Bridge Builders Microgrants

Who We Are

The Michigan Municipal League Foundation is on a mission to create and cultivate the resources, partnerships, and opportunities that Michigan communities need to thrive.

The MML Foundation serves as the philanthropic arm of the Michigan Municipal League.

The Michigan Municipal League is a 125-year-old statewide association representing more than 500 full-service cities, villages, and urban townships. The Michigan Municipal League is dedicated to making Michigan's communities better by thoughtfully innovating programs, energetically connecting ideas and people, actively serving members with resources and services, and passionately inspiring positive change for Michigan's greatest centers of potential: its communities.

The MML Foundation's Bridge Builders Microgrants program has been a valuable initiative and has demonstrated the power of cross-sector collaboration by supporting creative, place-based projects that include municipal leaders, community leaders, and other stakeholders. These projects shine a light on the tremendous potential in Michigan communities.

Bridge Builders Microgrants

Throughout its first four years, the Bridge Builders Microgrants program offered small, one-time grants that funded creative projects in Michigan Municipal League member communities. The program aimed to bring people together through collaborative efforts while celebrating community and diversity. The funding amounts, while small, often served as a catalyst for greater community change.

Many projects have continued and grown, bigger and better than anything we could have imagined.

Over time, the program evolved to offer two distinct types of microgrants.

Neighborhood Microgrants began at $500 but grew to $1,000 in 2023 in direct response to project leader feedback. These microgrants supported creative projects or events that took place in neighborhoods. Projects were expected to bring people together and to celebrate the community's diversity.

Main Street Microgrants offered $5,000 for creative projects or events that brought together artists, businesses, and municipal government in downtowns or business districts. Projects were required to have a creative element led by an artist and, to fuel economic opportunity, artists were required to be compensated fairly. Projects also involved at least two locally owned small businesses. This helped stimulate support for our state's small businesses during challenging years. Finally, projects were required to have a letter of support from the municipal government. This requirement helped build a sense of trust and belonging between communities and their local governments. Main Street projects were also expected to bring people together and celebrate diversity.

Each year, projects went through a round of internal review, and semi-finalists moved onto a round of public voting. Community members were able to vote for their community's project, and vote totals helped applicants score additional points on their applications. After public voting, semi-finalist applications were reviewed again by a statewide jury. Factors for review included overall project feasibility, community impact, creativity, number of online votes, and diversity, including demographics and geographic location in Michigan. These juries selected each year's projects.

Voting was a special part of this program as it gave communities big and small an opportunity to build comradery through the simple act of an online vote. It also often gave applicants a boost of encouragement!

History

The Bridge Builders Microgrants program began as a pilot during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Michigan Municipal League Foundation knew that, despite the isolation caused by COVID-19, there were plenty of Michiganders eager to bring people together. The pilot program was designed to support and encourage acts of creativity, selflessness, and connection.

In the program's first year, Neighborhood Microgrants were offered. In 2021, the program's second year, Neighborhood Microgrants were offered along with the first round of Main Street Microgrants—thanks to support by the DTE Foundation. Main Street Microgrants were designed in direct response to the overwhelming struggles of small businesses and artists during the pandemic.

In 2022 and 2023, Neighborhood and Main Street Microgrants were offered again.

Program Impact

Bridge Builders projects have spanned the state and have come from many different types of communities. Some projects were accomplished by a handful of residents over the course of a day, while others spanned multiple groups of people and unfolded over a month or longer. This diversity—from geographic region to community types and project details—is precisely what made each project so special.

The program has emphasized two components: community and arts. Twenty-one projects strongly emphasized community, such as through a garden spruce-up, a community space improvement, or an engaging event like a block party or charrette. Twenty-nine projects centered on the arts, like a mural installation, performance art, or a public art installation like a sculpture or art pole.

Reflection

If it's true that the relationship people share with their community is one of the most influential of our lives (and it is true), then the Bridge Builders Microgrants program has served as a way for community members to begin or strengthen that relationship.

Bridge Builders projects have brought people together, including community members, small business owners, artists, municipal leaders, and others to work side by side, and demonstrated that cross-sector collaboration yields valuable results. It has given people opportunities to plug in, to dream about what their communities could be, and to celebrate what makes their communities special.

The Bridge Builders Microgrants program has highlighted the simple idea that investment in people and place matters to Michigan communities. The program has demonstrated that even small amounts of seed funding can have tremendous and transformative impacts on our communities and that all communities have things to celebrate and ideas to implement.

Be it sidewalk art, a downtown mural, a clean-up day at your local park, or the simple act of getting to know your neighbors, we can all be Bridge Builders.