Resource Highlight: City of Austin’s Community Navigator Program
The Program
(Description taken from Community Navigator website)
The Economic Development Department’s Community Navigator Program supports local businesses, non-profit organizations, and creative professionals impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Local entities can apply for no-cost assistance from Community Navigators for one-on-one coaching, virtual classes, and applying for government and philanthropic support. This program was approved by Austin City Council from Austin’s allocation of the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
To be eligible, local entities must be located in the Austin-Round Rock Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). The Austin-Round Rock MSA includes Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Travis, and Williamson counties.
Registrants can choose to receive services from a range of trusted and diverse Community Navigators. In addition to the Community Navigators, Art Spark Texas is available to assist with stakeholder engagement to local creative professionals.
Partnership with Mission Capital
Mission Capital is proud to be a partner with the City of Austin and the Community Navigator program. We encourage our community to see if they can benefit by requesting funding for events/professional development offerings, technical assistance in applying for local, state, and federal grants, and up to three hours of consulting from the MC team.
We reached out to a few of our current members who have made use of the Community Navigator Program in order to learn from their experiences. Here’s what they had to say:
Youth Justice Alliance
Mission Capital member, Youth Justice Alliance, works to spread access to legal knowledge, legal support, and legal careers to underrepresented and under supported communities. We have three key elements of our work. First, we help support secondary legal education programs with curriculum assistance and connections to legal professionals. Second, we run a fellowship for aspiring first-generation lawyers from their senior year of high school through their senior year of college. Third, we advocate for the spread of high school legal aid clinics, where a licensed attorney and a team of high school student legal assistants can bring much needed legal assistance to their neighbors.
Through Mission Capital and the Community Navigator Program, we were connected to SVPs who provided meaningful feedback to our programmatic and marketing strategy. We utilized that feedback to update our mission, our language, and our plans to bring in additional support. Instead of learning lessons from rejected grant applications, we turned SVP feedback into successful grant applications.
We would highly recommend this program to similar organizations. Especially for our organization that currently consists of one employee, having extra eyes and ears on our work was a huge benefit. Having the support of experienced and successful local for-profit and nonprofit leaders was a cherry on top.
The Other Ones Foundation (TOOF)
TOOF is an Austin-based nonprofit that offers humanitarian aid, case management, and extremely low barrier work opportunities to people experiencing homelessness. Our mission is to welcome our unhoused neighbors into an engaged community through shelter, opportunity, and support.
TOOF participated in an incubator program to develop micro-enterprise strategies. The training facilitated innovation and real time design of business strategy, while leveraging strengths and partnerships of the participants.
TOOF highly recommends utilizing the Community Navigator Program to access Mission Capital resources. We recommend giving yourself the time and the space to innovate, by participating in one of these programs. It was a supportive and energizing experience, making ambitious goals feel attainable.
For more information or to apply for funding, visit the City of Austin Community Navigator Program.