About City Connect Detroit

City Connect Detroit is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization charged with the mission of  helping metropolitan Detroit nonprofits and governments obtain increased national funding and facilitating collaboration among nonprofits, governments, businesses, grant-makers, and others.

Established in 2001 by Detroit-area foundation and civic leaders, City Connect Detroit has helped attract more than $110 million in grants and donations to Detroit and Michigan nonprofit and government agencies since its launch as a demonstration program.

The agency has traditionally attracted funding support by organizing and staffing cross-sector community collaborative teams to identify local needs, develop creative solutions to those needs, and by aggressively pursuing local, state, and national funding support for those efforts. City Connect Detroit has organized, staffed, and supported more than three dozen community collaborative projects since 2001, including projects to increase the availability of after school programs, remediate lead-contaminated homes where children live, and provide employment experiences to local youth, among others.

Today, City Connect Detroit provides four primary areas of service to the community:

–Networking – City Connect Detroit convenes and facilitates group dialogue around pressing local issues, develops environmental scans and analyses to gauge opportunities for change, and prospects and cultivates funding opportunities around important community initiatives.

–Collaborations – City Connect Detroit convenes and staffs action-oriented collaborative teams to develop solutions to local challenges.

–Incubation – City Connect Detroit provides incubation services and supports to important community programs in need of an array of back office functions, from financial management to fund development to human resource management and beyond.

–Intermediary Supports – City Connect Detroit connects donors and grant makers with local nonprofit and government agencies and programs that can quickly utilize their funds. The agency also administers and scales up programs on behalf of funding partners.

“City Connect Detroit provides platforms for community change,” says Dierk Hall, President and CEO of City Connect Detroit. “We want to bring money into this community and we want to know that it is being used efficiently and effectively to bring about positive community change. Our organization is here and entrepreneurial enough to help make those things happen on behalf of community residents.”