The Community Festival established the grants program in the spirit of giving back to the community. Each year, ComFest invites grant applications to support and sustain programming consistent with ComFest’s principles which are rooted in community, social justice and progressive activism.
2020 ComFest Grants Recipients
- Food Not Bombs – Columbus
Food Not Bombs (FNB) is a non-violent direct action solidarity dedicated to changing society so that food becomes a person’s given right, rather than a “gift” to be begged for. The organization reclaims food that would otherwise end up in a landfill and provides it to people via fresh produce and bread handouts, and prepared meal services.
ComFest’s grant will enable the acquisition of a walk-in cooler to expand safe refrigeration capacity. The improved capacity will allow FNB to reclaim a greater quantity of food, preventing it from going to waste and instead providing it to persons in need.
- Summer Jam West, Inc.: Color Your World Green
Summer Jam West is an arts and music organization in the Hilltop neighborhood. The festival is an annual event, and features the installation of permanent, public art as a gift to the community.
ComFest’s grant will support a commissioned mural to be painted at 3045 Sullivant Ave. Local artists Michael Boudreault and Chris McDaniels (Artisan Rooms) were selected to produce the mural. The design reflects this year’s theme of “Color Your World Green.” The mural depicts a “green goddess” dropping her veil of hair over a smog filled, industrialized area. The mural’s message is to protect and heal the earth.
- VoiceCorps Reading Service: Reading for Blind Residents of Franklin County
VOICEcorps is a radio reading service that enriches lives by reading printed news and information to people who are blind, have low vision, or other conditions that prevent reading. Oftentimes, these are men and women who have experienced vision loss late in life – after a lifetime of independent reading. ComFest’s grant will support an awareness and outreach campaign to increase the number of persons served by VoiceCorps.
- Clintonville-Beechwold Community Resources Center: Community Homeless Kit Project
Clintonville-Beechwold Community Resources Center (CRC) has been working with those facing homelessness since the agency started in 1971. CRC provides resources for this population including food, clothing, warm blankets, housing referrals, assistance in applying for benefits, and more. CRC is often asked by community members what they can do when they encounter someone who is homeless. In response, CRC developed the Community Homeless Kit Project. A kit includes essential personal care items and bus passes. ComFest’s grant will allow CRC to purchase supplies for 200 homeless kits. The kits will be available for anyone in the community to pick up and hand out when they see someone living on the streets.
- Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services (ETSS): Survivor Support Services
A ComFest grant will assist ETSS in providing services for vulnerable populations escaping abusive relationships. Tragically, the majority of Central Ohio’s immigrant and refugee communities are isolated and often don’t understand the inner workings of social service support systems in the United States. Survivor Support bridges that disconnect by providing emergency services to immigrant and refugee survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking. In 2019, ETSS Family Care served 83 primary victims and 187 secondary victims from 29 different countries.
- IMPACT Safety, a program of LifeCare Alliance: Safe Bars 614
Safe Bars 614 is a restaurant and bar intervention program that teaches staff how to intervene in sexual assault, harassment, and other disruptive behaviors they see occurring in their places of employment. Safe Bars 614 uses an innovative bystander intervention curriculum to empower participants to stand up against sexual harassment, sexual assault, and other acts of inappropriate behavior to increase safety and comfort in Franklin County bars and restaurants.
A grant from ComFest will help market and publicize the workplace training program, produce promotional materials to build interest around the program and achieve buy-in from restaurants and bars, primarily those located in the Short North area.
2019 ComFest Grants Recipients
- Women Have Options Ohio: EC For All
- Your Best Self: Navigating Healthy Relationships
- Grey Matter Media: Matter Mobile Studio
- 934 Gallery: Summer Music Program
- Growlers Dog Bones: Vocational training.
2018 ComFest Grants Recipients
The mission of Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services (ETSS) is to be the focal point of integration for immigrants, refugee families, and low income individuals in Central Ohio. The Survivor Support Group provides assistance for foreign born survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking and sexual assault. The ComFest grant will assist ETSS and Survivor Support with supplies for meetings, including: financial literacy activities, gift cards, bus passes, culturally appropriate food, and printing and copying services.
Restoring Our Own Through Transformation (ROOTT) is seeking grant funding to collaborate with The Center for Humane Options In Childbirth Experiences (CHOICE) as a means to improve outcomes in infant mortality as it affects the Black community. This project addresses the need for Black-led education in antenatal, perinatal and postpartum education, with particular focus on combating the effects of structural and institutional racism, and reducing the rate of infant mortality in the Black community. Our grant will go towards training materials, books, diagnostic instruments, and printing costs for curriculum books.
The Hubbard Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) serves the families and students of Hubbard Mastery School, a Columbus City School serving students in pre-K through 6th grade. The Playground Project will utilize volunteer labor from families and community groups to convert a portion of their asphalt playground to a green natural play space for recreation and outdoor learning. Our grant will assist with purchase of trees, plants, wood chips, and natural play materials.
The mission of Striving to Achieve Real Success (STARS) is to find talented teens that seek successful careers in the music, video and/or graphic arts industries, and to develop them into knowledgeable, noteworthy adults. The Emerging Young Musician Outreach Program helps at-risk Ohio teens develop the technical, engineering, and artistic skills necessary for successful careers. Our grant will assist with the purchase of musical instruments for use by students.
The Sunbury Urban Farm strives to educate and inspire its community as to the importance of agriculture, nutrition, sustainability, and the environment. The program hopes to expand its day camp to nine weeks in 2018. The ComFest grant will go towards supplies, equipment, and financial assistance to campers.
Radio 614 serves to educate the public about audio, video, internet and broadcast technologies, as well as to help individuals find ways to use these technologies to enrich local culture in the Central Ohio Region. Radio 614 Live will produce high-quality live remote broadcasts of music-related community events and seek to work with artists and musicians who are underserved by local media. The grant from ComFest will assist with the purchase of equipment for live broadcasts.
IMPACT Safety has served the central Ohio community for more than 20 years by developing and teaching interpersonal safety skills to a wide range of populations, including women, youth, the elderly, professionals in the workplace, and individuals living with disabilities. The purpose of the Bystander Intervention Training is to empower people by teaching them self-defense and assertive communication skills that will help them protect themselves, their neighbors, and their communities. Funding from the ComFest Community Grants will support IMPACT Safety program fees and interpretation costs to provide four bystander intervention trainings.
Actors’ Theatre of Columbus is a local performing arts troupe celebrating their 37th year. Access Shakespeare is the group’s outreach program that allows the company to work with residential care facilities, community groups, schools, and incarceration centers. The goal of the program is to allow people who have limited access to theater and performance arts to experience live theater and participate in performances.
- Heaven Sent Community Garden – Breaking Chains Ranch
The purpose of Heaven Sent Community Garden is to create Healthy Habits & Healthy Habitats. They are establishing a Community Garden in partnership with Heaven Sent Children’s Academy. The ComFest grant will help pay for an artist’s mural and wooden signage, as well for a shed, table, shade, and plants.
2017 ComFest Grants Recipients
- Charitable Pharmacy of Central Ohio: Nutrition, Education and Cooking Classes for Low-Income Patients will support and enhance individualized nutrition counseling and provide hands-on cooking demonstrations by dietitians for 45 patients to equip and motivate them to voluntarily manage their food choices.
- Community Arts Project: King Arts Complex Youth Summer Camp will provide campers ages 5-13 from economically disadvantaged households a summer camp developed around the theme of Black Arts Movement. Youth will be introduced to local and nationally recognized artists who use their art to advocate for social justice.
- Central Ohio Worker Center: Restaurant Worker Survey will gather information from at least 300 Columbus restaurant workers. Results will help build a database of wages, working conditions, benefits, and struggles of restaurant workers in the area that will track wage theft, discrimination, and workplace harassment. COWC is also providing “Know Your Rights” sessions to inform workers of their rights.
- Cbus Libraries: Eco Library project will build a temporary art, literature, and educational installation of four little libraries in one structure, The Eco Library. Their goal is to engage participants over the course of outdoor festivals, promote social change through a unique presentation, and advance harmony with the environment.
- Global Gallery: Women Crafting Change will expand its programs with a summer internship. Ten teenage girls from the Hilltop area will learn creative business skills and work side by side with current WCC members. These teens will come from a partnership with Faith Community Church and the teen program at the Shalom Zone.
- Youth Yoga Project: Yoga in Schools will present a 12-week yoga and wellness program at three Columbus City Schools in underserved and under-resourced neighborhoods. YIS is designed to improve their physical, social, and emotional well-being and increase academic success.
- Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Ohio: Camp Lionheart provides children with the compassion and expertise needed to help face the difficulties of grieving losses due to suicide, murder, and drug overdose, as well as terminal illness, sudden death, and trauma, while providing a highly therapeutic, fun and healing program. Now in its 11th year, Camp Lionheart works with children and teens, ages 7-17, who are grieving losses.
- Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services: Survivor Support Group will help survivors break their social isolation and empower them with skills to help them be independent from their abusers. The program focuses on bringing culturally specific outreach and services to refugee and immigrant women and families in Central Ohio involved in sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, human trafficking, and stalking situations.
2016 ComFest Grants Recipients
- Central Ohio Green Education Fund: Start-up expenses for WGRN Radio Women’s Programming Initiative
- Community Organizing Center: Southside Community Collaborative Teen Institute
- Cornerstone of Hope: In School Grief Support Group
- Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services: Human Trafficking Awareness Campaign
- Franklin County Local Outreach to Suicide Survivors (LOSS): Remembrance jewelry and monthly survivor scrapbook group
- Franklinton CycleWorks: Outdoor bicycle air pump and maintenance station
- Good Neighbors of Central Ohio: Good Neighbors Picnic for homeless individuals
- Third Hand Bicycle Co-op: LED lighting conversion
- Vanderelli Room: Artist Holistic Integrative Educational Program for young artists with autism and other disabilities.
2015 ComFest Grants Recipients
- Central Ohio Green Education Fund
- Central Ohio Worker Center
- CMAA Refugee Services
- Community Computer Alliance
- Franklin County Local Outreach ro Suicide Survivor Team (LOSS)
- Friends of the Ravines
- Girlz Rhythm and Rock Camp
- Good Neighbors of Central Ohio
2014 ComFest Grants Recipients
- CHOICE
- Franklin Park Civic Association
- Global Gallery
- Kossuth Street Garden
- LifeCare Alliance
- WCBE Radio
- WCRS Columbus Community Radio
- YMCA
2013 ComFest Grants Recipients
- Court Appointed Social Advocates (CASA) of Franklin County
- Community Organizing Center
- Girlz Rhythm and Rock Camp
- Izaak Walton League Capital City Chapter
- Kossuth Street Gardens
- Near East Side Bike Co-op
- Rwandan Women in Action
- Summit & 16th United Methodist Church & University District Freedom School
2012 ComFest Grants Recipients
- CHOICE
- COVA
- Columbus Green Building Forum
- Columbus Youth Guild
- Girlz Rhythm and Rock Camp
- Goodale Park Music Series
- Huckleberry House
- Kossuth Street Commonwealth Garden
- Short North Civic Association
- SOLE
- Sporeprint InfoShop
- Third Hand Bicycle Cooperative
- UAEA (University Area Enrichment Association)
- WCRS
- Westminster-Thurber Community
- Youth Advocate Services
2011 ComFest Grants Recipients
- CHOICE
- Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism – Free Press
- Film Council of Greater Columbus, Inc.
- Huckleberry House
- Near Northside Emergency Material Assistance Program
- Westminster-Thurber Community
2010 ComFest Grants Recipients
- The Center for Humane Options in Childbirth Experiences
- The Charles School at Ohio Dominican University
- Clintonville-Beachwold Community Resource Center
- Columbus AIDS Task Force
- Iuka Park Ravine Association – Earth Touch
- The Peach District
- Pedal Instead
- Third Hand Bike Cooperative
2009 ComFest Grants Recipients
- The Center for Humane Options in Childbirth Experiences
- Columbus AIDS Task Force
- Friends of the Lower Olentangy Watershed
- Historic Peace Churches of Ohio
- Native American Indian Center
- University Area Enrichment Association (Pedal Instead)
- Third Hand Bicycle Cooperative
- WCRS & Simply Living
- Westminter-Thurber Community
2008 ComFest Grants Recipients
- Camp Sunrise
- Clintonville-Beechwold Community Resource Center
- Free Geek
- Friends of the Homeless
- Graham School
- IMPACT Safety
- Third Hand Bike Co-op
2007 ComFest Grants Recipients
- Simply Living: Equipment to furnish a broadcasting studio for the low power community radio station 102.1 FM.
- Friends of the Lower Olentangy Watershed, aka FLOW: Website enhancements.
- Columbus Children’s Theatre: Children’s acting class at St. John’s Episcopal Church and the Homeless Families Foundation.
- WCBE: Equipment for Studio A.
- Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism: Equipment for a citizen’s video journalism project.
- Free Geek Columbus: Computer class training materials and internet access to train limited-resource persons in computer skills.
- Friends of the Ravines: Costs of publication of the Ravinia newsletter.
- Camp Sunrise: Provide transportation of Franklin County HIV/AIDS-impacted children to camp.
- Adena Brook Community: Install a model rain garden to reduce stormwater runoff into Adena Brook.
2006 ComFest Grants Recipients
- Friends Of Alum Creek
- IMPACT Safety
- Ohio Patient Network
- Friends Of the Lower Olentangy Watershed
- Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism
- Columbus Community Radio Foundation
- Victorian Village Society
- Friends Of The Homeless
- Friends Of The Ravines
- Short North Special Improvement District
Click here if you would like to donate to the ComFest Grants fund.
100% of your donation goes directly the grants fund.
2024 Recipients
2023 Recipients
2022 Recipients
2021 Recipients
