A few million dollars of neighborhood matching funds are available for projects in Seattle in 2015, and this is the month to attend a workshop if you are interested in scoring some of that cash. The match you provide does not have to be financial- you can match simply by adding up volunteer hours to the tune of $20 an hour, or professional services at up to $75 per hour.
Matching funds are perfect for building or upgrading parks and playgrounds, including those on school property that are publicly available. Ask yourself- would you rather spend your time begging for money like a politician, or spend your time planning what gets done and then get some exercise raking wood chips into place? Even if you just want money for planning assistance or an event, the matching fund can be applied to that.
I led the renovation of Meridian Playground at the Good Shepherd Center, and even though my kids are grown up now, it’s rewarding to go there and see the kids playing on the equipment we put in. Basically, we did the planning and helped with installation, and the matching fund paid for the equipment we picked out and also for some professional oversight of installation. The parks department owns the equipment and sculptures now, so they are responsible for maintenance.
The easiest to way a pull off a matching fund request is to go through a PTA or other organization. That gives you a pool of volunteers and makes it clear to the city that you aren’t some crank with a crazy idea who might flake out on them. Also, make sure to get in touch with matching fund folks before going too far to make sure your plans have buy in from the agency that will have to approve, insure, and maintain your big idea.
There’s 3 levels of funding with increasingly stringent requirements:
| Funds | Small Sparks | Small and Simple Projects | Large Projects |
| Awards | Up to $1,000. | Up to $25,000. | Up to $100,000. |
| Application Deadlines | Applications accepted year-round. Applications must be received at least six weeks prior to the start of the project. |
February 2, 2015 June 1, 2015 October 5, 2015 |
May 4, 2015 Must attend one of the mandatory workshops. |
| Notice of Decisions | Within two weeks. | Within eight weeks. | Within three months of full proposal deadline. |
| Contract | With the City one month from award notification date. | With the City one month from award notification date. | With the City one to four months from award notification date. |
Follow the links in the chart for more info, or see the overview document on neighborhood matching funds. A side note is that if your idea is particular to Wallingford Playfield then there’s still some money left over from the last NMF project that’s safely stored in the Wallingford Community Council vaults to help out with changes you want to see made. If you want to suggest a project but don’t know how to get started, leave a note in the comments. Thanks!
Cool. Out of curiosity, is there a list somewhere of past or current projects in Wallingford that have used this mechanism?
I don’t see a master list, although if you dive into the links for each fund they list winners of the latest round of projects. Wallingford has not been making NMF project requests this past year that I know about, which is partly why I posted this. If any project gets proposed I expect it will get approved because there’s little to no competition in our area. I think the McDonald school playground is the last big NMF project that was approved for our area.
The Good Shepherd p-patch is currently using a Small and Simple grant to replace plot borders and develop planting areas with better accessibility. Not sure why it’s listed as a Lake Union project!
For the Department of Neighborhoods, Wallingford is part of the Lake Union District along with Eastlake and Fremont. At some point I’ll do a really confusing post about all the divisions and groupings in local government.
That would be interesting — My friends and I have wondered about it. We’ve also wondered what constitute “official” neighborhood boundaries and whether they differ from de facto neighborhood boundaries. Maybe I’m imagining it, but it seems like sometimes which neighborhood a business says it’s in depends more on what kind of clientele they want to attract than on their actual location.
I want to write the article as I don’t know whether the boundaries of “Wallingford” exist in any real way other than in peoples’ minds. Real estate agents fudge boundaries, probably other businesses too. The crazy thing is how even official boundaries are don’t exist- each government agency has a different boundary for our neighborhood, and that’s just the government of Seattle. If you look at the school district or the county or the state then things get even more confusing.
Anyhow, for the purpose of the Neighborhood Matching Fund, what we understand as Wallingford is in the Lake Union District.
Freeway Estates Community Orchard won a NMF Small and Simple grant in 2013 to design the space and a NMF Large grant for construction in 2014 of some of the elements in that design. The space is on WSDOT land on 6th Ave. NE, between NE 60th St. and NE 63rd St. and therefore technically Green Lake neighborhood. As I understand things, NE 60th is the border of Wallingford. Being right on the border, FECO certainly serves Wallingford residents (myself included).