CITY COUNCIL STAFF REPORT
June 18, 2024 {{section.number}}b
REVIEW AND ALLOCATE THE FISCAL YEAR 2024-25 COMMUNITY GRANT PROGRAM AWARDS
RECOMMENDATION:
Review and approve allocations for the Community Grant Program for Fiscal Year (FY) 2024-25.
BACKGROUND:
Since 2000, the City of Coronado has awarded grants to support local nonprofit organizations.
The goals of the Community Grant Program are to be objective, activity-based, and promote positive outcomes for the City’s residents. On May 7, 2019, the City Council adopted Policy No. 28 – Community Grants to establish formal guidelines for the program, ensuring effective stewardship of public funds and providing greater transparency to the process. That same year, an amended grant application and a new evaluation process were initiated where experienced, unaffiliated field readers scored applications based on objective criteria.
On February 6, 2024, the City Council reviewed and approved the FY 2024-25 grant program documents and approved several modifications to Policy No. 28. Modifications to the policy included setting a funding cap to $125,000 per organization, as well as a few administrative changes:
- Modifying the grant reader process to include more in-depth scoring discussions, - Moving away from using the reader score as a percentage of allocation, - Updating the grant application to increase the level of reporting, and - Appropriating funding evenly (25%) to each grant category.
Each year, funding is set at a percentage of the City’s General Fund budget per Council Policy No. 28. For FY 2024-25, funding for the grant program is set at 1.45% of the City’s General Fund.
At the June 4, 2024, meeting, the City Council approved the FY 2024-25 Budget, which included funding of $1,075,000 for this year’s Community Grant program.
ANALYSIS:
The Community Grant Program continues to be a reliable source of funding for Coronado nonprofit groups. As the grant program develops, the process has become increasingly competitive. Although the City’s allocation of over $1,000,000 is significant compared to similar municipalities, the volume and high quality of applications makes it impossible to fund every organization and application at the requested level.
Grant program documents were released on February 15, 2024, and a virtual orientation was held to guide interested applicants through the process. Additionally, staff held weekly open office hours for grant applicants. The grant application closed on March 31, 2024.
This marks the fifth year since implementation of Policy No. 28 by City Council. The grant process has been refined over time with more supporting data now available to help inform the decision- making process of City Council. This also provides an opportunity to analyze grant requests on both qualitative and quantitative levels.
Last year, the City received 50 applications from 32 organizations, for a total of $2,155,503 in requested funding, and awarded $1,015,000 to 36 unique programs across 23 organizations.
This year, the City received 41 applications across the four categories, amounting to $1,999,934 in requested funds. After the initial staff review, two applications were deemed ineligible due to requesting an amount over the $125,000 cap and having an ineligible status with the Office of the Attorney General, and a third application was rescinded. Adjusted figures show the City received 38 applications from 26 organizations requesting a total of $1,831,934. Although the City received approximately 15% fewer application requests than last year, the total requested amount exceeds available funds by $756,934.
Category FY 24-25
Applications
FY 24-25
Amount
Requested
FY 23-24
Amount
Requested
% Change in $
Request Year
over Year
Arts and Culture 17 $678,341 $718,163 -5.54%
Community Pride/Sense of Place 12 $701,500 $501,825 +39.79% Economic Development 3 $174,525 $254,700 -31.48%
Social Services 6 $277,568 $680,815 -59.23%
Total 38 $1,831,934 $2,155,503 -15.01%
Copies of all grant applications are available on the City of Coronado website:
https://www.coronado.ca.us/209/.
Submitted Requests
This year, grant requests ranged from $125,000 to $1,500. Five organizations requested the highest potential funding amount of $125,000. The ten organizations requesting the highest amounts of funding comprise 17 of the 38 applications, totaling $1,151,400 or 107% of available funds.
Organization # of Applications
Submitted
Total Amount
Requested
Coronado Historical Association 3 $125,000
Coronado Island Film Festival 2 $125,000
Coronado Junior Arts League 1 $125,000
Islander Sports Foundation 1 $125,000
Safe Harbor Coronado 2 $125,000
Coronado Chamber of Commerce 3 $119,000
Coronado Fourth of July 1 $105,000
Emerald Keepers 2 $102,400
Coronado Floral Association 1 $100,000
San Diego Historical Society 1 $100,000
Scoring Process
Each grant application was reviewed by three independent grant readers and scored across six weighted rubric criteria. Grant readers also provided comments and justifications for their scores that are summarized in Attachment 5. Once all scores and feedback were received and compiled, staff examined the scores and comments to determine whether there were any significant outliers.
Per Policy No. 28, applications scoring below a 75 will not be recommended to the City Council for funding. If there was an outlier in either a score or in the comments received, resulting in the application scoring near or below the 75 threshold, staff engaged in further discussion with the grant readers to ensure a clear consensus was achieved. The grant readers engaged in thoughtful discussions and were impressed with the caliber of applications reviewed.
On average, scores were higher than last year, with only four applications scoring below the 75 threshold. The increase in scores may be attributed to the consideration and adjustment of outlier scores but also attests to the high quality of applications.
The table below provides a comparison of the last few years of average grant scores across the four categories:
Grant Category FY 24-25
Average Scores
FY 23-24
Average Scores
FY 22-23
Average Scores
Arts and Culture 86 88 86
Community Pride/Sense of Place 81 79 92
Economic Development 82 72 79
Social Services 79 64 78
Cultural Arts Commission Review
Per Policy No. 28, the Cultural Arts Commission is tasked to review the Arts and Culture grant applications and make funding recommendations to the City Council based on their work in the community with the various arts and culture organizations. This is the only category that has a review by a City Commission.
On July 20, 2023, the Cultural Arts Commission approved and appointed three Commissioners to the Cultural Arts Grant Review Subcommittee (Subcommittee). At the November 2, 2023, Cultural Arts Commission meeting, the Commission approved the Subcommittee process, which included the review and scoring of all Arts and Culture grant applications using the City Council approved rubric.
During April, the Subcommittee met weekly and discussed each Arts and Culture grant application. The Subcommittee then formed a recommendation to present to the Cultural Arts Commission for approval. The Subcommittee’s recommendation was presented to the Cultural Arts Commission at a Special Meeting held on May 23, 2024. At that meeting, the Cultural Arts Commission formalized and approved their recommendations, which are included in Attachment
4. Application Analysis and Recommendation Process
After each application was scored by the grant readers following the scoring process above, the staff recommendation was developed through the following steps. The steps are also outlined in Attachment 2 Application Analysis in greater detail.
1. Compared Cultural Arts Commission Recommendation with the Grant Reader Recommendation
After the May 23 Cultural Arts Commission meeting, their funding recommendation was compared to the grant reader scores and feedback. Overall, the Commission and grant reader’s scores were aligned, with a few exceptions. To be equitable with the other categories, if a discrepancy occurred, the grant reader recommendation took precedence over the Commission recommendation. The following application’s recommendations were lowered slightly from the Cultural Arts Commission recommendation:
a) Classics 4 Kids
Cultural Arts Commission Recommendation: $20,000
Reader Score: 95 | Recommendation: $17,500
Lowered by $2,500 to be more aligned with FY 23-24 funding level ($15,389). b) Coronado Island Film Festival
Cultural Arts Commission Recommendation: $65,000
Reader Score: 75 | Recommendation: $50,000
Lowered by $15,000 to reflect the reader’s recommendation. The organization’s last year funding level and other grant application in the Community Pride/Sense of Place category was also considered. The organizations total funding recommendation is $100,000. c) Coronado Philharmonia
Cultural Arts Recommendation: $45,050
Reader Score: 80 | Recommendation: $35,543
Lowered by $9,507 to be more aligned with FY 23-24 funding level ($23,152) while accounting for the number of concerts proposed in the application. d) Villa-Lobos Chamber Music Festival, Coronado School Outreach Cultural Arts Recommendation: $10,000
Reader Score: 96 | Recommendation: $8,800
Lowered by $1,200 to be more aligned with FY 23-24 funding level ($5,010) and proposed budget while accounting for their prior success as expressed by CUSD staff.
Additionally, the Coronado School of the Arts Foundation received a reader score of 74 and is not being recommended for funding, although the Cultural Arts Commission recommended full funding for the proposed program. More information on this application is listed below under Other Considerations.
2. Reviewed Organization’s Prior Year Funding
Next, staff reviewed all applications at the organization level and compared the request to the amount received last year. If the funding request was relatively comparable or less than what the organization received last year, than last year’s funded amount was used as a base. If an organization’s funding request was significantly higher than what was previously awarded, the program applications were more thoroughly reviewed in Step 3.
3. Determined if an Increase Request in Funding was Supported with New or Expanded Programming
A few organizations requested significantly more in funding than received last year. Most of these organizations were flagged during the grant reader process and the grant readers made recommendations based on their interpretation and scoring of the applications.
Some applications received unanimous support from the grant readers who felt the request was well supported despite being an increase from years prior. Other applications that had mixed feedback or received lower scores were further evaluated in Steps 4 and
5. 4. Evaluated Program’s Past Success and Prior Council Support Next, all the reader scores and feedback were compared to those organizations who have had marked prior success and City Council support. The City Council has consistently supported organizations like Safe Harbor and the Emerald Keepers and has also supported programs like the Holiday Parade & Tree Lighting event, the Coronado Flower Show, the Coronado Island Film Festival, and the Coronado Fourth of July. Staff balanced the grant reader recommendations by considering prior success and support.
5. New Organizations
This year, we received three applications from new organizations (Camarada, Coronado Junior Arts League, and San Diego Historical Society) and two applications from organizations who have applied in the past, but have not been granted funding (Islander Sports Foundation, KMAC Foundation). Each of these organizations that received a reader score of 75 or higher are being recommended at a moderate funding level as not enough data is available to justify a significant funding recommendation.
6. Aligned Recommendation with Budget Line Items
Once the above items were considered, staff reviewed each application’s budget proposal and aligned the recommendation with specific line items contained therein. Although Policy No. 28 does not include parameters or define preferences for funding direct or indirect costs, developing the recommendation through the submitted budget proposal ensures transparency and improves accountability for organizations that receive grants.
Along with Attachment 2, the Executive Summaries in Attachment 5 detail the reader score, feedback, and derived staff recommendation.
While initially intending to allocate funding equally across the four categories, the imbalance in requests makes it unreasonable to recommend a uniform distribution of 25% per category.
Category
FY 24-25
Amount
Requested
FY 24-25
Percent
Requested
FY 23-24
Amount
Request
FY 23-24
Percent
Requested
Arts and Culture $678,341 37.02% $718,163 33.3%
Community Pride/Sense of Place $701,500 38.29% $501,825 23.3% Economic Development $174,525 9.53% $254,700 11.8%
Social Services $277,568 15.15% $680,815 31.6%
Recommendation Options
The recommendation presented in Attachment 1 includes two options, both funding 34 of the 38 proposals.
Option 1 includes a $20,782 surplus. This recommendation was developed using the qualitative and quantitative methodologies listed above, and each recommendation is aligned with the application’s budget proposal. The surplus is provided for the City Council to redistribute, as desired.
Option 2 redistributes the $20,782 to the 34 applications evenly, giving each application approximately $945 more.
If the City Council decides to reassign funding in a different way, staff recommends utilizing Option 1 as a starting place, to keep as much alignment as possible with an application’s submitted budget.
It is important to note that the newly introduced cap of $125,000 per organization was successful at reducing application requests to a more manageable level and also has provided City Council with additional flexibility for funding level adjustments, if desired.
Other Considerations
Four applications totaling $261,293 fell below the 75% threshold and are not being recommended for funding, per Policy No. 28. The City Council may still consider and allocate funding to applications that scored less than 75%.
Coronado School of the Arts Foundation – Score: 74
The Coronado School of the Arts Foundation requested $10,500 in the Arts and Culture category to fund a community fundraising event at the Coronado Ferry Landing. The grant readers noted that the application was not as well written as the others in the category and that the fundraising goals and proposed event impact were not clearly defined. As such, funding was not recommended.
The Cultural Arts Commission supported the proposal as it is a new event that will engage a new audience to the arts and support a public-private partnership. The Cultural Arts Commission recommends full funding for this proposal even though the reader score fell below the 75% threshold.
Islander Sports Foundation – Score: 50
The Islander Sports Foundation requested $125,000 in the Community Pride Sense of Place category to fund Coronado High School sports team uniforms. The application received an average reader score of 50 and the readers unanimously agreed to not recommend funding for the proposal as they felt that uniforms would be better funded by donations from the community.
The Islander Sports Foundation has applied to the Community Grant Program once in the past in May 2019 and was not awarded funding.
MainStreet Coronado – Score: 73
MainStreet Coronado requested $70,525 in the Economic Development category to fund the Coronado Cash, Downtown Monitoring, and Downtown Shopping programs. The grant readers felt that the request lacked sufficient evidence of the program’s economic impact. Although they acknowledged MainStreet’s history and contributions to the City, grant readers ultimately decided to not recommend funding as the application did not include data on the success or prior impact of the proposed programs.
Pacific Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) – Score: 65
PAWS requested $55,268 in the Social Services category to fund a new vehicle to transport animals to appointments and adoption events. The grant readers noted that the low score was attributed to the lack of alignment with the Social Services category goals, as the program does not support youth, veterans, disabled residents, etc. They also recognize the important services that PAWS provides to the community. The proposal fell under the 75% threshold and is not recommended for funding because of the lack of alignment with the Social Services category.
FISCAL IMPACT:
Per Council Policy No. 28 – Community Grants, grant funding for FY 2024-25 is set at 1.45% of General Fund revenue. The approved budgeted amount for FY 2024-25 is $1,075,000.
ALTERNATIVE:
The City Council could decide to allocate Community Grant Program funds using an alternative method.
CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY ACT:
Not applicable.
PUBLIC NOTICE:
No notice required, but all applicants were notified via email of this item.
ATTACHMENTS:
1. Staff Recommendation
2. Cultural Arts Commission Funding Recommendations
3. Application Analysis
4. Organization Recommendation Summary
5. Executive Summaries of Grant Applications
Submitted By: City Manager’s Office / Kelli Maples