OUR COMMUNITY PARTNERS
We have learned alongside our Community Partners as they have faced challenges, overcome barriers, and achieved extraordinary successes. Find out more about each project and the outcomes below.
YEAR
2018
GRANT CATEGORY
Catalyst
GRANT AMOUNT
$111,500
Organization:
CASA of Travis County
Project Title:
Increasing Volunteer Diversity through Targeted Marketing and Recruitment
Project Description:
CASA of Travis County speaks up for children who have been abused or neglected by empowering the community to volunteer as advocates for them in the court system. When the state steps in to protect a child’s safety, a judge appoints a trained CASA volunteer to make independent and informed recommendations in the child’s best interest.
CASA of Travis County will use the Impact Austin grant to help address the critical challenge of diversifying CASA’s base of volunteers to better represent the community and the children CASA serves. They will create a dedicated staff position focused on this need, and will launch an intensive marketing and outreach campaign to recruit more African-American and Latino community members to serve as CASA volunteers.
Grant Status:
From the time of the Impact Austin grant award, the number of prospective volunteers applying to CASA of Travis County who are people of color has increased by 30%. CASA’s overall pool of volunteers is very large, so the evolution of demographics of the entire pool will take time. For this reason, because the efforts funded by Impact Austin have been so successful, CASA is continuing these efforts even beyond the conclusion of Impact Austin’s grant.
Additionally, CASA’s new website helped further their volunteer recruitment efforts. Their online presence continues to recruit and build connections with diverse volunteers. This year alone, 37% of volunteer applicants were people of color—these results continue to grow each month.
Read the full case study here: