🌟 Listening, Learning, and Lifting Up—Announcing Our Capacity Grant Awardees!

December 12, 2025

At SRF, we believe that how we work is just as important as what we fund. That’s why this year’s Capacity Grant process wasn’t just a grant—it was a practice in relational governance, collective discernment, and infrastructural care.

Using our sociocratic model, the Youth, Community, and Admin Circles moved together to steward this pilot. Each circle holds a distinct role, but their work is deeply interwoven—lifting up community and youth voice not as a checkbox, but as a living compass.

🌾 Meet the Community Circle

The Community Circle brought together leaders from across Nebraska with deep lived experience in youth systems of care and a strong presence within the nonprofit ecosystem. Their names carry stories, place, and commitment:

  • Faith Mills – Scottsbluff

  • RuAnn Root – Hastings

  • Jamie Legates – Kearney

  • Stephanie Vadnais – Lincoln (also part of the Admin Circle)

  • Andrea Evans – Lincoln

  • Dr. Maya Chilese – Facilitator

  • Sara Wilcox – SRF Executive Director

  • Arielle Lawrence – Delegate for Youth Voice and Community Partnerships

  • Kandi Weinbender – Grants and Flow Coordinator

This was their first time piloting a grant review process—holding both the relational space and SRF’s new online grant platform with care and curiosity. This group has been convening for nearly two years—coming together to build relationships, cultivate trust, and shape the foundation of this work. Alongside designing the grant application and review process, the Community Circle has also played a vital role in advising the Admin Circle through design recommendations that center lived experience and community-rooted insight.

The Community Circle served as the primary decision-making body for this grant, reviewing applications and making funding recommendations on behalf of SRF. Their leadership ensured decisions reflected real-world insight, relational accountability, and deep alignment with SRF’s values.

This grant specifically supported organizations already integrating youth voice into their work—meeting them where they are and resourcing the infrastructure that sustains their efforts. For organizations not yet at that stage but interested in exploring youth voice integration, stay tuned: the Catalyst Grant and Cohort will be launching soon.

đź›  Why Capacity?

This grant was born from deep listening. In 2024, we completed a Participatory Grantmaking Study where nonprofits across Nebraska shared honest reflections about their needs.

You told us:

  • You’re overburdened by extractive application processes.

  • You need support for capacity—not just programs.

  • You want funding that trusts your wisdom and strengthens your infrastructure.

We heard you.

The Capacity Grant was created in direct response. It funds the backbone work: tech upgrades, internal development, communications, and systems infrastructure—the often-overlooked elements that make sustained impact possible.

✨ Announcing the Awardees

We are honored to announce the organizations selected by the Community Circle for this round of Capacity Grant funding:

  • Visionary Youth – Lincoln

  • Spouse Abuse Sexual Assault Crisis Center (enCourage Advocacy Center) – Hastings

  • Hemingford Community Foundation – Hemingford

  • Greater Grand Island Community Foundation – Grand Island

  • Empowering Families – Scottsbluff

  • Friends of the Bridgeport Library – Bridgeport

  • Alliance Recreation Center – Alliance

These organizations are tending life in their communities. They are doing the often-invisible labor of sustaining youth systems, adapting to changing conditions, and showing up with care, courage, and clarity.

This grant doesn’t fix everything. But it’s one way we say: we see you, we believe in your work, and we’re in this with you.

🌻 What We’re Learning Together

This pilot offered more than a grant cycle. It offered a way to learn and grow together.

We’re learning how to:

  • Let community lead decision-making

  • Use tech without losing relationality

  • Design processes that heal rather than harm

  • Compost extractive patterns into something more alive

This is just the beginning. We’re walking—at the speed of trust—toward a grantmaking model metabolically rooted in community realities.

We are deeply grateful to the Community Circle, and to every applicant who shared their vision, vulnerability, and hope. You are helping us grow into the funders we aspire to be.

With love and commitment,
—The SRF Team