If you haven't spotted the interactive advertisements around town yet, here's the deal: Google is awarding $5 million worth of grants to a handful of Bay Area nonprofits and soliciting the community's input to select four grand prize winners. And two of Google's ten finalists — Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and 826 Valencia — are based right here in District 6.

According to the grant program's website, the Google Impact Challenge aims to rally Bay Area communities around bold ideas that will improve their neighborhoods. From the applicant pool of more than 800 local nonprofits, Google's team of advisors selected 25 finalists. Fifteen of those nonprofits, including Friends of the Urban Forest, La Cocina and the Sheriff Department's inmate charter school, have received $100,000 each. Of the remaining ten, four nonprofits with the most votes from the community will win $500,000 while the rest receive $250,000 each. Google also notes that all 25 finalists will receive support from Google volunteers and access to its local Impact Hub co-working spaces.

So what are our District 6 finalists planning to do with their winnings?

826 Valencia's grant will go toward opening a writing and tutoring center in the Tenderloin. In May, the 13-year-old Mission District nonprofit announced that it had secured a 15-year lease at the corner of Golden Gate and Leavenworth, a space that once housed one of the neighborhood's most infamous liquor stores. At the time, the organization had raised $1.8 million, and estimated it needed a total of $4 million to fund capital improvements and the program's first year or two in the Tenderloin.

Photo: 826 Valencia

YBCA (a Hoodline advertiser) says that 100 percent of the grant money they receive will be used to grow the Market Street Prototyping Festival, which aims to make Market Street "a more vibrant public space." According to their website for the grant program, $500,000 will allow YBCA to bring to life 100 prototype concepts developed by community members, and many of those could become permanent installations once the Better Market Street redesign is complete in 2018.

A scene from the Market Street Prototyping Festival in April. Photo: (Tom Hilton/flickr)

To learn more about all of the competing Bay Area nonprofits and place your votes, check out the Google Impact Challenge website. Or, if you run into a poster or billboard promoting the challenge, you can simply place a vote by tapping the cause of your choice. Voting ends Oct. 20th and the winners will be announced on Oct. 21st.