The Central New York Community Foundation has named Madison County Rural Health Council the winner of a $75,000 participatory budgeting grant to support housing stability for families in Madison County. The winning proposal, which is focused on emergency assistance and education, was selected through a public vote held Thursday, June 25, as part of the Community Foundation’s participatory budgeting initiative celebrating its upcoming centennial.
Voting took place online throughout the day and in person during a live community celebration held at the Smithfield Community Center. A total of 137 votes were cast.
The winning grant will help the council combine emergency financial assistance with education, resource navigation and community partnerships. The project aims to help working families remain safely housed while connecting them to services that support financial well-being and overall health. By addressing housing instability, the organization hopes to strengthen household resilience and improve quality of life for Madison County residents.
“We are deeply grateful to the Community Foundation, the Madison County community, and our dedicated team for believing in our mission and investing in our vision,” said Christine Paul, executive director of MCRHC. “Their confidence in our proposal reflects a shared commitment to ensuring that individuals and families have access to the resources they need to achieve housing stability and financial empowerment. We are honored by this partnership and excited to put these resources to work for the people we serve, ensuring that the impact is felt directly in neighborhoods throughout our community.”
Thursday’s vote marked the culmination of a month-long community engagement process that invited Madison County residents to help determine how funding should be invested locally. During two participatory budgeting sessions held earlier this month at Madison County Cornell Cooperative Extension, residents worked to identify pressing community challenges and develop project ideas that would best support local needs. Participants identified increasing housing stability for families as the community’s top funding priority.
“This process was designed to ensure that residents had a direct voice in shaping solutions for their community,” said Qiana Williams, senior program officer at the Community Foundation. “Community members shared their experiences, identified what they believed was most needed and helped guide this investment from start to finish. That level of participation and collaboration is what makes participatory budgeting so meaningful.”
The ballot also included proposals submitted by Community Action Partnership for Madison County. Participating nonprofit organizations worked closely with Community Foundation staff to refine their ideas and ensure proposals reflected community input gathered during the participatory budgeting sessions.
The Madison County initiative is the second of five participatory budgeting projects the Community Foundation will host across its service area as part of its two-year centennial celebration leading up to 2027. Collectively, the initiatives will distribute $500,000 in funding through projects selected directly by residents. Additional participatory budgeting initiatives are taking place in Oswego, Cortland, Cayuga and Onondaga counties.
Participatory budgeting is a community engagement process in which residents help decide how funding is allocated through a structured process of community need identification, prioritization and voting. In partnership with residents, nonprofits and grassroots organizations, participants identify priorities, co-design solutions and ultimately select the project they believe will best address a community need.
To learn more about the Community Foundation’s participatory budgeting initiative, visit cnycf.org/pbmadisoncounty.
