Building Community PHL: Accessing Resources to Build Your Networks and Support Your Mission

This will be an interactive conversation about the funding landscape in and around Philadelphia as well as some helpful tips to enhance your next grant application. Participants are invited to come with specific grant questions or funding issues for us to answer or troubleshoot.

This workshop is presented by Dan O'Brien and Jocelyn Jones Arnold of the City of Philadelphia's Office of Grants & Community Partnerships.

Advanced registration is required as space is limited. Please register online here.

Dan O'Brien is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who served as a Youth and Community Development Specialist in Jordan from 2005-07. Upon returning to Philadelphia, Dan worked as a Refugee Resettlement Case Manager  building community connections for refugees from Iraq, Iran, Burma, Bhutan and Eritrea. Dan led regional resettlement efforts for groups who are particularly at risk like LGBT and religious minority refugee populations. In 2011 Dan became Assistant Managing Director for the City of Philadelphia, working in neighborhoods with the highest gun crime creating or improving community connections to city services and building capacity among neighborhood stakeholders. In 2015, Dan became Deputy Director for the Office of Grants and Community Partnerships. His responsibilities include identifying and applying for state, federal and private grant opportunities and building and maintaining relationships between the City of Philadelphia and the local philanthropic community.

Jocelyn Jones Arnold is a native Philadelphian with more than twenty-five years of experience in the philanthropic, nonprofit and local government sectors.   She currently holds the position of Deputy Director for the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Grants & Community Partnerships where she helps City agencies and their community partners to identify and secure resources and partnerships needed to support their work. In this role, Jocelyn has helped the City obtain over $100 million in public and private funding and awards including $22.9 million from the Department of Homeland Security/FEMA for the Philadelphia Fire Department, $600,000 from the U.S. Department of Justice to help the City address the school-to-prison pipeline and one of the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development’s first Promise Zone designations for West Philadelphia. Jocelyn’s extensive experience as funder and grantee includes her tenure as Program staff at The Philadelphia Foundation, Trustee and Board Chair of the Valentine Foundation, Assistant Director at Pembroke Philanthropy Advisors, and the first Development Director for Mural Arts Philadelphia. Currently, Jocelyn sits on the Steering Committee of the Philadelphia Black Giving Circle and the Boards of the Youth Sentencing Reentry Project (YSRP), the Pennsylvania Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) Corporation and the City’s Roadmap to Homes Community.  She and her family are proud residents of Mt. Airy.