Studer Community Institute wants to help make the Pensacola area thrive.

We are tapping into a national grant funding competition to help make that happen with the Gannett Foundation’s A Community Thrives contest. 

The grant competition began on March 19 with a crowdfunding component that will run until May 11.

Nonprofits must raise a certain amount through CrowdRise, a crowdfunding platform. SCI must use CrowdRise to raise at least $3,000 in that eight-week March to May period. Our page is live at this link. 

Gannett Foundation will award 16 grants in two categories through the competition. Winners will be announced after June 1. 

This year, A Community Thrives will give away $600,000 in grants.

If SCI meets its CrowdRise fundraising requirement, the nonprofit would be eligible to become one of eight grant recipients. 

Grant amounts are available in $100,000, $50,000 $50,000, $25,000, $15,000, $10,000 and two $25,000 bonus grants to campaigns that raise the most money on CrowdRise. 

SCI would use the grant funds to support the continuation of the Build a Brain, Build a Life outreach effort, which includes the Brain Bag and PArent Outreach Program projects.

Brain Bags are early literacy gift bags that are given to every mom who gives birth at one of Escambia County’s three main birthing hospitals. Nurses at Baptist, Sacred Heart and West Florida hospitals also include a lesson with the bags, meant to help parents understand the important link between parent talk and healthy early brain development.

The bags include a copy of P is for Pelican, the ABCs of Pensacola, which uses the alphabet to highlight landmarks and features of our community; Baby Steps, a baby book designed by SCI to help parents track early brain development that includes advice and practical tips on how to weave talking, reading, singing and play into everyday life in the first three years; a toy and a binder of community resources to help support parents.

The Parent Outreach Program includes weekly, hour long classes in which SCI staff work directly with parents to coach them on the importance of talking early and often to young children. 

These classes use a curriculum designed to continue to educate and empower the parents of young children, so that those children have the best chance to prepared for school and life.