Advocacy in Action: The Journey to Securing FY2025 Funding for MENTOR Rhode Island
August 5, 2024
About a month ago, I received a letter that MENTOR Rhode Island’s request for FY2025 congressionally directed spending had been forwarded by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse to the committee that oversees education funding projects. While not a guarantee, that typically means that there is a very good chance our request will be funded. A few weeks after the first letter, another arrived -this time from Senator Jack Reed. He serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and also put forward our request to that committee, further strengthening our chances to receive this large funding request.
But the story of this advocacy win didn’t start with the application process for the funding. Instead, it was born through years of effort both in advocacy and work performance. Because much of MENTOR and its Affiliates’ work is funded through the federal government, MENTOR Rhode Island has always placed an emphasis on maintaining a strong relationship with the state’s congressional delegation. In this case, the fact that our state is small is a great asset. With only 4 delegation members, we have the opportunity to connect with them on a fairly regular basis. With a robust non-profit community and lively political landscape, there are numerous events, announcements, openings, etc., where it is possible to interact with them, remind them of our organization’s existence, and thank them for their continued support. Those interactions are then supplemented by opportunities to engage with them and their staff on a more formal basis at events like our annual Capitol Hill Day meeting, interactions in their district offices, an invitation to one of our own events, or a simple request to their staff for a letter of support for a federal grant we are applying for.
Over the years, this work led to a strong relationship that garnered MENTOR Rhode Island a congressionally directed spending award in a previous fiscal year. We made sure the delegation and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse specifically were appropriately thanked for that opportunity – and then we outperformed the expectations set forth for the project. When the project concluded, we built a report chronicling that success. We presented the report to the offices of each delegation member at our Capitol Hill Day 2024 meetings. We also successfully nominated Senator Whitehouse for MENTOR’s federal government public service Champion of Mentoring Award, which was presented to him at the Capitol Hill Day meeting.
It was just two months later that the application for a congressionally directed spending request from Senator Whitehouse’s office was due. It’s a request that looks to be successful thanks to the relationships we built and the quality of our work. But advocacywork is never truly done; we are continuing to build relationships and, hopefully, even more future advocacy wins with our congressional delegation.
This spring, Rhode Island’s two congressmen, Rep. Seth Magaziner and Rep. Gabe Amo jointly hosted “Rhode Island Days at the Capitol.” Both congressmen have only been in office since 2023 and 2024 respectively, replacing the state’s long-time congressmen in Jim Langevin and David Cicilline. MENTOR Rhode Island was among the organizations invited to attend Rhode Island Days. More than 100 people from non-profits, business, labor, and local government attended. The two-day conference featured speakers and panel discussions on several different topics associated with federal policy, and afforded attendees the chance to interact with the congressmen, their key staff, other legislators, federal agency staff, and experts in the issues that were discussed. By attending and making the case for youth mentoring at this event, both congressmen asked us to work with their staff to see how they could support mentoring. We continue to develop these relationships and strengthen the well-established ones we already have, with an eye to the future and more advocacy wins.