Bring $25,000 to your community – State Farm Neighborhood Assist

Have you ever wanted to help your community with a problem but didn’t know where to start? Maybe it’s a run-down park or to help the impoverished in your community. Now, YOU have the power to fix it. State Farm Neighborhood Assist wants to help identify and address key issues faced by consumers throughout the United States and parts of Canada.

State Farm Neighborhood Assist, a crowd-sourced philanthropic initiative, lets communities determine where grant funding is awarded, exclusively through Facebook. The application is short and simple, and I encourage you to check out the Facebook application @ . You, or someone you know, could be the catalyst for positive change to your community cause!

The submission phase is open from February 13– March 6 and each Facebook user who downloads the free application can submit up to three causes. Anyone living in Canada or the United States with a Facebook account is eligible to submit a cause. It’s better to submit early - a maximum of 3,000 submissions will be accepted. All you have to do is submit the cause; you don’t have to “run the program.” The cause must fit into the categories of safety, community development or education.

After the submission stage ends, the State Farm Youth Advisory Board (YAB), a group of college and high school students from across the country, will read and narrow down all the submissions to the top 200 finalists. What the YAB is looking for:

1. How much does your cause focus on an unmet need in your community?
2. How would you use the $25,000 to address the unmet need?
3. How much of a lasting impact on your community would the proposal have?
4. How will your project define and measure your success?

Once the top 200 causes are identified, they will appear on the Facebook application to be voted on by you and your community. The voting stage will last from April 4 – 22 and each Facebook user gets 10 votes every day. Winners will be announced on April 29.