Rhode Island Foundation Honors 5 Nonprofits with 2014 Best Practices Awards

Rhode Island Foundation Honors 5 Nonprofits with 2014 Best Practices Awards

The Rhode Island Foundation’s Initiative for Nonprofit Excellence has awarded its 2014 Best Practice Awards to 5 local non-profits.

“These organizations emerged from a highly competitive process and an impressive group of nominees. There is something valuable in each of their remarkable examples that can help every nonprofit achieve more,” said Jill Pfitzenmayer, INE’s vice president.

The awards honor work ranging from helping low-income households open bank accounts to preventing domestic violence.  Each non-profit honored by the INE will receive a $1,000 grant and tuition waivers for up to two board or staff members to any INE professional development workshop or seminar in the next 12 months.

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Organizations Honored

The Capital Good Fund (CGF) received the Innovation Award for creative approaches that strongly incentivized savings while making it easier to open an affordable bank account and have a tax refund direct deposited into it.

"Everyone, from policymakers to regulators to civic groups and nonprofits, recognizes the importance of having a checking and saving account. The problem, however, is that millions of Americans remain unbanked," said Andy Posner, CGF’s founder and executive director. "Our innovation addresses one of the key reasons for this: the inconvenience of opening an account.  Instead, community members are able to open an account at our office while filing their taxes or receiving one of our other services.  Using this model, we opened more than a dozen checking and savings accounts and empowered taxpayers to save $51,000."

The Providence Student Union (PSU) won the Advocacy Award for its public policy advocacy effort to increase the number of students who qualify for free bus service to and from school.

"We're very honored to receive the Rhode Island Foundation's Best Practices in Advocacy award. PSU's youth leaders worked very hard to engage fellow students, build partnerships, and increase public demand for a successful change to Providence's transportation policy. Now, up to 1,800 additional Providence high school students will be able to access school," said Roselin Trinidad, student leader, Providence Student Union.

ecoRI News won the Collaboration Award for its EcoRI Earth program, which diverts waste from the state’s Central Landfill by collecting food scraps from 80 customers in the Greater Providence area and distributing them to urban farms for composting.

The Providence Children’s Museum will receive the Leadership Award for increasing operational efficiencies by defining strong strategic priorities, restructuring staff and adding expertise to create a strong executive team.

The Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence received the Communications Award for the “KNOW MORE” public education campaign, which used traditional and new media strategies to target specialized populations including men, youth and the Latino community.

Local Ties

The Coalition Against Domestic Violence is the only organization of the 5 not based in Providence.

The awards are sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield RI, in conjunction with the Rhode Island Foundation.  The Rhode Island Foundation is the largest funder of nonprofit organizations in the state.