Which brings us back to the question of the MidCity name. As it turned out, the idea that the MidCity Business Association could be funded by a Neighborhood Investment Fund grant was a non-starter, and probably shouldn’t have been included under the committee’s NIF-related recommendations in the first place. As a 501(c)(6) organization, rather than a 501(c)(3), MCBA is ineligible to receive NIF monies under the guidelines established by DMPED. The main organization that ultimately was awarded the grant? The MidCity Residents Association.

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Together with the three organizations it recruited to apply collectively for the NIF grants (the Logan Circle Community Association, the Constance Whitaker Maffin Memorial Fund, and Cultural Tourism DC), the MidCity Residents, of which Doughty serves as vice-chair, got $200,000 for its branding project, but only after it initially was rejected.

“We had crafted an application at that time that had five distinct projects,” explains Mary Brown, who wrote the arts district project’s NIF application. “We made a decision to go ahead and put it in as one thing, with the idea that it's really five different things. But that didn't make the NIF people very happy, because they have rules, and they felt that was too far outside the grant guidelines to be accepted.”

Councilmember Evans’s office then stepped in to offer guidance on how the group could revise its proposal, which involved gathering those other non-profits together and applying for four $50,000 grants that were eventually awarded. But Brown says any technical assistance provided by D.C. Council staff was purely that.

“There's no way to lobby a grant, a grant is an application that you put in,” she says.

Still, that revised grant application did accomplish something that had never been done before, in that it directed a handful of those typically small NIF grants to one overarching project. Though this was the first time NIF had bundled grants, “it is permissible under the guidelines,” according to DMPED spokesperson Jose Sousa.

The MidCity Business Association was not one of the grantees, but one section of the approved grant application lays out how the MCBA would be involved in supporting the proposed branding project.

The MidCity Business Association (www.midcitylife.org), a 501(c)(6) organization, has tremendous experience in budgeting, communications with its retail and restaurant/bar members, and events promotion on behalf of its business members. Their active in-kind contribution to the project -- in the form of advice, support and outreach --, will both assist the project in achieving its objectives as well as ensure that businesses and arts organizations are well-represented.

Initially, then-MCBA executive director Natalie Avery did participate in planning meetings for the proposal, but by the time the first application was due, MCBA had determined that it was ineligible to receive NIF funds directly due to its tax status, and opted to jump ship to pursue separate funding on its own.

That pursuit involved once again lobbying D.C. Council members, this time focusing on Kwame Brown (D-At-large), chair of the council’s Committee on Economic Development. Ali and other MCBA board members met with Brown this past spring to ask him for help in locating a smaller sum, somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000, that could serve to stabilize the organization while it identified a more permanent revenue stream. The board then rallied its members, who sent a steady stream of letters and e-mails to the councilmember's office, encouraging him to support MCBA.

But despite his desire to help, the earmark ban and the ever-increasing budget crunch left Brown without many options. The D.C. Department of Small and Local Business Development was left cash-strapped amid mounting city budget shortfalls.

“There was no money in the budget for the business organizations,” says Brown, who notes that he’s long been impressed with MCBA, but wasn’t very familiar with the MidCity Residents Association or its pursuit of NIF money.

So when in May, the $200,000 NIF grant for a "MidCity" branding campaign was announced and no money was ever located for MCBA, its members starting seeing red.

"Here we get to the end of this thing, and there's this other group, who is sort of similarly positioned, and they're pulling in all this money," says Lepanto. "The whole thing has just been so demoralizing."

Zero-sum fears

After deducting costs associated with its regular events, like First Monday Mixers and the annual Dog Days of Summer sidewalk sale, MCBA’s modest annual budget doesn't leave much leftover to pay an executive director's salary. By all accounts, Avery had been donating about half of her time since she started with MCBA in 2008, with the promise that once the organization secured a more stable revenue stream, her salary would be increased to reflect her full-time position.