It’s only Monday, but I’m confident this will be the most exciting news I have to share this week… 
Asmbly has been awarded an $80,000 grant from the City of Austin’s Elevate program — a competitive cultural arts funding program administered by Austin Arts, Culture, Music and Entertainment (AACME). This is the first grant we have received where the decision was made entirely by outside reviewers with no prior knowledge of Asmbly, which makes it a particularly meaningful signal that our work speaks for itself.
We’ll be working through the onboarding process over the next month and will share more details about what this grant will support as things progress.
How we got here
This win has a longer story behind it. In 2024, @MoonLitRose, who is now a core volunteer in our 3D printing shop, was the first to flag this grant as an opportunity worth pursuing. That kind of community-level awareness and investment is exactly what makes Asmbly work. Thank you Emma!
Acting on that, @mkmiller6 and @wdnatx stepped up to join me in our efforts to get our very first application across the finish line on a tight turnaround, with Matthew leading the effort and Billy handling the budget. We didn’t get it that time, but the process taught us a lot and the foundation they helped build carried directly into this year’s application.
This year, @AJStow wrote the bulk of the application — the narratives, program descriptions, and the case for who Asmbly is and what we do. I handled the intro statement, final review, refinement, and submission, and put together the work samples we submitted alongside the written application. @Jordanva2’s years of outreach leadership gave reviewers a wealth of real community partnerships and programs to point to; that track record exists because she and the Outreach Team built it. And @nreiter, our board treasurer, made sure the budget and financials we submitted were solid, which was noted and appreciated by reviewers.
The application also leaned heavily on the work of our Facilities Team — staff and volunteer Shop Area Leads and volunteer stewards whose work keeping our spaces safe, organized, and well-maintained is what makes programming like this sustainable in the first place. That contribution is woven throughout the grant to make it clear to reviewers that we’ve already built the infrastructure to make good use of grant contributions.
And honestly, this award reflects something bigger than any one application.
It reflects what every member contributes — showing up, maintaining the culture, taking care of the space, and making Asmbly the kind of place that’s worth writing a grant about. That’s not something we could manufacture for a grant panel. It’s just what this community is. For that, I want to thank each and every one of you 
More details coming soon. In the meantime, if you’d like to read what we submitted, here’s a consolidated PDF with all the written responses and work samples.