Organization: The Fund for Santa Barbara
The Fund for Santa Barbara (FUND) is a 501c3 nonprofit community foundation advancing progressive change by strengthening movements for social, political, economic, and environmental justice in the Santa Barbara County region. The FUND provides cash grants and capacity building assistance to community-based organizations, convenes activists around critical issues, and represents grassroots interests within the larger philanthropic community. Now having embarked on its 40th year, the FUND has cultivated a wealth of insight into grassroots-led social change efforts in the region, including building robust archives and a network of organizations and supporters in the local community.
Project: Archival & Communications Fellow
Last year, the FUND initiated a targeted project to analyze and present the organization’s impact on issue-based movement-building victories in the region over its four decade-long history—particularly focusing on its grants programs. The Archival & Communications Fellow will build on this work to continue selecting, analyzing, and presenting longitudinal trends and narratives about the FUND’s grantmaking history in priority issue area(s), such as environmental justice, LGBTQ+, economic justice, and political reform. The Fellow may but need not have expertise or experience in the specific subject areas. The FUND intends to use this initial effort to create a research and marketing model, which it would then replicate to all of its other major issue areas. The FUND’s grantmaking archives include detailed descriptions, news clippings, reports, and key contacts of grassroots-led local work addressing the root causes of societal problems over the past forty years. The project would entail varying degrees of the following:
- Codifying key metrics of projects funded while refining and documenting methodology;
Conducting informational interviews with key stakeholders—longtime community activists, policy makers, FUND staff, academics, and grassroots leaders; - Developing and carrying out a communications plan to present highlighted findings via the FUND’s various communications channels—depending on the skill set and interests of the Fellow, these may include an impact report, short video(s), infographics, online landing page, social media campaign, etc.; and
- Depending on the project timeline, the Fellow may also be assisting with the FUND’s exploration of moving its archives to a collection at UC Santa Barbara beginning in 2021.
The internship can begin on June 15, 2020, or as early as April 2020 should the Fellow’s availability allow. A schedule can be crafted between 10-20 weeks for 10-20 hours per week depending on the schedules of FUND staff and the Fellow.