Three area nonprofits selected to host Weaver Awards

GREEN BAY – Working together, NeighborWorks Green Bay, Basic Needs Giving Partnership and The Canary Fund have been selected as a community host for the 2026-2029 Weaver Awards.

The Weaver Awards are a part of Weave: The Social Fabric Project at the Aspen Institute, an initiative dedicated to strengthening trust, connection and belonging by supporting weavers — those who show up for others and build community.

“The fraying of our social fabric is really having an impact on a lot of things in our communities,” said Julie Filapek, neighborhood partners program manager at NeighborWorks Green Bay. “What [The Aspen Institute] is trying to do is to sort of launch a national movement around rebuilding or weaving that social fabric… Their focus is really on diving very deep into the grassroots to find those people, because they’re out there, who are actively ‘weaving’ their communities together — people who are trying to do good things in their communities.”

The Weaver Awards are one way of supporting those weavers.

As one of just 25 community hosts across the country for the Weaver Awards program, NeighborWorks Green Bay, Basic Needs Giving Partnership and The Canary Fund will award 20+ microgrants each year from 2026-29 to individuals and small nonprofits and organize gatherings that bring people together to help them learn the skills of weaving.

“We’re collaborating to find the weavers in our local communities across Northeast Wisconsin to tell their stories, give them some financial support so they can do more of what they’re doing and just try to really help everyone take a moment to look around them, see the weavers around them and see what they also might do themselves to connect people in their community…” Filapek said. “It’s exciting that our region is one of just a few across the United States that are being highlighted by this and I think we really are at the forefront of what we hope will be a really impactful national movement and our stories are going to be a really important part of that story. Weavers exist in all of our communities across Northeast Wisconsin and we have a lot to learn from them.”

With the Weaver Awards at work int he community, Filapek said the goal is not necessarily to create a perfect community, but a strong, resilient community.

“From NeighborWorks Green Bay’s perspective, our mission is to solve housing challenges and build stronger communities,” Filapek said. “When we think about the second half of that mission, to have a stronger community does not mean a community where there are no problems. It means a community that can be productive and a community that can address its challenges and create new opportunities. What we’re talking about is really culture-changing work, which is probably not a four-year timeline, but what we’d like to see, I would say, after four years, is some indication that there is an increase in interest, involvement and opportunities to get involved across our region in activities where regular people are coming together to do something that they care about and that the idea of joining something is an idea that more people are going to trend toward.”

It’s an especially important goal as civic participation is on a downward trajectory.
“There’s been a long history — decades — of documented decline in civic participation across all kinds,” Filapek said. “How many people are part of their PTO, church attendance, or even voting? All forms of civic participation have declined a lot. We’d like to see that turning around and a world of voluntary associations where people get together because they care about something. We want to see more of that and we want to see more people getting involved.”

The first cycle of Weaver Awards in Northeast Wisconsin will launch in fall 2026.
Details on how local residents can apply or nominate someone for a Weaver Award will be announced by early summer.