Art, environment prime beneficiaries

From its first grant of $900 for a temporary art gallery in the Skinny Building, Downtown, the Sprout Fund has become a powerful little engine on Pittsburgh’s road to artistic and environmental innovation.

Small “seed” grants have been that fund’s pulse — $6,000 here, $7,500 there, giving legs to hundreds of ideas, projects and passionate bands of advocates.

“They completely helped us get our start,” said BikePGH co-founder Scott Bricker.

“I think before we got the bike rack grant our budget was $500.”

The Sprout Fund is celebrating its milestone 10th birthday by funding a signature piece of public art with its largest grant ever, $100,000. The winning artist or artists will install work on the Law and Finance Building on Fourth Avenue, Downtown. The finalists will be announced this month.

In 10 years, Sprout has supported 450 projects at a value of $4 million from more than 100 funding sources. Now, Sprout is poised for a transition.

“It’s unclear to me where we will go after this signature art project,” said Cathy Lewis Long, who, with Matt Hannigan, founded Sprout, itself a seed of the New Idea Factory that former county Executive Jim Roddey launched when he was elected in 2000.

Mr. Roddey said he put Ms. Lewis, then a fellow with the Coro Center for Civic Leadership, in charge of the idea factory of three dozen young people. One idea was bike racks on buses, he said, “and now I read that all the buses have them.”

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Visit PittsburghGives.org for more info.