2024 Fall Community Impact Grant Awards

The purpose of this grant cycle was to invest in major projects which substantially increase the quality of life for Johnson County residents through services provided by local nonprofit organizations. You can find the five $25,000 grant awardees from 2024 below with short summaries of the projects these grants will support.

City of Coralville Library

This grant will support the Coralville Public Library in establishing a full-time Community Outreach Educator position. This staff person will coordinate the English Language Learning Program as well as build out a more holistic slate of programs and resources aimed at lowering cultural, socioeconomic, and educational barriers for all community members. In addition to even more support for people in language acquisition, the Library hopes to take a more holistic approach to helping immigrants settle into our community by adding services and programs that teach cultural skills such as navigating U.S. banks, social services, and cooking local foods. They hope to expand services to offer programs that foster social integration, reduce discrimination, and promote understanding and respect among diverse groups of residents. This grant supports a critical community initiative which helps ensure that all members of our community have access to the resources they need to thrive.

 

CommUnity Crisis Services and Food Bank

Johnson County has a chronically high rate of food insecurity, with many residents lacking access to food due to a number of barriers, including transportation to local food sources. CommUnity Crisis Services and Food Bank addresses those concerns through their Mobile Food Pantry program. Over the past two years, the mobile pantry has seen an increase of 64% in visits to the mobile pantry. CommUnity’s Mobile Pantry a critical resource for Johnson County residents living in food deserts. This grant will support the purchase of an updated mobile pantry vehicle, increasing CommUnity’s capacity to provide food directly to economically disadvantaged populations who lack transportation to their on-site food pantry. An improved mobile pantry vehicle specially designed to transport and distribute food will allow CommUnity to engage and retain more volunteers, save staff time on set-up and tear down of the pantry to instead focus on developing additional mobile pantry sites, create greater visibility of the resource for people who need it, and improve the visitor experience.

 

Iowa City Free Medical and Dental Clinic

This grant will support the Iowa City Free Medical Clinic in expanding their staff to include a Patient Navigator who will help patients overcome obstacles to obtaining specialty care and radiology at UI Health Care, including screening and diagnosis for breast and other cancers. This position will assist with financial assistance applications, communication with providers, transportation arrangements, and locating services within the hospital. The Patient Navigator will be onsite during patient visits to receive referrals from providers for financial assistance, guide patients through the application process, monitoring the application progress and proactively follow up with patients to gather any missing information or documents. The Navigator will also help patients secure transportation to their appointments and direct them to the location of their appointments, ensuring there are interpretation services available if necessary. The Iowa City Free Medical & Dental Clinic (ICFMC) fills a critical gap in healthcare access in our community by providing primary, chronic, acute, specialty, preventative, vision and dental care to uninsured individuals in our community at no cost. The addition of a Patient Navigator will greatly increase the Free Medical Clinic’s ability to both provide and manage client services between our organization and essential care patients need at UI Health Care.

 

Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County

Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County (NCJC) serves as a vital hub for education, childcare, and community engagement. They are currently expanding programming by building a third neighborhood center in Iowa City’s Towncrest neighborhood. The new Towncrest Neighborhood Center will add 60 early learning slots for children ages birth to five and 30 additional afterschool childcare slots for elementary-aged children. This expansion is critical to making high-quality childcare and educational services accessible to more low-income families in Johnson County, where finding affordable childcare is a significant barrier for working families—particularly those living in low-income, low-resource neighborhoods. Currently, NCJC’s Early Childhood programs serve 96 children ranging from birth to age five and at least 95% of the children enrolled qualify for childcare assistance or other forms of governmental aid, a testament to our commitment to serving economically disadvantaged families. NCJC’s programs hold the highest level of accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children. This grant will support the capital campaign project to build the new center in the Towncrest neighborhood to enhance quality childcare options for families in our community.

 

North Liberty Community Pantry

The North Liberty Community Pantry has embarked on a $4 million campaign to expand its efforts to eliminate food insecurity in North Liberty and rural towns in Johnson County. This campaign seeks to improve the Pantry’s capacity by more than tripling their size with the construction of a new 10,500-square-foot facility at 350 W Penn in North Liberty. Between January and July 2024, the Pantry served 834 unique families – 45% more than in 2022 and has seen 11,032 visits through July 2024, or 76% more visits than in 2022. The Pantry set a single-month food distribution record with 64,922 pounds of food distributed in July 2024 – 72% more than in July 2022. Each month that goes by, a new food distribution record is set. This demand has created a sense of urgency for the North Liberty Community Pantry to grow in size to accommodate service to more neighbors. The new facility will increase workspace for staff, include space for partner organizations to sign families up for services and receive additional resources on-site in a private and confidential setting, and include additional warehouse and cooler storage space to keep up with the demand. This grant will support the North Liberty Community Pantry’s capital campaign to expand their services through a new physical location.