The Florida BRAIVE Fund at Dade Community Foundation was created to provide assistance to current and former military personnel serving in Iraq or Afghanistan and their families. Grants are being made to non-profit agencies that currently serve the military and their families, or agencies that could, with additional funding, meet an identified unmet need of military personnel who are or have served in Iraq or Afghanistan and their families.
The Florida BRAIVE Fund will support efforts that help service the needs of military personnel and their families before, during, and after deployment. Priority areas include family readiness and support--before and during deployment; support for military personnel and families transitioning after discharge; services for injured and disabled veterans; and supports for surviving family members of fallen heroes.
In 2008, Dade Community Foundation, The Community Foundation in Jacksonville and Gulf Coast Community Foundation of Venice in Southwest Florida were each awarded $5 million grants through a national initiative to establish a Florida initiative addressing the urgent needs of military personnel and their families impacted by deployment to Afghanistan and/or Iraq. The funding was awarded by The Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund (IADIF) of the California Community Foundation. IADIF was created in response to a multitude of unmet needs arising among these military service men and women and their families as a direct result of their deployment. The foundations jointly established The Florida BRAIVE Fund, with each foundation managing grants in their region of Florida.
The grant to Dade Community Foundation enables the Foundation to address the urgent need to support troops, veterans and their families living in southeast Florida with the personal challenges they face as a result of their service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Following an initial assessment of the local service and support needs in 2008, the Foundation began working with area nonprofit organizations to respond to them during through grantmaking in 2009 and 2010. The first round of grantees has been selected in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties, and a Request for Proposal released for Broward, Palm Beach and Martin counties.
The Foundation created an advisory committee of individuals knowledgeable about the current resources available and unmet needs of military personnel and their families to assist in this important venture. The initial research phase identified service providers in the five-county Southeast region that already serve veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Foundation began its efforts in Miami-Dade County and the Florida Keys, and is now expanding to the southeast Florida counties of Broward, Palm Beach and Martin.
It is clear that currently numerous military service providers are working on behalf of local military personnel and their families. Anecdotal evidence, however, indicates these disparate efforts lack sufficient capacity, and there is little coordination or communication among these providers and with community agencies whose resources could be helpful to military families. Moving forward, the Foundation will develop partnerships with existing agencies that have the skills and experience to meet these needs, but perhaps not the resources to expand their services to address unmet needs and service gaps. The plan is to seek out and work with organizations to develop new needed services to address unmet needs.
