Local Businesses Supporting Youth Development

Youth programming in any given county tends to be funded by three sources: government, grants, and local businesses. The third one is the least discussed and often the most dependable.

Government money moves slowly and arrives attached to categories that may not match the actual problem. Grant funding is competitive, time-limited and heavy on reporting; a small nonprofit can spend more hours applying than the grant is worth. Neither is a reason to avoid them, but neither lets you promise a student anything in March.

A local business writing a modest cheque that renews is different. It is small, it is predictable, and it is unrestricted. That combination is what allows a foundation to commit to a specific student for a full year rather than helping retrospectively after a family has already had the bad month.

There is a second reason small businesses matter here, which is proximity. The owner of a cleaning company in Hyattsville is not evaluating a funding proposal from three states away. They know the schools. Sometimes their own children went to them. That shortens the distance between the money and the problem considerably.

For customers who want to support businesses that do this, the difficulty is finding them. Every business claims community involvement on its own website and almost none of it is verifiable. A directory of businesses that have actually contributed to a named nonprofit solves that, which is most of why ours exists.

You can browse the current supporters by category and by city. They range across cleaning, legal, automotive, restaurants, health and trades, and the only thing they have in common is that they funded education for young people in Jamaica.

If you run a business here and want to be among them, applying is free and payment comes only after approval.