Community Innovation Grants

The Consensus Council in Partnership with the Bush Foundation is excited to offer Community Innovation Grants!

We’ve heard from organizations throughout North Dakota that today’s changing community needs and complex challenges require new thinking and new approaches. However, the day-to-day pressures of work – operationally and financially – make it hard to step back and engage the community to think bigger and think differently to create new solutions to community problems. These grants are designed for organizations to do just that – to lead the process of creating a community innovation.

Over the past 28 years, the Consensus Council has worked to bring citizens and leaders together to build agreements on difficult issues, through including the right people, assuring a safe place and facilitating thoughtful and strategic conversations. In a unique partnership with the Bush Foundation (www.bushfoundation.org) the Consensus Council has entered a new and exciting phase of operations – bringing opportunity to fund North Dakota organizations – through Community Innovation Grants.

⇒ Want to engage your community to solve a problem?

⇒ Want to use the current strengths and resources in your community as a starting point in your problem solving?

⇒ Want to work collaboratively with other groups and organizations to create solutions that are better than what any one of you could achieve alone?

These grants are definitely for you!

Community Innovation grants support communities to use problem-solving processes that lead to more effective, equitable and sustainable solutions. Think of it as civic research and development (R&D), allowing communities to develop and test new solutions to community challenges.

There’s a lot of work that happens in between identifying a community problem and implementing a new “break-through” solution, especially if you want to engage your community, make the most of existing assets and work collaboratively with other organizations along the way. Our Community Innovation Grants support that process – they fund the work that it takes to create a community innovation.

We know that there are many ways to approach solving a community problem. In this program, we are particularly interested in supporting processes that are inclusive, collaborative and resourceful.