relationships in our yearly meeting.
  6. Facilitate PYM-wide corporate witness and social action.
  7. Ensure our communities are welcoming and safe for all people.

Guiding Queries

The Quaker Life Council reviews each application in a Spirit-led discernment process guided by the following queries. We hope that these queries might be helpful to you as you draft your application and also to draft your Collaborative Annual Report which is due annually in May.

  1. How does the application further the strategic directions of the Yearly Meeting (listed above)?
  2. How are the applicants planning to include Friends who are outside of the Philadelphia metro area?
  3. What partnerships with monthly and quarterly meetings are supported in this application?
  4. If you are seeking funding, how is this proposal for funding Spirit-led?
  5. Are there other sources of funds for this work (i.e., from individual Friends, granting groups, monthly or quarterly meetings)? Active fundraising is prohibited.
  6. What is the timetable for the use of the funds?
  7. How will the funds be used?
  8. What are the short- and long-term goals of the funded project? What are the measures of success?
  9. Is there a plan for sustaining this work beyond the funding cycle? If so, what is it?

Guiding Statements

The Quaker Life Council seeks:

  1. to support a mix of new and continuing projects.
  2. if funding is requested, to ensure that funds support a wide variety of work, witness, and activity.
  3. to provide seed funds toward projects that may be funded from multiple sources other than the Council.
  4. to ensure that funded work, witness, and activity reflects a balance between depth and breadth. That is, some things with a far reach and lasting impact will be supported, while other things with a finite, yet penetrating importance will be supported.
  5. to ensure that funds have an impact; what people say they are going to spend money on should be grounded in time-bound and achievable goals. The work may be ongoing, but applications should articulate what will be accomplished specifically with funds towards a long-term goal.

The Funding Application Process

  1. All applications are reviewed by the Quaker Life Council Program Committee for approval or recommendation.
  2. When submitting your funding application, please include all funding needs that will occur between October 1, 2019 and September 30, 2020, otherwise known as Fiscal Year 2020.
  3. If you have not yet been approved, you need to use the application to come under the care of the yearly meeting.
  4. All applications submitted by the September 30th deadline will be considered by the Program Committee in the first round. All applications received after the September 30th date will be considered on a rolling, case by case basis.  It is highly recommended that groups submit their requests as early as possible. Funding requests are considered relative to the funds available at the time of submission, meaning there will be smaller sums to give with each approved application.
  5. Application deadline for the first round is September 30, 2019. Applications after the deadline will be considered on a rolling basis.

Important Things to Note about Collaboratives:

Without any additional request from Quaker Life Council, collaboratives approved by the Council receive many supports that represent time and money. These include access to most PYM communications channels, including the PYM calendar; space on the PYM website; a private section of the website called a “multisite”; and social media accounts. Collaboratives can also reserve meeting space, reserve conference and Zoom calls, and receive support to develop simple online registration forms and design flyers without any additional funding from the Council.