Funding is often the main vehicle and key determinant for community action, so it is critical that organizations understand the current funding landscape for community technology efforts. SLG Consulting can help your organization by preparing a comprehensive Funding Strategy, which includes:

• A Positioning Strategy (which is the basis for future grant narratives)
• A Program/Project Budget
• A Complete Index of All Applicable Funding Opportunities, including specific strategies based on the funding agency, its programming, due dates, award amounts, and reporting responsibilities.

Once your organization confirms its funding strategy, SLG Consulting will collaborate with your team to prepare every aspect of your grant applications, including narratives, logic models, budgets, and evaluation metrics. Sam has direct experience with the following funding entities and their community technology funding programs:

Thanks to the recent historic federal investment of $65 billion dollars in the American telecommunications space, there are more opportunities than there ever have been for state and local governments, private and nonprofit providers, and advocacy groups to develop and enhance successful community technology programs with federal and state-based funding.

Because the policies that govern these opportunities are new, and there are legislative differences between different funding entities and programs, it can be overwhelming to make sure that your interpretation of these rules are correct and  compliant. When designing programs, you need peace of mind that your plans are eligible uses and are compliant with all applicable regulations.
 

SLG Consulting can help your team learn how to leverage these policies by contextualizing new and existing legislation for your team. SLG Consulting will also track policy developments and contextualize these changes for your organization so that you know exactly what the rules are and how they may affect your planning and programming.

For community technology initiatives to be truly successful, organizations must perform participatory community engagement processes. For some funding programs, community engagement is a requirement. This is necessary to understand both community needs as well as community strengths. This data is then used to craft reflective programming that addresses the stated needs and strengths  of the communities being served.

SLG Consulting can connect you to the tools and expertise you need to design successful community engagement processes to collect required data. SLG Consulting Community Engagement deliverables can include:

• Surveys
• Workshops
• Activities
• Focus Groups
• Qualitative and Quantitative Data Analysis
• Report of Findings
  

Any investment into community technology initiatives needs to be put into context with your organization's overall strategy as it applies to funding, multi-year planning, and reporting to your stakeholders. This contextualization is especially critical when it comes to understanding what resources you will need to  sustain your community technology programming over time. Contextualized strategic planning sessions also provides the opportunity to see where leveraging your community technology programming can help your organization meet its other goals that may not be directly linked to the initiative.

SLG Consulting is trained to offer wholistic program design that takes into account all the unique circumstances of your organization, its stakeholders, its financial plans, and its covered populations. With a comprehensive strategic plan for implementation in place, your community technology programming will complement and be folded into your other institutional goals.

Usually, a single entity is not going to be able to tackle a longstanding social problem all on its own. Instead, establishing a set of partnerships that collaborate on developing and implementing solutions is a tried and true tactic for community technology initiatives.

Often, groups who are interested in getting technology into the community are already organized around the issue in the form of local, regional, or statewide "digital equity and inclusion" coalitions. SLG consulting has direct experience with building coalitions, helping them formalize and organize themselves to maximize impact. Whether that be through advertising ongoing efforts, raising or distributing funding, or being success advocates for the issue, there are many methods to enhance or establish your coalition.

Another key form of collaboration includes structuring specific private-public partnerships to combine resources and mobilize action. SLG Consulting can provide methods to assess the trajectory of potential partnerships, and offer options for governance and ownership models will fit your P3 best, creating a mutually beneficial outcome for all parties.