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Detroit
Focus Area

Coordinated Investments and Technical Assistance

Our Detroit Program works to provide coordinated investments (such as grants and social investments) to neighborhood stewards that implement catalytic projects across Detroit neighborhoods. Stewards connect these layered resources to amplify the strengths and enhance the unique character of the community. Today, we seek to extend and adapt these lessons in Livernois-McNichols (Live6), Southwest Detroit, New Center and the North End, and Jefferson Chalmers.

The Detroit Program believes that neighborhood steward organizations play a catalytic role in revitalization. Neighborhood stewards are uniquely placed to engage the community as well as understand the physical assets, from a blighted property that could be a greenway to an empty storefront that could house a business and begin the revival of a commercial corridor. Each geography brings a unique set of assets, and the mix of philanthropic supports – convenings, grants, social investments, technical support, etc. – to complement those assets will evolve differently as revitalization proceeds.

Funding this Focus Area

We do not accept unsolicited proposals. All grant opportunities are listed on the Current Funding Opportunities page.

How to Apply

Explore Recent Grants

Eligibility Requirements

We periodically invite applications for specific efforts through requests for proposals.

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The Example of Neighborhood HomeBase

Government, civic and neighborhood leaders in April 2019 celebrated the opening of Neighborhood HomeBase, a storefront community space in the Livernois-McNichols area intended to provide residents with meeting and gathering spaces while connecting them with neighborhood organizations, nonprofits and city government.The opening of Neighborhood HomeBase marked a milestone in efforts – supported by Kresge, Detroit Mercy, other foundations and the city of Detroit – to engage residents and business owners in guiding revitalization of their neighborhoods surrounding the intersection of Livernois and McNichols in Northwest Detroit. The new building complements the new Fitzgerald Park, a new greenway, support for commercial strip revitalization and other parallel efforts. Neighborhood steward the Live6 Alliance, founded in 2015, is key to all of the activity, , just as Midtown Detroit Inc. took the lead on revitalization of its namesake area nearly a decade earlier. The creation of the Midtown Co-Lab, with Kresge’s support, was a prototype adapted to create Neighborhood Homebase.

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