These days, the Island’s service organizations face great demands. With the Vineyard population swelling, groups such as Community Services, the boys’ and girls’ club and the school system need to expand. Meanwhile, new organizations — including the aquatics center — are struggling to establish themselves.

All want to be located at a central Island site. All want to serve the general public, but offer special attention to young people. And so something very rare is happening: These groups are working together and sharing a vision of a single campus to serve all their needs, possibly on school-owned land that adjoins the regional high school. This area, near the blinker light in Oak Bluffs, is already home to Community Services, the Martha’s Vineyard Arena, and Woodside Village, which offers housing to elderly people.

This week, the group reached a milestone when its efforts were bolstered with grant money. On Tuesday, the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency awarded a $20,000 grant to Martha’s Vineyard Community Services for, in part, long-term planning among this broad coalition of organizations.

“All of these people, who in other times could have had competing interests, we’re all looking at this together,” said Ned Robinson-Lynch, executive director of Community Services and a vocal advocate for the cooperative approach. “We’re talking about imagining 20 years out. We know we want a pool. We may need a regional middle school. We want some kind of youth facilities. How can we plan together for the future of the Island, especially where youth is concerned?”

It was this aspect of the grant proposal that most appealed to MassDevelopment, an 18 month old, semi-public agency.

“What we like about it is that it’s cooperative, that the boards are so supportive, and that they represent such a broad cross-section of the community,” said David Squire, vice chairman of the agency. “It was several nonprofits working together — that’s what was great about it. The school system, Community Services, the aquatics center, the boys’ and girls’ club, all working together.”

It’s hard to see exactly where this effort will lead, especially because the groups have such varied needs. Some, like the boys’ and girls’ club, are thinking of a new building as a project for the distant future. Meanwhile, advocates of an aquatics center have completed architectural plans and are eager to find a location.

What the grant will do is pay for an architect or space consultant to study the group’s needs and figure out whether they can be met at the high school site.

“I think the group is hoping in the next year to have really done some cooperative group planning and come up with a vision for the best use of this land,” Mr. Robinson-Lynch said. “I think it will serve the community really well that that’s happening.”

Uncertain as the future may seem, this group has actually come a long way in recent months, thanks to hard work from leaders of the groups and a couple of accidents, too.

It all began when Mr. Robinson-Lynch was a guest speaker at Suffolk University last fall. After speaking before a group of graduate students in a public administration program, he was approached by one of the students who also is a staffer at MassDevelopment. She told him about MassDevelopment and said it sounded as though Community Services might be eligible for one of the agency’s “predevelopment” grants. MassDevelopment offers these grants to all kinds of groups, including small and medium-sized companies, educational institutions and social service groups. The agency also offers low-interest loans for building projects. Its goal is to produce jobs.

Mr. Robinson-Lynch was interested. Community Services has been located in the same three buildings for 10 years, despite major growth in all the programs housed there -- which include day-care, women’s support services, crisis counseling and more. The buildings are on school committee land. So he went to the committee and told members he might apply for a predevelopment grant.

The idea sounded good, superintendent Kriner Cash said at the time, but what about all the other possible uses for the land? Not only is there a chance the school district may want to build within the next decade -- possibly an administrative building or a regional middle school -- but Mr. Cash was acutely aware of the many programs that might serve the needs of young people. He received a great deal of input on this topic last fall and winter at monthly public meetings with teenagers and community leaders.

“I particularly became concerned in holding this series of meetings,” Mr. Cash said this week. “They told us that there was not enough activities for them to do in a constructive, supervised or quasi-supervised way, outside of school. We knew that the boys’ and girls’ club was having an issue with its building, Annie Mechur was looking for land [for the aquatics center], and the teen center idea was coming up again. There were all these competing ideas going on, and I said, ‘Look, why not look for a way to make them all happen in a nexus arrangement that might unfold on school land?’”

This sounded pretty good to Mr. Robinson-Lynch, so he incorporated a proposal for long-range group planning into his grant application.

Consequently, the $20,000 check handed to him on Wednesday afternoon has more than one purpose. Some will go for architectural costs for an immediate expansion at Community Services. And another portion will go into planning for what has become known as the “nexus committee.”

In brief remarks Wednesday to leaders of the effort, Mr. Squire offered encouragement about the financial opportunities that are still available to the group.

“What we hope is that you’re going to develop something and then come back to us for financing,” he said. “This organization gave out $517 million [in loans] last year. This is not government coming in and telling you what to do. Our job is to help you achieve what you want. Our intention is attracting jobs and making a better life for the citizens of Martha’s Vineyard.”

Questioned later, Mr. Robinson-Lynch said he is optimistic.

“We’re actually planning together, which is rather unique and fraught with potential issues,” he said. “It just made a whole lot more sense to bring everybody to the table and find out what everybody’s plans are.”