After a years-long planning process, a new Kingston initiative is ready to enact its vision of a grant program entirely directed and supported by city residents. Kingston Common Futures is currently recruiting 30 locals to help distribute $150,000 in grants aimed at improving conditions for underserved populations in the city.

Kingston Common Futures grew out of a 2022 effort by another local nonprofit, the Good Works Institute, to start a community conversation about how to define and build community wealth. The meeting led to the formation of a committee in 2023. The steering committee met two to six hours a week to discuss a funding model based on the ancient idea of “The Commons,” in which certain community resources like pastures or farm fields are held as common property and managed through a democratic process.

Project Director of Process and Learning Clay Moodey said those early discussions revolved around how to address two major issues facing Kingston residents: lack of housing and food insecurity. But the 18-member steering committee quickly realized that their starting budget of $150,000 provided by NoVo in Kingston was too small to make a dent in either issue.

“We felt like that pool of money would not be sufficient to steward redistribution of resources in a way that would be equitable,” said Moodey. “It just wouldn’t make enough impact.”

The committee then began thinking of another angle — a community-run fund to support smaller-scale efforts by city residents on a wide range of issues. The funds would be available to a wide swath of Kingstonians including nonprofits, individuals and businesses. Criteria for the grants would include efforts to redistribute power and resources to marginalized communities, a commitment to meeting local needs in the city and an alignment with the principles of “just transition” — a philosophy the grew out of the labor and environmental movements which calls for transitioning to a sustainable, low-carbon economy in ways that do not hurt workers or leave behind poor and vulnerable populations.

Key to the new fund’s mission is transparency and community control. The group is in the process of recruiting 30 city residents who will act as “readers,” going over and scoring applications for grants ranging from $5,000 to $50,000. Scoring will be based on a publicly available set of criteria while members of the steering committee will act as mentors to applicants who have never written a grant application before. Once the readers have scored the applications, members of the steering committee will make a final decision to ensure that funded projects are in line with core values and principles.

“We felt that in Kingston, and really everywhere, the funding world is just not a space where there’s a lot of transparency, there’s not really a lot of agency,” said Moodey. “We were interested in how a wider subset of the community than the 18 folks who were part of the design process could make use of these funds.”

The program is currently accepting letters of intent to seek project funds through May 1. Applications will be accepted from May 16 to June 20. Plans call for announcing 25 finalists on July 11. Final decisions on funding will be made in early August. Information on how to apply for a grant or serve as a “reader” are available at www.kingstoncommonfutures.org.