Community Safety Department Awards $300,000 in Violence Prevention Grants

The Cambridge Community Safety Department awarded $300,000 in grants to five nonprofit organizations Monday to support violence and trauma prevention efforts across the city.

The department will fund programs run by Cambridge Holistic Emergency Alternative Response Team, Community Conversations: Sister to Sister, InnerCity Weightlifting Inc., My Brother’s Keeper Cambridge and On the Rise.

Each organization — selected from 11 applicants — will receive $60,000 to support initiatives aimed at preventing violence and addressing trauma.

Cambridge HEART, InnerCity Weightlifting and My Brother’s Keeper Cambridge previously received funding from the department, each receiving $150,000 in fiscal year 2025. On the Rise and Community Conversations are first-time recipients.

The grants will fund specific programs at each organization. For HEART — a civilian alternative emergency response team — the funding will support ongoing crisis prevention work and public events. More than 160 residents have received “intensive follow-up and case coordination” through previous grants, according to a Monday press release.

HEART has faced financial challenges since its founding in 2021, competing with city-backed alternative response programs housed within the department and the Cambridge Police Department. In July, the organization said it was “nearing the bottom” of its funds after losing a major donor, prompting cuts to operating hours and layoffs affecting half its full-time responders. HEART later raised $170,000 in local donations in addition to last year’s $150,000 grant from the department.

The new funding will allow HEART to continue operating a crisis phone line staffed by peer-support responders and to conduct research using qualitative feedback from residents.

Community Conversations, which has offered health literacy programming for 17 years, will use the grant to fund peer-support training and certification for its steering committee, whose members assist residents navigating health crises, stress and social instability.

InnerCity Weightlifting, which operates a gym in Kendall Square, provides paid employment and pathways to economic mobility for young adults “from communities most impacted by systemic racism, street violence, and incarceration.” Grant funding will support employment programs and case management services. More than 150 people participated in programs funded by previous grants last year, according to the release.

My Brother’s Keeper Cambridge will use the funding for its empowerment programming, which helps residents ages 18 to 30 pursue education and career pathways while addressing personal and economic challenges. More than 120 participants took part in grant-funded programming last year.

On the Rise, a day shelter serving homeless and formerly homeless women, transgender and nonbinary residents, will use the grant to continue offering shelter access, one-on-one advocacy, safety planning, community accompaniment and housing stabilization services.

CSD Director Marie Mathieu wrote in the press release that “violence prevention has long been a “long-standing paramount priority” for the city.

“We are proud to continue these grants and leverage the valued resources and expertise of these community partners and supplement the vast approaches the city is already taking to prevent violence, support survivors and families, and build a more resilient and empowered community,” she wrote.

—Staff writer Shawn A. Boehmer can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at shawnb.18. Follow him on X @ShawnBoehmer.

—Staff writer Claire A. Michal can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at ClaireMichal.154.