By the time Zora Ball was starting Temple University in Philadelphia, she had already been nominated for an Emmy Award in a category for students. She had sharpened her filmmaking skills at Big Picture Alliance, an apprenticeship program that for 30 years has helped young people who otherwise might not have the opportunity to learn to tell their stories.
Judith Bauer was in her 70s when she started dancing, at first taking belly dancing lessons to help with some health problems. She turns 90 in May, and she is still at it — a member of an improvisational group called Quicksilver, sponsored by Arts for the Aging in the Washington, D.C., area.
In Miami, community fridges are stocked by an organization called Buddy System MIA. Their presence across Miami-Dade County grew out of the coronavirus pandemic, when Kristin Guerin started worrying whether her elderly, disabled neighbors would be able to get their groceries.
All three nonprofit organizations received an NBCUniversal Local Impact Grant last year — part of a $2.5-million distribution to groups in the 11 cities served by NBC- and Telemundo-owned television stations.
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The application period for this year’s awards opens today, and once again $2.5 million will be given out to 501 (c)(3) nonprofits in the available markets. Organizations with expenses of between $100,000 and $1 million are eligible in three categories: youth education and empowerment, next generation storytellers and community engagement.
Applications are available in English and Spanish. The application period closes on April 11.
NBCUniversal has provided $18.5 million to 546 organizations since 2018. The funding is unrestricted.
Funding with fewer constraints has become more common since the coronavirus pandemic, as some philanthropies move to what is known as a trust-based model for giving. It gives nonprofits greater discretion in how to allocate their money and enables them to tackle community problems rapidly.
“The pandemic obviously made clear that there were a lot of societal issues in our communities that needed to be addressed,” said Jessica Clancy, senior vice president of corporate social responsibility for NBCUniversal. “We know that the nonprofits on the ground are the ones that have the most insight into what is that need.”
“This idea of trust-based philanthropy was really accelerated post the pandemic, to get the money as quickly as we could into the hands of nonprofits who are on the ground doing the work in a way that made the most amount of sense for that community,” she said.
Individual stations participate in choosing the grant winners to keep with that philosophy.
The NBC Boston stations emphasize telling the stories of underserved communities in the city, said General Manager Chris Wayland, so for him the organizations that complement that focus, that line up with helping children and communities that have been ignored are the ones he wants to promote.
“I’m always astonished at the lack of support, for especially kids that are in difficult circumstances,” he said.
As NBCUniversal’s grant season for this year gets underway, here is a look at some of last year’s winners and what they have been able to accomplish with the awards.
Arts for the Aging
When Bauer, 89, began having health problems, she was encouraged to round out her exercise regimen with dance lessons.
She eventually found her way to Quicksilver, an improvisational senior dance company sponsored by Arts for the Aging in the Washington, D.C. area. She and the other dancers not only perform but they also visit adult day centers, retirement communities and other such places to encourage fellow seniors to be active and to help to ease loneliness and isolation.
“Our mission really is to go to out to senior centers, any place where seniors gather, in order to bring our work to them and have them participate,” she said.
Bauer attributes her longevity not only to modern medicine but also to diet and exercise. She has fun dancing, she said.
“I dance with joy,” she said. “Some people say, ‘Well, don't you ever have sort of a dance that has to do with sadness?’ But what happens in my body is that I feel like I join the elements, I join the world. And it just fills me with such joy to be moving and expressing myself.”
Quicksilver is one of a number of programs sponsored by Arts for the Aging, led by two of the 26 teaching artists that make up its faculty. The artists work in a variety of disciplines, from dance to painting to story telling.
The grant helped the group to increase its reach, boosting participation by 16%, said Janine Tursini, the organization’s director and CEO.
It just fills me with such joy to be moving and expressing myself.
Judith Bauer
"We were able to reach more older adults and caregivers, more communities that need this kind of work," Tursini said.
The aim is to hold 510 workshops in 48 communities in the region this year, with the idea that regular arts participation improves seniors’ physical, cognitive and emotion health.
“We know that research links isolation and loneliness with accelerated declines in health,” she said. “So for older adults, there's more risk for depression, anxiety, strokes, dementia, and heart disease, just to name a few.”
Big Picture Alliance
Ball, 19, received her Emmy nomination in 2023 after she worked on a news story about illegal parking while interning at WHYY, the city’s public television station. She was part of team in contention in the student category for a video that she edited and co-produced.
Ball explored filmmaking through Big Picture Alliance’s after-school and summer programs, and has a portfolio of short films, a news story and commercial that she made for an NBC apprenticeship. She won a scholarship that helped her enroll at Temple University.
“Everyone really knows each other and it's just like a big family, so I just really love that about [Big Picture Alliance],” she said.
Ball, who converted to Islam last year, now wants to tell stories within the Muslim community as part of her work.
“Before my identity was just as a black woman and making sure the voices of — especially young black girls — are heard, but now it's expanding to other communities as well because that's a part of who I am,” she said.
Big Picture Alliance has served more than 10,000 young people since its creation in 1994. It has grown to include a digital storytelling curriculum for the city’s schools, summer and workforce programs — Big Picture Productions, an Emmy-winning company staffed by its alumni that creates content for clients and the community, and GroundFloor Studios, a production studio that it co-launched.
The programs allow them to see how a job can incorporate artistic work and offer support in finding those jobs.
“It is an industry where there is employment and gig opportunities out there, but it is not a straight line,” said its executive director, Aleks Martray.
Adleen Francis, 21, attended Spelman College in Atlanta for documentary filmmaking but returned to Philadelphia after a year. Through Big Picture Alliance she has gotten a paid apprenticeship with a home remodeling company.
"It's allowed me to immerse myself in videography in a corporate setting," she said.
She continues to work on her personal films. Big Picture Alliance gives her access to equipment that means the difference between a low-budget film and art, she said.
“Philly youth are often the subject of media, but they’re rarely the storytellers,” Martray said.
Buddy System MIA
When the coronavirus pandemic shut down Miami, Kristin Guerin and a friend distributed a flyer looking for volunteers to make sure people were fed. Within weeks they had hundreds.
“It was amazing,” said Guerin, whose acting jobs had also closed down. “We started running our own food distributions weekly and then from there we just grew and grew and grew and found other areas in the community that really needed support, in addition to folks who were homebound, elderly, disabled.”
Today the nonprofit Buddy System MIA collects 250,000 pounds of food a year that would otherwise go to landfills and redistributes it to around 5,000 people. In addition to the fridges, there is a food pantry and a food delivery service for transgender and gender nonconforming people. Homebound residents are paired with a volunteer who will attend food distributions on their behalf. An emergency food program was begun to help those reaching out as a last resort and the community food distributions held at least once a month are open to anyone in need.
Making it all work are 1,600 volunteers, from Girl Scouts who make sandwiches for the fridges, to adults who pick up surplus food and seniors who clean the fridges.
"It's beautiful to see that the community folks who didn't know each other before are coming together over this shared belief," Guerin said.
Some of their clients are without food for the first time and do not know where to go, Guerin said. A mother of three small children who had just lost her job was struggling to pay for both rent and groceries, she said. An elderly woman unable to leave her home was paired with a friendly neighbor, a young man who checks in on her each week.
"We really never expected to grow into what we grew into," Guerin said. "But as we grew and as we started to gain steam and the need became really apparent, we did start to build on and take inspiration from what other folks were doing."
And today, she continues to act, but now it's her side job.
INTEMPO
Valeria Gomar never expected to play for Sirena Huang, praised as one of her generation's most celebrated violinists. That the 16-year-old from Norwalk, Connecticut, was able to participate in a master class with Huang is thanks to INTEMPO, a nonprofit that provides classical and intercultural music education primarily to children from immigrant backgrounds.
Gomar's family is from Mexico and although neither of her parents play instruments, her grandfather and her uncle were in a band together, she said. She joined INTEMPO when she was five, first singing in the choir, but then quickly taking up the violin. Now, her 12-year-old brother who grew up listening to her play is following her example, joining INTEMPO on the violin.
"I have a sense of belonging there," she said of INTEMPO.
With the organization's help, she successfully auditioned for the Norwalk Youth Symphony and performed in concert venues in Rome and Prague. This month, she's preparing for a role in her school's rendition of "Newsies: The Musical."
Gomar plans to study medicine in college in the hope of becoming a cardiothoracic surgeon.
"I'm the first generation of my family to go to college, so it's a really big responsibility," she said.
INTEMPO reaches 700 children each year, ages 4 through 17, through its music school and other programs, said its chief executive officer, Lou Chen. There they are also able to receive help with homework, literacy tutoring and preparation for jobs and college.
"These are kids from around the world, from Afghanistan, from Haiti, from Ukraine, from Ecuador, who in some cases just landed on U.S. soil a few days before we get to work with them, through music, and that really speaks to the universal power of music as a language," Chen said.
Chen will be conducting when INTEMPO holds its annual spring concert on April 5 at Norwalk City Hall. The 140 children in the music school will perform in ensembles and then together at the end.
"I think time stands still a little bit for these kids when they're in our space, and you can see the burdens of the outside world falling from their shoulders," he said.
Scientific Adventures for Girls
Ellyana Thorton was one of 44 girls across the country chosen for a STEM program called Million Girls Moonshot in 2023.
The high school senior traveled from California's Bay Area to Atlanta, and as a member of the group's "flight crew," became an ambassador for the science, technology, engineering and math studies that have gripped her imagination since she was child.
She credits Scientific Adventures for Girls for preparing her for the honor. She joined the after-school program in the first grade and stayed with it each year, eventually becoming a mentor.
"One of our first lessons, it was an engineering project and we were allowed to take apart phones and computers," she said. "We were getting these recycled electronics and we were able to just take them apart, look at what was going on inside."
Now 18, she is waiting to hear from the colleges she applied to, but thinks she wants to major in information science, software engineering or a similar subject. Were it not for Scientific Adventures for Girls, she may never have been exposed to the STEM fields, she said.
"There weren't, there aren't a lot of after-school STEM programs for girls or just disadvantaged communities in general," she said.
Scientific Adventures just marked its 10th anniversary, with an after-school program in 23 elementary schools in the East Bay area that runs for the school year. About 90% of the 850 girls who participate are girls of color, said co-founder Courtenay Carr Heuer.
Heuer, along with co-founder Tiffany Sprague, started the program to provide hands-on engaging classes in STEM fields for their own daughters.
"The girls can meet women that are in these fields that they're learning about and put a face to what it would be like to be in a career like this," she said.
Organizations interested in learning more about this year’s grant program can register for the Local Impact Grant Webinar to join an informational session on March 18 at 10 a.m. PT.
