History

GrantWorks has roots in Texas and the Gulf Coast extending back to the mid-1970s. The firm’s founder and president, Bruce J. Spitzengel, worked for the Cities of Pasadena and Texas City as a planner and community development director before founding the consulting business in La Porte, Texas, in 1979.

For the first two decades the firm primarily focused on administration of Community Development Block Grants under the Texas state and small cities program. This program provides grant assistance to local governments for infrastructure and comprehensive planning. Our track record in Community Development is unmatched in Texas, and our recent performance is even stronger—more than 90 percent of the total below was awarded in the past 15 years.

The CDBG program has been in at least five agencies since we began working with the program, most recently with the Texas Department of Rural Affairs. As of October 1, 2011, the program will move to the Texas Department of Agriculture.

GrantWorks began securing and managing Texas HOME Program awards for our local government clients in the early 1990s, quickly becoming the main provider of services throughout the state. We primarily work with the Owner Occupied Housing Rehabilitation and Reconstruction activity. During the past 20 years GrantWorks has secured $140,083,493 in HOME funding under 383 separate contracts for 300 clients, which include local governments and several non-profit groups. The total number of housing units we have assisted is around 2,500.

Bruce opened a new office in Austin in 1995, which gradually grew to become the corporate headquarters location. The current main office building on Northland Drive was purchased in 2004, allowing us to consolidate our operations which were then in several buildings. As we continued to grow throughout the 1990s and 2000s we added additional offices around Texas to serve our 250 local government clients [link to map].

GrantWorks was the first consulting firm to work with the General Land Office’s Coastal Management Program (1998) and has been active in the Coastal Infrastructure Assistance Program since its inception. We were among the first to secure and manage various TxDOT programs including ICE-TEA, TEA-21, Safe Routes to School, and SAFETEA-LU, Texas Parks and Wildlife Open Space Master Planning, Small Parks, Large Parks, and Indoor Recration, and the State Energy Conservation Office’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants.

Currently the firm is active in the Hurricanes Ike/Dolly Disaster Recovery program managed by the Land Office and looks forward to continually improving the services we deliver to local governments.