Dave Matthews Band Bama Works Fund distributing $775K to Charlottesville nonprofits

The Dave Matthews Band’s Bama Works Fund is handing out nearly $775,000 to nonprofit groups all around Charlottesville.

The Community Climate Collaborative (C3) is one of 106 nonprofits receiving funding from the initiative.

“We’re very fortunate to have somebody so influential, but also so heavily invested in making sure our community has the resources it needs to be thriving,” said Maggie Davis with C3. “Their grant goes towards our climate action activity kits that we send out to the local fourth and fifth graders.”

The Charlottesville Area Community Foundation (CACF) is helping to distribute the funding.

“We have a scoring rubric that we use in focusing on the initiatives that are having the biggest impact on our community, but not all. Also not leaving out our smaller, newer nonprofits, and helping them establish,” said Chaquita Venable with CACF,

Each nonprofit group can request up to $10,000.

“A lot of our local nonprofits don’t have access to state funding or government funding, so it’s a way for us to bridge that gap for them,” Venable said.

The Bama Fund was started in 1999. Since then, it’s handed out more than 28 million to local organizations.