Grantwriting and Planning to Plan

Sometimes communities have well-established goals; sometimes those goals are yet unknown. In either case, the planning process is critical; this design of this process is overlooked or hurried, outcomes can inadvertently fail to serve the community's interests. With our public service experience, cross-disciplinary knowledge, and problem solving skills, JVM Studio can help you design a process that will carefully consider the of known and unknown factors, so that you can be confident in the future outcomes of your planning or design.

Cash-strapped communities that want to make change must first weigh the implicit trade-offs, turn to their own budgets, and confirm that they reflect stated and agreed upon community priorities. Often, however, increasingly competitive outside funding sources provide an opportunity to accelerate realization of community goals. At JVM Studio, we have both been a part of designing grant programs, and have a proven track record of collaboratively conceiving of and writing successful grant proposals, including:

William Penn Foundation, Creative Communities Program

Delaware River River Waterfront Arts: $750K Grant (2016)

Connecticut Department of Transportation’s Transit Oriented Development Planning Grant program

Westport, CT. Saugatuck Master Plan: $440K Grant (2016).

Waterbury, CT. Freight Street Redevelopment Strategy: $189K Grant (2016).

US Department of Transportation’s TIGER Program

Waterbury Active Transportation and Economic Resurgence (WATER) Project: $14.M Grant (2014)

Hartford's Intermodal Triangle: $10M Grant (2012)

National Endowment for the Arts: Mayor's Institute On City Design, 25th Anniversary Initiative

The iQuilt Plan: $250K Grant (2010). Of over 200 applications nationwide, only 21 were selected. The NEA ranked Hartford's proposal first among them, awarding the largest grant possible.