Exciting news! We’re announcing our grant for the month of April, which makes this our fourth straight grant. The Unfoundation is on track for its plan to make twelve grants in twelve months in our first year. We started with ten trustees and we’re really excited to say that we’re growing! As more and more people hear about the awesome projects that our foundation has been funding, interest has grown exponentially.

In April, we’ve decided to grant our award to the Folk School of Chattanooga to enable them to pursue an effort to establish ukelele teaching programs in partnership with other Chattanooga non-profits. They currently already have a program underway at the St. Andrews Center and two others currently in development. The Folk School of Chattanooga will run a short series of teacher training sessions with the ukelele, enabling music instructors to teach and engage with their students in their communities. There will be a core curriculum that the ukelele projects draw from, ultimately enabling groups from all over the city to potentially come together and play in one large ensemble.

The Folk School of Chattanooga is a community of musicians and music enthusiasts in the city that seeks to cultivate a thriving community in Chattanooga. They’ve been teaching, organizing music events, and doing community-based projects since 2009.

As always, the Unfoundation is looking for new projects to grant to. If you have an idea that would benefit the City of Chattanooga, please take a few moments to apply and let us know about your idea. We’re committed to making a grant every month this year; if you have a great idea, we want to hear about it!

In other announcements, keep an eye on this site for updates from our past grants. We’ve heard from the projects we’ve funded over the past few months, and they’ve made amazing progress. We’re super excited to tell everyone about it.

Stay tuned!

Through our journey over the past few months, we’ve been ecstatic to participate in something totally unique to Chattanooga and really rewarding at the same time. In January, we granted $2,000 to the College Hill Courts Neighborhood Association to participate in an awesome project that would result in raised beds and gardens for the Westside residents to participate in. This was huge because not only does it provide social and community engagement for the residents there, but also because it shines a light (and, to a certain extent, helps alleviate) the food desert crisis that exists within that community.

At the UnFoundation, we’re committed to funding outside-the-box ideas that will benefit the residents of Chattanooga, in some way, shape, or form. That’s why we’re so excited to announce our next grant recipient, Chattanooga Elite Basketball! This program is being headed up by Kathleen Hunt. We’re granting Chattanooga Elite Basketball $1,700 for the purchase of uniforms for their players. This program takes youth in the community and leverages their excitement about basketball to promote teamwork, leadership, and academic skills.

This is a project that balances the, too often, heavy burden of school and sports. In addition to competing in NCAA-sanctioned events that will regularly expose these young players to college coaches, Chattanooga Elite Basketball also teams up with local agencies to provide academic tutoring. The young adults that are playing on Chattanooga Elite Basketball teams also get to tour colleges, allowing them to see their educational opportunities moving forward.

We can’t wait to see the uniforms in action; this is an exciting project that has a big positive impact on its community. Big thanks to our trustees who make all of this possible, and props to all of our wonderful applicants. As always, the application process is open and anyone can apply. We’re getting close to going through our March applicants, so apply as soon as you can if you want to be considered for this month. Stay tuned!

Hey all. I wanted to provide you all an update of what has been
going on since our awesome kick-off at 48 Hour Launch. We sort of hunkered down
and went dark over the past month, but we have been hard at work!

In working to get everything operational, we are excited to
say that we have launched the application process for The Unfoundation and we
really are making a big push for applications over the next two weeks. The
application takes between 15 and 20 minutes, asks some pretty basic questions,
and achieves our goal of having a simple-to-use application process for projects
that would be beneficial to the people of the City of Chattanooga. Check it out
here.

Additionally, we wanted to make sure that we were squared
away with the more legal stuff for the foundation. We had the great opportunity
to meet with our awesome legal advisors from Chambliss, Boehner, & Stophel;
they are doing a great job getting us in ship-shape for when we make our first
grant. The folks from the Area 203 marketing team were also involved in the
conversation, getting us started on some branding decisions and pointing us in
the right visual direction.

Right now, our biggest effort is getting in some awesome
projects to grant out to. We’ve already gotten in a handful of applications and
we’re really looking forward to more. We expect to make our first grant toward
the end of January; what a great way to kick-off 2012.

Anyway, you’ll be hearing a lot from us over the coming
weeks – we can’t wait to show you what we have coming up. From all of us here
at The Unfoundation, have a Happy New Years!

-Joda