Search Through Grants for Community Centers in the U.S.

About Us

AJA Foundation seeks to help those who have done everything society asks of them, yet for whom access to essential resources and the probability for advancement that comes from them remain elusive at best and structurally impossible at worst.

We know that the “playing field” of opportunity tilts substantially and unfairly towards those coming from advantage and that nobody succeeds on their own. AJA Foundation is dedicated to leveling the playing field by investing globally in organizations addressing what we see as fundamental human rights with a focus on equal access to clean water, quality education and essential healthcare.

What We Fund

Water

Billions of people lack access to clean water. This affects health and hinders education, employment, economic growth, and gender equality.

Having access to clean water not only saves lives and leads to better health outcomes, it creates a domino effect of positive change throughout entire communities by improving access to education, food, employment, gender equality, and mitigates the effects of climate change.

Over the last 15 years, AJA Foundation has invested approximately $3 million to support five clean water initiatives. Some have been multi-year commitments.

Education

Access to primary education is inequitable. Children who are economically disadvantaged lack access to curriculum and support necessary to thrive academically.

Education is the critical tool for upward economic mobility. Students who are structurally denied necessary coursework and critical support like tutoring, mentoring, and scholarships cannot reach their full potential.

The AJA Foundation has invested over $4 million to date in programs that empower deserving students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Investing in the potential of these students not only improves their financial future, it unlocks broader economic opportunities for entire communities and fosters future leadership.

Health

Half of the world’s population lacks access to essential health services. This not only puts the individual's health at risk, but also the stability of communities, societies, and economies.

Billions of people do not live close enough to medical centers or providers to access basic healthcare or are too poor to afford it. As a result, far too many medical conditions that are routinely treated in the developed world go untreated in the developing world. The same is true for prevention.

Because where you are born should not determine access to healthcare, the AJA Foundation has invested over $1.8 million in organizations delivering quality healthcare in developing countries. In addition to prevention, health services include maternal, newborn, and pediatric medicine and treatment of common diseases.

Through our Arts and Culture program, Mellon celebrates the power of the arts to challenge, activate, and nourish the human spirit. We support exceptional creative practice, scholarship, and conservation practices while nurturing a representative and robust arts and culture ecosystem. We work with artists, curators, conservators, scholars, and organizations to ensure equitable access to excellent arts and cultural experiences and support approaches that place the arts and artists at the center of thriving, healthy communities.

Guiding strategies

Three interconnected strategies guide Mellon’s Arts and Culture grantmaking.  

Supporting visionary artists and practitioners and the participatory roles they play across institutions and communities 

Artists reveal our shared humanity and connect us all. We invest in visionary artists and arts leaders whose practices extend beyond their studios or workspaces to catalyze change in our world. We celebrate artist-driven, cross-sector collaborations and acknowledge the dimensional nature of an artist’s work and place in society. 

Supporting exceptional organizations and artists that have been historically under-resourced, including the creation, conservation, and preservation of their artwork, histories, collections, and traditions 

Mellon seeks to engender an understanding of broader histories, narratives, and aesthetic traditions through multi-year support of artists and communities historically subject to disinvestment. Grants seek to ensure the legacies of many instead of few.

Creating scaffolding for experiments with new economic paradigms and institutional models that center equity and justice and creative problem-solving in arts and culture  

Mellon seeds experiments that center and embolden artists to imagine new structures and organizational models that reflect their holistic approach to social change. Mellon provides support for projects that pilot new operating and funding models for individual artists and organizations that foster a more inclusive, nimble, and cooperative sector.

About The Foundation

The Change Happens Foundation is dedicated to allocating our resources to charitable activities and programs that are aligned with our pillars and fall within our budgetary constraints. Organizations whose projects do not satisfy our eligibility standards or match to our focus areas are encouraged not to proceed with an LOI. For those seeking foundations with interests aligned to their work, the Foundation Center offers a valuable resource—a searchable database designed to assist nonprofits in identifying potential funding opportunities.

The Change Happens Foundation is dedicated to supporting charitable activities that align with our pillars areas, strictly adhering to the guidelines of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code and Treasury Regulations. We are committed to the effective use of our grants, which are monitored through comprehensive financial and performance reporting by our grantees.

Our Pillars

Environmental Science

Systemic Change

Fostering a future where innovation intersects with environmental stewardship, we are committed to strategically investing in forward-thinking programs that catalyze systemic and sustainable solutions. Our dedication lies in addressing and overcoming the critical environmental challenges that confront our planet. Through these targeted investments, we aim not just to contribute, but to set in motion a ripple effect of change, driving progress towards a healthier, more resilient, and greener world for generations to come.

Education

Creating Opportunities

At the heart of our mission is a steadfast commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, with a strong focus on early education and STEM learning. We are dedicated to empowering women and underrepresented communities, breaking down barriers to education and access in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics from the earliest stages of learning. By fostering opportunities that ignite curiosity, fuel aspirations, and open doors, we are laying the groundwork for lifelong learning and innovation. Our investment in these communities is an investment in a future where transformative change is not only envisioned but realized, shaping a society that celebrates diversity, practices equity, and embraces inclusion at every level.

Human Services

Nutrition & Support

Our approach to combatting food insecurity and bolstering community health is rooted in thoughtful and strategic funding initiatives that delve deep into the underlying causes of these pervasive issues. We are unwavering in our commitment to support and scale up programs that do more than just provide – they empower. By ensuring access to wholesome, nutritious food and comprehensive healthcare services, we are actively bridging gaps for those in dire need. Our mission transcends mere assistance; it's about nurturing a robust infrastructure that fosters long-term resilience and well-being, affirming our belief that everyone deserves the fundamental right to health and nutrition.

Child Well-being

Through the Child Well-being Program, the foundation aims to promote children’s healthy development and protect them from abuse and neglect. 

Doris Duke took a special interest in the well-being of children and families, supporting communities, early family planning efforts and nearly 85 child welfare organizations during her life. In her will, which guides our focus areas, she expressed her interest in "the prevention of cruelty to children." 

Why It's Important

Children’s well-being and ability to thrive are strongly tied to the safety and stability of both their families and where they live. These factors provide the foundation for healthy physical and emotional development during childhood. Unfortunately, many children in the U.S. experience a long legacy of unjust historic and systemic inequities and disparities that rob them of access to the fundamental factors that allow others to flourish. All children should be able to grow up in secure, positive, healthy and inclusive environments that allow them to reach their full potential.

What We Support

Through the Child Well-being Program, the foundation funds efforts that strengthen the systems that serve families and support the needs of children and caregivers together. In March 2024, we launched Opportunities for Prevention & Transformation, or “OPT-In for Families,” to help build a prevention-oriented child well-being system that supports children and families within their communities.

OPT-In for Families

Building a New Model for Child Well-being.  The current child welfare system, with surveillance at its center and maltreatment concerns as its trigger, too often causes lasting harm to children and families and misses the opportunity to support them in their community and help them thrive. We believe there is a better way to prevent abuse and neglect.  

Launched by the Doris Duke Foundation, Opportunities for Prevention & Transformation Initiative, or “OPT-In for Families,” builds on work done across the country to create and test a meaningful alternative to the child welfare system—one that moves from a punitive system focused on assessing whether children should be removed from their homes to a prevention-oriented well-being system that leads to better outcomes across a child's life.

Strengthening & Coordinating Service Systems

Through its grantmaking, the Child Well-being Program aims to strengthen and expand the capacity of social service systems that are collaborative and provide culturally appropriate, evidence-based, and context-specific prevention and treatment programs for parents and children. By strengthening the ability of existing social service systems to better serve those in places contending with sizeable inequities, more children and families can receive the essential supports and resources that help them to pursue full, healthy and happy lives. Services such as these, when well-coordinated, can make a significant impact in responding to the effects of generations of inequities and exposure to trauma, violence, abuse, and neglect to help give families a fairer shot at achieving healthy and happy futures.

Building Capacity and Sharing Knowledge

The Child Well-being Program works to build individual, organizational and collective capacity that fosters, aligns and expands opportunities to advance more equitable outcomes for children and families. The program invests in the career development of visionary and effective leaders from a variety of disciplines who reflect the experiences, cultures and backgrounds of the communities they serve. These leaders include those from multiple social service systems, nonprofit organizations and researchers.

Our grantmaking also supports the generation and use of research evidence that offers invaluable insights into the communities we aim to serve and informs policies and practices that shape the experiences and well-being of children and families.

The program also provides targeted funds to facilitate communication and storytelling that use a strengths- and equity-based lens to replace harmful dominant narratives with authentic representation and the lived experiences of the communities and families we support.

Additionally, we support advocacy efforts that increase awareness of community needs and promote essential elements of well-being.

Child Well-being Program Priorities

The Child Well-being Program prioritizes funding for projects and programs that:

• Cultivate partnerships between organizations and systems that serve children and families to increase health equity and well-being;
• Coordinate efforts across a variety of social service systems;
• Implement interventions that meet the needs of children and families in their neighborhoods and communities;
• Increase access to prevention and treatment services;
• Communicate lessons and outcomes broadly to inform policy and practice; and/or
• Invest in developing and supporting the next generation of leaders committed to implementing effective programs and policies serving children and families.

Background

We strengthen community voices and ensure everyone has access to vital information and resources to thrive.

Our mission is to build public awareness about critical nonprofit resources, programs, and messages by creating and distributing community-driven public service announcements with local artists and creators.

We believe an informed public
drives an inclusive democracy. Nonprofits are the trusted voices that shape our communities and pave the way for a more inclusive and just world. But in today's crowded media landscape, these vital voices from local communities are often drowned out and lack the tools to harness the power of media and design as catalysts for social impact.

Our PSA Network

The PSA Network is the only free advertising space in the nation for nonprofits, by nonprofits.

The PSA Network is NYC’s first community media cooperative comprised of digital screens with trusted, community partners like health clinics, supportive housing facilities, community centers, and LinkNYC. The PSA Network builds awareness of essential community resources, services, and programs. Acting as a bridge between trusted messengers and underserved populations, the PSA Network puts the power of information into the hands of the community. The PSA Network is a free platform exclusively by and for any mission-driven organization to share information.

Share Your Info Across Our Network

Our goal is to help nonprofits with zero advertising budget share their message with the world. We get trusted and reliable information in front of the communities who need it most, for free.

The PSA Network is a network of digital screens located in community spaces such as health clinics, supportive housing facilities, and community centers that help build awareness about essential community resources, services, and programs.

The PSA Network is a free platform exclusively by and for any mission-driven organization to share information. Acting as a bridge between trusted messengers and underserved populations, the PSA Network puts the power of information into the hands of the community. PSAs are distributed in New York City, on digital screens in community spaces, and on the streets of NYC via LinkNYC’s digital kiosks.

‍F.Y. Eye offers this in kind opportunity to nonprofits at no cost, but please note that our PSA distribution has a significant media value of approximately $150,000, and is sought after by many nonprofits.

What We Fund

We support community-informed, data-driven programs that strengthen healthcare infrastructures and provide education and financial support to the most vulnerable communities around the world. Our corporate giving programs focus support where the need is greatest and we prioritize applications that demonstrate a strong capability to deliver the specific outcomes the grant would support.

We welcome funding requests for innovative, high-impact projects that relate to at least one of our core therapeutic areas:

• HIV
• Liver disease
  • Hepatitis C
  • Hepatitis B
  • Hepatitis D
  • Primary biliary cholangitis
• Oncology
  • Hematology
  • Solid tumors
• Chronic Inflammatory Diseases

Types of Support

Patient Community Support:

We strive to advance health equity, diversity in clinical trials and access to medicines to reduce disparities. We also support the local communities in which we operate.

• Examples of Patient Community Support projects Gilead has funded include:
  • Events or resources to educate patients about prevention and care options, such as:
    • Presentations
    • Web-based resources
    • Printed materials
    • Testing and screening initiatives
• The types of Patient Community Support organizations Gilead has funded include:
  • Patient advocacy and support groups
  • Hospitals and clinics
  • Nonprofit service organizations
  • Professional associations
  • Academic medical centers and universities

Corporate Sponsorships:

Many individuals face barriers to accessing healthcare due to age, disability, ethnicity or race, location, gender, gender identity or socioeconomic status.

To help ensure all people have the opportunity to get the best possible care – regardless of background – Gilead sponsors select events or conferences that raise awareness and support organizations working in our therapeutic areas of focus.

Events Gilead has sponsored include:

• Walks/runs
• Awards dinners
• Fundraising galas
• Community conferences

Gilead North America Grants

We are inspired by the work that our grantees do every day to improve access and eliminate barriers to healthcare while advancing education among patients and healthcare professionals. We support projects in North America across all our therapeutic areas — HIV, liver diseases, oncology and inflammatory and respiratory diseases.

Funding Priorities

• HIV:
  • While advances in medical research help millions of people living with HIV have longer, more fulfilling lives today, HIV continues to have a devastating impact, especially on underserved communities and in populations who lack access to medical care and are impacted by stigma and discrimination. We support organizations working to help individuals learn their HIV status and get the care they need. We also support organizations that aim to solve the challenges of tomorrow, including how to:
    • Understand the impact HIV has on an aging population
    • Ensure continuity and retention in care
    • Spark appreciation for innovative thinking in HIV treatment
    • Identify and create a new generation of advocates
• HIV Cure:
  • We work to address the HIV epidemic by discovering transformative and life-saving medicines, developing simplified treatment regimens that increase efficacy, expanding access to treatment for those who need it most and building communities among people affected by HIV and AIDS. Continuing on this commitment, we partner with and support institutions, community groups and organizations that are engaged in HIV cure activities through grant funding.
• HIV Prevention:
  • We support the efforts of community-based organizations, public health entities and similar nonprofit organizations to educate their constituents about comprehensive HIV prevention, including the role of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Specifically, we support programs designed to:
    • Provide comprehensive education on the range of prevention options and strategies available
    • Ensure biomedical prevention plans, such as PrEP, are implemented safely and effectively in accordance with recommended guidelines
    • Engage communities and individuals at highest risk for HIV infection in prevention efforts
• Liver Disease:
  • Hepatitis C disproportionately affects people who use drugs and other at-risk populations and there remain gaps in access to testing and care. We are working to change this by providing funding for organizations that:
    • Raise awareness and provide education
    • Increase treatment capacity and sustainability
    • Move individuals down the care pathway from screening to cure
    • Eliminate barriers to testing, care and treatment
• Oncology: Cancer remains one of the greatest health challenges we face. We support organizations focused on health equity in order to: 
  • Enable people affected by cancer and their caregivers to make informed health decisions
  • Educate healthcare providers on identification, screening and diagnosis
  • Improve access to prevention and treatment by overcoming barriers to care
• Inflammatory and Respiratory Diseases: Inflammatory and respiratory diseases have a substantial impact on people of every age, gender, ethnic group and economic class. We fund organizations that work in this therapeutic area to:
  • Improve individuals’ health literacy, enabling them to make informed health decisions
  • Educate healthcare providers on identification, screening and diagnosis
  • Improve access to treatment by overcoming financial and other obstacles

Funding

Gilead doesn’t place a limit on how much grantees can apply for. We want you to request the level of funding that you’ll need to make your project a success.

About Us

When humanity is united, we can act together to create a powerful force for human dignity.

Our Work

At HU we are focused on cultivating the conditions that can transform human exploitation and violent conflict to enduring peace and freedom.

Forced Labor & Human Trafficking

Within our Forced Labor and Human Trafficking Work at HU, we focus on three themes that cut across all of our efforts, Safer Labor Migration, Worker Power, and Corporate Accountability. These themes are embedded into Global Supply Chains, the Asia-Pacific Seafood, and the Nepal/Qatar Migration Corridor program tracks.

Peacebuilding

The Peacebuilding portfolio seeks to support the agency and power of proximate peace actors, as they determine what peace should look like in their contexts. We invest in transformative relationships in Agency for Collective Action, Innovative Pathways for Peace, Inclusive Peace Processes, Healing, and Well-Being, through Learning, and Geographic Commitments.

Public Engagement

The Public Engagement Portfolio supports the strengthening of power among proximate actors and aims to shift power dynamics within the systems in which we work, by Centering Communities With Lived Experiences and Influencing Policy Outcomes. These themes are embedded into our program tracks that focus on Independent Journalism & Media, Strategic Communications, and Policy & Government Relations.

Racial Justice & Equity

Humanity United accompanies our partners to advance racial justice and equity. These extraordinary organizations work tirelessly to build the power of Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC) communities and address the conditions that have long harmed BIPOC lives.

Please see FAQs for additional guidelines.

Mission

Kalliopeia’s grants are dedicated to leaders and projects that model cultural and ecological renewal rooted in reverent connection to the Earth.

Our Approach

• Center the Sacred
• We consider the spiritual commitments of our grantees to be as important as the outer measures of their work. We look for leaders whose work embodies their most sacred values.
• Ground in Service
• We strive to balance our institutional power with humility, knowing that there is greater potential in an ethic of service. We try to return again and again to our own humanity so we can connect with our partners in the most simple and creative ways.
• Work through Relationship
• Trust, respect, and shared values are the medium of our work. We aspire to build funding relationships that unleash creativity, power, and love.
• Invest in Diverse Ways of Knowing and Being
• We value different cultural and spiritual expressions of Earth connection and hold a specific consideration for those traditions that have been marginalized in the United States. We envision a future in which diverse communities thrive in their own sovereignty while contributing to wider ecological resilience

Grants Program

All of our grantmaking is dedicated to people and projects that model cultural and ecological renewal rooted in reverent connection to the Earth. Within this overall focus, we have two strong currents of interconnected work.

Land Care

Kalliopeia supports projects from different cultural contexts that bring people into nourishing, reciprocal relationships with each other and the Earth.

We seek out leaders working toward regenerative approaches to land care, with a focus on communities that have been dispossessed or excluded from land ownership. We are especially inspired by intergenerational projects that carry traditional and ancient systems of land care into future generations, and we recognize that women are often the carriers of the Earth-based wisdom that is needed for the deep restoration of our community of life.

Indigenous Leadership

Kalliopeia builds partnerships with Indigenous leaders who model ways of being in relationship with Mother Earth, and who serve as knowledge keepers and tradition bearers in their communities and beyond.

We work with Indigenous leaders who steward and care for their traditional lands and waters, and who preserve their languages and the ancestral knowledge they hold. We focus on organizations that strongly uphold Indigenous values and ways of knowing, and honor Indigenous women who create pathways for community healing and build up generations of new leaders.

Laird Norton Family Foundation

The Laird Norton Family Foundation (LNFF) is a private family foundation in Seattle, Washington, with a mission to honor and reflect the family’s shared values through giving and engage the family in philanthropy as a platform for strengthening family connections.

Primary Grantmaking Programs  

Our grantmaking reflects the values of the Laird Norton family. We give in program areas that reflect the family's shared interests:

Arts in Education

Our Arts in Education grantmaking program supports equitable educational opportunities for students using arts integrated and culturally informed instruction, including sustained professional development for public school teachers. Funding will be directed toward programs that seek to enhance students’ educational outcomes in public Pre-K through grade 12 classrooms rather than to simply increase participation in, or appreciation for, the arts.

• Our current support focuses on organizations that provide: long-term, push-in, professional development opportunities for public Pre-K through grade 12 teachers and schools; programs that aim to serve students furthest from educational justice; and programs with culturally relevant instruction and are focused on the whole child.

Climate Change

Climate change is a global, complex challenge facing our world. The goal of our Climate Change program is to help the planet heal and mitigate adverse impacts of climate change for all people, communities, and the natural world. Grantmaking is centered around carbon sequestration work and recognizes organizations as the experts and stewards to advance climate and environmental justice. Grantmaking is focused in the West Coast of the US.

•  We are focused on supporting work that increased the abilities of forests, coastal ecosystems, and agricultural lands to sequester carbon. Through projects involving healthy forests, blue carbon, and regenerative agriculture, we seek to learn from and follow the lead of communities impacted first and worst as our planet changes. 

Human Services

• Our Human Services grantmaking program supports organizations working directly with youth and young adults (age 12-25) who are experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness, and/or involved with child welfare, juvenile legal or behavioral health systems. Grantmaking is currently only with organizations in King County, WA. 

• Our current support prioritizes organizations that are created and led by the communities they seek to serve, that acknowledge and seek to address racial and social injustice in their work, and that offer programming with the aim of preventing youth and young adult homelessness and creating systems change.

Watershed Stewardship

​Watersheds have social, ecological, and economic significance. The goal of the Watershed Stewardship program is to create enabling conditions for long-term social and ecological health and resilience in places of importance to the Laird Norton Family. Currently, we prioritize work in Minnesota and Wisconsin as well as a few key watersheds in the Western United States, consistent with the Laird Norton family's priorities.

We take a long-term view on healthy watersheds and invest in organizational capacity with an eye to future resilience. We encourage our partners to focus not on single-species recovery or restoration to historical conditions as a primary end-goal, but to also consider the potential value of significantly altered — but functioning — ecosystems as we continue to face the impacts of climate change and other natural and human-caused changes into the future.

​We believe the wellbeing of the people who live in a place must be considered alongside ecological goals; understanding the diverse interests and values of a watershed’s human inhabitants is an important component of long-term success. ​

The Milbank Foundation was created in 1995 to pursue Jeremiah Milbank’s vision of integrating people with disabilities into all aspects of American life.

The Foundation’s current priorities include:

• Consumer-focused, community-based initiatives that empower people with disabilities and foster independence and self-sufficiency
• The rehabilitation and re-integration of veterans, especially veterans with disabilities
• Helping seniors to age in the place of their choice through non-institutional, community-based health and social services, and
• Market-oriented, patient-centered health care reforms across the country
• Programs that address mental health issues and aim to prevent substance abuse and suicide, especially among young people.

Mission Statement

The Pop Culture Collaborative is a philanthropic resource and funder learning community working to transform the narrative landscape in America around people of color, immigrants, refugees, Muslims, and Indigenous peoples, especially those who are women, queer, transgender and/or disabled. The Collaborative achieves this through partnerships between the social justice sector and the entertainment, advertising, and media industries that help mass audiences understand the past, make sense of the present, and imagine the future of American society.

Since its public launch in Summer 2017, the Collaborative has worked with field and philanthropic partners to articulate a shared goal: to unleash the superpowers of pop culture to build widespread public yearning for a pluralist culture—that is, a nation in which most people are actively engaged in the hard and delicate work of belonging together in a just society.

With this in mind, the Collaborative seeks to accelerate the pop culture for social change field’s ability to design and implement sophisticated, long-term culture change strategies at the pop culture level and to be a catalyst for the activation of transformative narrative systems—​coordinated systems of mental models, narrative archetypes, and immersive story experiences—​designed to normalize pluralist behaviors and values in America. 

In the long term, the Collaborative is working to support the growth of a pop culture for social change field capable of building the yearning in most Americans (more than 150 million people) to actively co-create a just and pluralist society in which everyone is perceived to belong—inherently—and treated as such. 

Grantmaking

Pop Culture Collaborative grants are awarded to United States–based nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies, and individuals (with fiscal sponsorship) working to drive transformative experiences for mass audiences (i.e., more than 1 million people) through pop culture stories, media, and social networks. These include initiatives focused on the development and distribution of content, design of audience engagement strategies, and the creation of immersive narrative environments through cultural, narrative, and behavioral change approaches.

As described in our vision statement, the Collaborative is working over the long-term to support the growth of a pop culture for social change field capable of building the yearning in most Americans (more than 150 million people) to actively co-create a just and pluralist culture in which everyone is perceived to belong, inherently, and is treated as such.

The Collaborative defines “pluralist culture” as a culture in which the majority of people in a community or nation are actively engaged in the hard and delicate work of belonging together in a just society. Our grantmaking approach reflects our belief that pop culture stories and experiences have a critical role to play in helping people discover, experiment with, and embody pluralist behaviors and norms.

The Pop Culture Collaborative Vision and Purpose

Throughout America’s history, the most transformative cultural shifts—from slavery abolition to Reconstruction, “I Have A Dream” to “Yes We Can,” #BlackLivesMatter, the DREAM-ers, and Love Is Love—have been achieved by movements and leaders who have awakened people’s deep yearning to belong in a pluralist America. In each case, the tug-of-war between belonging and exclusion sparked a portal moment—a cracking open of the public imagination about what this nation is capable of becoming.

We believe our nation is on the precipice of another historic breakthrough: a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the American people to decisively choose to move in the direction of pluralism and justice. How will we respond to this call for transformation? Will we submit to authoritarian narratives that entice us to retreat back into the systems of exclusion and violence that stain our past, or will we step boldly through the portal and onto the path towards our pluralist future?

Americans have the opportunity to ask: What society do we yearn to create and who can we empower to lead the way? If, as civil rights scholar Vincent Harding once said, America is “a country that has yet to be born,” the pop culture for social change field can help prepare and guide millions of people through this process of becoming something new by clearing away the detritus of our nation’s past, replacing fetid, crumbling ideas and norms with ones rooted in justice, care, and connection.

Together, artists, organizers, strategists, and researchers can create the stories that help the American public understand and interpret the choices we face through the lens of our shared commitment to becoming a pluralist nation.

Over the long-term, the Collaborative is working to support the growth of a pop culture for social change field capable of building the yearning in most Americans (more than 150 million people) to actively co-create a just and pluralist society in which everyone is perceived to belong, inherently, and is treated as such. The Pop Culture Collaborative defines a pluralist society as a culture in which the majority of people in a community and nation are engaged in the hard and delicate work of belonging together in a just and equitable society.

Major Grants

Major Grants can support new and/or established initiatives, organizations, or companies that are working to advance long-term narrative change goals and/or to build the pop culture for social change field.  Major Grants are approved twice a year, in the late Spring/Early Summer and in the late Fall.

The Pop Culture Collaborative funds in five priority grantmaking areas. All approved grants will fit into at least one of the five priority areas, but often fit across multiple areas.

Program Area 1: Artists Advancing Culture Change -

The Pop Culture Collaborative provides grants to artists and organizations or companies that support artist cohorts, from various disciplines, locations, and industries to bring their artistic vision to mass audiences, while also contributing to field-wide efforts to build public yearning for a pluralist America.

We seek to create a large, networked community of artists who believe that their creative work and leadership have the power to inspire millions of Americans to actively co-create a pluralist society.

Areas of interest include:

• Supporting artists and cultural organizations to conceptualize, develop, and produce creative works that can help build public yearning for pluralist culture in America.
• Supporting artists to gather for shared learning, networking, community-knitting, and power-building, especially spaces that bring artists into direct and meaningful connection with frontline activists and culture change strategists.
• Helping artists and organizations develop the methodology, networks, infrastructure, pipelines, and leadership skills needed to redistribute access and power in their respective industries to historically excluded communities. 

Program Area 2: Building the Pop Culture for Social Change Field -

The Pop Culture Collaborative supports artists, activists, strategists, researchers, and other practitioners in the entertainment, social justice, and philanthropic fields to build a robust pop culture change field capable of achieving widespread narrative and cultural change at scale. Together, they can form narrative networks that have the knowledge, connections, skills, and infrastructure that can align and create transformative narrative environments in our society.

Areas of interest include: 

• Creating resources and/or infrastructure that support the design, testing, and/or activation of long-term pop culture strategies.
• Developing, testing, and strengthening partnerships among artists, the entertainment industry, and social justice movements via convenings, cohorts, campaigns, and/or programs.
• Designing, testing, and/or advancing narrative infrastructure (convenings, emergent technologies, community knitting spaces, and programs) that create access and long-term career sustainability for the next generation of pop culture–focused strategists, campaigners, and artists.

Program Area 3: Culture Change Research -

The Pop Culture Collaborative supports grantees to unearth new data, develop analysis, and share insights with and among entertainment, social justice, and philanthropic sectors in order to inform content development, advance cultural strategies, and activate collaborations in the pop culture for social change field.

Areas of interest include:

• Audience Research. Research that helps the field understand who the people in key audiences are, what motivates their beliefs, (e.g., media, culture, family, economics), and how their beliefs compel and shape their behaviors.
• Industry Research. Research that delves into the ecosystem of a specific field of cultural production (e.g., television industry, music industry, or sports broadcasting industry) to inform and/or activate short- and long-term culture change strategies.
• Impact and Evaluation Research. Research that examines and analyzes past and current pop culture change experiments, campaigns, and/or partnerships; utilizes formal evaluation and longitudinal impact methodologies to understand impact; and/or leverages trend tracking and analysis to make sense of current narrative environments and cultural norms, or anticipate future patterns in pop culture content creation, consumption, and engagement.

Program Area 4: Movement-Led Pop Culture Narrative Strategies -

The Pop Culture Collaborative supports social justice organizations and initiatives to design, coordinate, and activate long-term narrative change strategies at the pop culture (mass audience) level.

Areas of interest include:

• Design and implementation of multilayered culture change strategies, including content/story strategy design and audience experience design.
• Reimagining and testing new roles and relationships between the social justice and entertainment fields to advance the development of narratives, story creation, and audience activation opportunities.

Program Area 5: Innovations in Mass Audience Activation -

The Pop Culture Collaborative supports initiatives, bold experiments, and exploration of emerging activation models to ensure that just, authentic narratives about historically marginalized communities are deeply integrated into our nation’s narrative landscape and strategically leveraged to build widespread public yearning for a just and pluralist America.

Areas of interest include:

• Design and implementation of audience activation campaigns (with intended audiences of at least 1 million people) focused on pop culture content.
• Experimentation with mass audience engagement strategies.
• Organizing and/or partnerships with pop culture fandoms.

Criteria

The Collaborative seeks grantee partners working at the intersection of pop culture and social change who:

• Are artists, activists, organizations, strategists, researchers, and/or others who identify culture change as a clear outcome of their work and pop culture strategies as a critical aspect of their culture change efforts.
• Demonstrate emerging or pathbreaking leadership around long-term narrative and culture change strategies in the arts, entertainment, digital, mass media, and/or social justice sectors.
• Prioritize authentic and equitable leadership and/or partnership from the communities most directly affected by the work.
• Have the ability to clearly define how their work fits into a long-term narrative change strategy and theory of culture change.

Funding

Grants allocations are informed by the request of the potential grantees, but made with the final recommendations of Collaborative staff, ranging from: 

• $50,000 to $100,000 for one year
• $100,000 to $200,000 over two years 

Mission Statement

The Pop Culture Collaborative is a philanthropic resource and funder learning community working to transform the narrative landscape in America around people of color, immigrants, refugees, Muslims, and Indigenous peoples, especially those who are women, queer, transgender and/or disabled. The Collaborative achieves this through partnerships between the social justice sector and the entertainment, advertising, and media industries that help mass audiences understand the past, make sense of the present, and imagine the future of American society.

Since its public launch in Summer 2017, the Collaborative has worked with field and philanthropic partners to articulate a shared goal: to unleash the superpowers of pop culture to build widespread public yearning for a pluralist culture—that is, a nation in which most people are actively engaged in the hard and delicate work of belonging together in a just society.

With this in mind, the Collaborative seeks to accelerate the pop culture for social change field’s ability to design and implement sophisticated, long-term culture change strategies at the pop culture level and to be a catalyst for the activation of transformative narrative systems—​coordinated systems of mental models, narrative archetypes, and immersive story experiences—​designed to normalize pluralist behaviors and values in America. 

In the long term, the Collaborative is working to support the growth of a pop culture for social change field capable of building the yearning in most Americans (more than 150 million people) to actively co-create a just and pluralist society in which everyone is perceived to belong—inherently—and treated as such. 

Grantmaking

Pop Culture Collaborative grants are awarded to United States–based nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies, and individuals (with fiscal sponsorship) working to drive transformative experiences for mass audiences (i.e., more than 1 million people) through pop culture stories, media, and social networks. These include initiatives focused on the development and distribution of content, design of audience engagement strategies, and the creation of immersive narrative environments through cultural, narrative, and behavioral change approaches.

As described in our vision statement, the Collaborative is working over the long-term to support the growth of a pop culture for social change field capable of building the yearning in most Americans (more than 150 million people) to actively co-create a just and pluralist culture in which everyone is perceived to belong, inherently, and is treated as such.

The Collaborative defines “pluralist culture” as a culture in which the majority of people in a community or nation are actively engaged in the hard and delicate work of belonging together in a just society. Our grantmaking approach reflects our belief that pop culture stories and experiences have a critical role to play in helping people discover, experiment with, and embody pluralist behaviors and norms.

The Pop Culture Collaborative Vision and Purpose

Throughout America’s history, the most transformative cultural shifts—from slavery abolition to Reconstruction, “I Have A Dream” to “Yes We Can,” #BlackLivesMatter, the DREAM-ers, and Love Is Love—have been achieved by movements and leaders who have awakened people’s deep yearning to belong in a pluralist America. In each case, the tug-of-war between belonging and exclusion sparked a portal moment—a cracking open of the public imagination about what this nation is capable of becoming.

We believe our nation is on the precipice of another historic breakthrough: a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the American people to decisively choose to move in the direction of pluralism and justice. How will we respond to this call for transformation? Will we submit to authoritarian narratives that entice us to retreat back into the systems of exclusion and violence that stain our past, or will we step boldly through the portal and onto the path towards our pluralist future?

Americans have the opportunity to ask: What society do we yearn to create and who can we empower to lead the way? If, as civil rights scholar Vincent Harding once said, America is “a country that has yet to be born,” the pop culture for social change field can help prepare and guide millions of people through this process of becoming something new by clearing away the detritus of our nation’s past, replacing fetid, crumbling ideas and norms with ones rooted in justice, care, and connection.

Together, artists, organizers, strategists, and researchers can create the stories that help the American public understand and interpret the choices we face through the lens of our shared commitment to becoming a pluralist nation.

Over the long-term, the Collaborative is working to support the growth of a pop culture for social change field capable of building the yearning in most Americans (more than 150 million people) to actively co-create a just and pluralist society in which everyone is perceived to belong, inherently, and is treated as such. The Pop Culture Collaborative defines a pluralist society as a culture in which the majority of people in a community and nation are engaged in the hard and delicate work of belonging together in a just and equitable society.

Opportunity Grants

Opportunity Grants are for emergent initiatives, projects, and research; time-sensitive gatherings, retreats, or convenings; and/or critical experiments at the intersection of pop culture and social justice. Opportunity grants are not necessarily hooked to external timing, but based on the timing and needs of the artists, initiative, and/or organization.

Opportunity grants tend to be focused on project that are:

• New and/or in early stages of development.
  • Seed funding for early-stage projects include conducting research; implementing an experimental cultural strategy; developing field or narrative infrastructure or networks; and/or designing or testing a mass audience activation campaign. (For example, much of our artist-led pipeline projects such as new writers rooms models were seeded with Opportunity grants.)
• Convenings and gatherings.
  • One-time or a series of small group gatherings (in-person or virtual) that foster connections or strengthen relationships among stakeholders in specific sectors of the pop culture for social change field (e.g., cultural strategists, entertainment artists, social justice organizations, culture change researchers); or cross-sector convenings that bring stakeholders across sectors together to learn, forge bonds, and/or develop strategy.
  • Genius banks: in-person gatherings of experts in issues, sectors, communities, and/or genres that can help advance a big narrative idea, develop a specific cultural campaign, etc. For example, pop culture audience engagement campaigns often use genius banks for early partner gathering and brainstorming.

All approved Opportunity proposals will fall under at least one (and sometimes more) of the Pop Culture Collaborative five priority grantmaking program areas, including:

Program Area 1: Artists Advancing Culture Change -

The Pop Culture Collaborative provides grants to artists and organizations or companies that support artist cohorts, from various disciplines, locations, and industries to bring their artistic vision to mass audiences, while also contributing to field-wide efforts to build public yearning for a pluralist America.

We seek to create a large, networked community of artists who believe that their creative work and leadership have the power to inspire millions of Americans to actively co-create a pluralist society.

Areas of interest include:

• • Supporting artists and cultural organizations to conceptualize, develop, and produce creative works that can help build public yearning for pluralist culture in America.
  • Supporting artists to gather for shared learning, networking, community-knitting, and power-building, especially spaces that bring artists into direct and meaningful connection with frontline activists and culture change strategists.
  • Helping artists and organizations develop the methodology, networks, infrastructure, pipelines, and leadership skills needed to redistribute access and power in their respective industries to historically excluded communities.

Program Area 2: Building the Pop Culture for Social Change Field -

The Pop Culture Collaborative supports artists, activists, strategists, researchers, and other practitioners in the entertainment, social justice, and philanthropic fields to build a robust pop culture change field capable of achieving widespread narrative and cultural change at scale. Together, they can form narrative networks that have the knowledge, connections, skills, and infrastructure that can align and create transformative narrative environments in our society.

Areas of interest include:

• • Creating resources and/or infrastructure that support the design, testing, and/or activation of long-term pop culture strategies.
  • Developing, testing, and strengthening partnerships among artists, the entertainment industry, and social justice movements via convenings, cohorts, campaigns, and/or programs.
  • Designing, testing, and/or advancing narrative infrastructure (convenings, emergent technologies, community knitting spaces, and programs) that create access and long-term career sustainability for the next generation of pop culture–focused strategists, campaigners, and artists.

Program Area 3: Culture Change Research -

The Pop Culture Collaborative supports grantees to unearth new data, develop analysis, and share insights with and among entertainment, social justice, and philanthropic sectors in order to inform content development, advance cultural strategies, and activate collaborations in the pop culture for social change field.

Areas of interest include:

• Audience Research. Research that helps the field understand who the people in key audiences are, what motivates their beliefs, (e.g., media, culture, family, economics), and how their beliefs compel and shape their behaviors.
• Industry Research. Research that delves into the ecosystem of a specific field of cultural production (e.g., television industry, music industry, or sports broadcasting industry) to inform and/or activate short- and long-term culture change strategies.
• Impact and Evaluation Research. Research that examines and analyzes past and current pop culture change experiments, campaigns, and/or partnerships; utilizes formal evaluation and longitudinal impact methodologies to understand impact; and/or leverages trend tracking and analysis to make sense of current narrative environments and cultural norms, or anticipate future patterns in pop culture content creation, consumption, and engagement.

Program Area 4: Movement-Led Pop Culture Narrative Strategies -

The Pop Culture Collaborative supports social justice organizations and initiatives to design, coordinate, and activate long-term narrative change strategies at the pop culture (mass audience) level.

Areas of interest include:

• Design and implementation of multilayered culture change strategies, including content/story strategy design and audience experience design.
• Reimagining and testing new roles and relationships between the social justice and entertainment fields to advance the development of narratives, story creation, and audience activation opportunities.

Program Area 5: Innovations in Mass Audience Activation -

The Pop Culture Collaborative supports initiatives, bold experiments, and exploration of emerging activation models to ensure that just, authentic narratives about historically marginalized communities are deeply integrated into our nation’s narrative landscape and strategically leveraged to build widespread public yearning for a just and pluralist America.

Areas of interest include:

• Design and implementation of audience activation campaigns (with intended audiences of at least 1 million people) focused on pop culture content.
• Experimentation with mass audience audience engagement strategies.
• Organizing and/or partnerships with pop culture fandoms.

Criteria

The Collaborative seeks grantee partners working at the intersection of pop culture and social change who:

• Are artists, activists, organizations, strategists, researchers, and/or others who identify culture change as a clear outcome of their work and pop culture strategies as a critical aspect of their culture change efforts.
• Demonstrate emerging or pathbreaking leadership around long-term narrative and culture change strategies in the arts, entertainment, digital, mass media, and/or social justice sectors.
• Prioritize authentic and equitable leadership and/or partnership from the communities most directly affected by the work.
• Have the ability to clearly define how their work fits into a long-term narrative change strategy and theory of culture change.

Funding

Opportunity grants can be awarded for up to $50,000. Proposals (considered only upon request) are approved year-round on a rolling basis and should be completed within four to 12 months. Opportunity grants can cover the total cost of a gathering or be applied to the budget of gatherings that cost more than $50,000.

What We Support

The Rauch Foundation takes an entrepreneurial approach to promoting change by investing in areas where we can have a fundamental impact.

Our mission has two main priorities:

• To promote a healthy planet through research into global food systems.
• To promote the financial preparedness of rising generations of students by supporting schools in the delivery of financial literacy programs

Building on the Rauch Foundation’s long history of providing evidence-based research and data to inform policy, our work in food systems is centered on exploring the nexus between the food we consume and the systems involved in its financing, sourcing, production and delivery. Using the island of Poros, Greece and its efforts to stop the expansion of open net pen industrial fish farming as a case study, we have been laying out a case for how global, national, and regional actions can impact the health of a community, its economy, and the local environment.

Our school-based work in financial literacy acknowledges growing national support for a curriculum that helps young people develop the skills to navigate a successful future for themselves and their families.

Working for systemic change.

The Rauch Foundation invests in ideas and organizations that spark positive systemic change.

We are not afraid of controversial ideas, original approaches, or new ways to tackle old problems. However, we do look for sound data, leadership, other grant partners, strong management skills, and a focus on evidence-based outcomes. Once we invest in the work of an organization, our involvement may include a long-term partnership or assistance with capacity building and leadership.

We are committed to partnering with nonprofits and NGOs, the private sector, labor, research institutions, universities, the media, and other funders to help achieve shared goals and work through common issues.

Mission

The Richard Davoud Donchian Foundation provides funds to nonprofit organizations whose programs result in the strengthening of the human spirit and the enhancement of personal integrity. The Foundation channels most of its financial resources toward charitable organizations whose attention is concentrated on character development through leadership training, literacy, primary education, business integrity, spiritual enrichment and ethics.

It is the expressed belief of the Donchian Foundation that every individual can become physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually stronger, resulting in the culmination of a more confident and scrupulous lifestyle. The primary objective of the Donchian Foundation's grant making activities is to ensure that its ultimate recipients become empowered to strengthen and build up their families and communities -- passing onto others that which was given to them.

Guiding Principles

The Donchian Foundation's goal is to help effective organizations advance their mission and meet their charitable objectives. Through its endorsement, the Foundation's secondary objective is to create a ripple effect that leverages new partners and greater visibility. Leveraging is a principle that the foundation believes in, and one that is applied to its efforts toward strategic philanthropy. Whether it's leveraging matching funds through challenge grants, or motivating like-minded organizations to participate in a foundation-initiated project, the ultimate intention is to foster the best possible results.

Qualities sought by the Donchian Foundation in its partner organizations are:

• effective and dynamic personnel;
• passionate leadership;
• a bias against bureaucracy;
• prudent management & governance practices; and
• commitment to results and to the documented assessment of program impact.

The Foundation focuses its grant making in three key areas: Literacy & Education; Humanitarian Efforts and Ethics & Personal Development.

Literacy & Education

– With an interest in rethinking and reconfiguring curriculum, pedagogy, and the other academic resources in schools and communities, the Foundation focuses on programs that work toward long-term improvement in all aspects of education, but with an emphasis on literacy.

Humanitarian Efforts

– To improve the lives and spirits of individuals and communities facing pressing circumstances, etc., including efforts to address Children’s Health.

Ethics & Personal Development

– To enhance the moral, ethical, spiritual and physical well-being and progress of mankind. The Foundation's grantmaking activities are centered around the concept of social purpose enterprise that seeks to raise the standards of ethical excellence in society, moral character in the community, faith in the family, integrity in business and grassroots leadership in needy communities.

Education, Science and Health Grant

Education

Education grants focus on scholarships, targeted programs within educational communities, and general operating support for institutions demonstrating measurable impact.

• Scholarships: Providing opportunity for those who could not otherwise access the educational environment to not only benefit the student, but also enhance institutions by ensuring a robust and diverse community.
  • Castilleja School
  • Dartmouth College
  • Menlo School
  • Phillips Brooks School
  • Stanford University
  • Stanford Law School
• Program: Partnership with organizations with programs that enhance research and learning.
  • Stanford Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
  • Stanford Law School Constitutional Law Center
• General Operating Support: Targeting specific small institutions to enhance their delivery of services through long-term support for operations.
  • Ragazzi Boys Chorus
  • College Track
  • Playworks Northern California
  • Eastside Prep
  • Child and Family Institute
  • Wood River Valley YMCA
  • Learning Matters

Science and Health

The purpose of our science and health grant-making is to enhance life experience through improved health outcomes.

• Research: Grants to research lead to medical breakthroughs for a healthier and more productive society.
  • UCSF General Clinical Research Institute: Salt Sensitivity; Chloride-sensitive Hypertension and Stroke, Comparative effects of potassium chloride and bicarbonate on thiazide-induced reduction in urinary calcium excretion
  • UCSF Gladstone Institute-Cardiovascular Disease
• Program: Supporting targeted programs that enhance an institution’s delivery of services.
  • Autism Center, Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health
  • Mosbacher Fellow, Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health
  • The impact of research in genetics
  • Hospital for Special Surgery, Patricia Mosbacher Flower Fund
  • Hospital for Special Surgery, Patricia Mosbacher Honorary Lecture in Orthopedic Trauma
• General Operating Support: Targeting specific institutions to enhance their delivery of services through long-term support for operations. 
  • Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
  • Danny Thompson Memorial Leukemia Foundation
  • California Pacific Medical Center

Target Foundation

We’re proud to continue our long legacy of support for communities in our hometown and around the world.

At the Target Foundation, we envision a world where all families and communities have the resources they need to determine and realize their own joy in life. It’s a reality that is out of reach for far too many families as they struggle for access to economic opportunity and stability, for equity and for the kind of empowerment that lifts up their communities. We believe we have a responsibility to work to remove structural barriers and help create access for those who have been left out. When we shift power to communities, they can more meaningfully participate in the economy, creating a world where all families can thrive.

Serving as a learning lab, the Target Foundation is committed to enabling shared prosperity and opportunity by upholding equity and inclusion for all communities. Guided by our deep commitment to community, we invest in leaders, organizations, coalitions and networks that expand economic opportunity equitably, enabling communities to determine their own futures. We support strategies that center and elevate the voices, stories and leadership of individuals and communities that have historically been silenced.

The Target Foundation is leaning into trust-based philanthropy to drive systems change, with values rooted in advancing equity, shifting power and building mutually accountable relationships. The Foundation’s capabilities allow it to work toward long-term solutions across complex and interconnected economic issues, grounded in the voices of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) as well as Global South communities and organizations.

Building on our legacy of giving in our twin hometowns of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and extending across the U.S. and in emerging economies around the world, we remain committed to listening, learning and building the kinds of relationships with partners that will shift systems to realize a world where joy is for all.

National Foundation Program

Building financial stability and empowerment for workers and families in a rapidly changing economy.

As the challenges and opportunities facing today’s workforce continue to evolve, the Target Foundation is taking action to help our neighbors grow and thrive. That’s why we’re committed to building financial stability and economic opportunity for working people and their families in a rapidly changing economy.

Grants and initiatives

The Target Foundation prioritizes investments that explicitly center on equity, with a focus on organizations working to address the specific systemic and structural barriers facing Black communities, Indigenous communities and other communities of color.

Through our national program, the Target Foundation invests in organizations that serve communities with programs focused on:

• The changing nature of work: Equipping individuals with limited income with the support, resources and opportunities for mobility needed to achieve their full potential in a rapidly changing economy.
• Financial resilience and inclusion: Supporting low-income workers and families in attaining financial stability and security, imbuing a sense of self-efficacy, control and dignity over their financial lives.

Tides Stronger Together Fund

Connecting doers with donors is central to the Tide's mission. The Tides Stronger Together Fund is one way we act on that commitment, providing general support grants to Tides Center fiscally sponsored partners with a focus on groups that are assisting historically underserved communities so they remain responsive to their communities.

Support Power Building in Historically Underserved Communities

Strengthening the core capacity of an organization goes beyond increasing its reach — it can create a lasting impact on the community it serves. While existing inequities within the philanthropic sector can stunt and destabilize nonprofit organizations, Tides’ funding seeks to center the leadership of changemakers who are proximate to the issues and communities they champion and amplify the critical community support they provide.

Tides’ Stronger Together Fund builds the capacity of our existing fiscally sponsored partners so they can continue to serve underinvested communities.

Funding Priorities

The Stronger Together Fund’s powerful pooled funding model supports the capacity-building efforts of community leaders and changemakers within Tides Center. 

Tides’ Fiscally Sponsored Partners

This fund is designed to support the more than 120 partners that are already fiscally sponsored through Tides Center. These partners are closely aligned with Tides’ mission and vision of shifting power to communities that have historically been denied power and resources by centering leadership from and by those communities.

Meaningful Impact

The Tides Stronger Together Fund strengthens Tides Center’s fiscally sponsored partners by supporting capacity building, sustainability, and organizational health. These resources help organizations overcome potential barriers to their missions, including operational challenges, financial loss, unsupported programmatic costs, and increased demand for services.

Community Perspectives

Tides trust that grantees hold the expertise to direct funds effectively. By empowering social change organizations with general operating dollars, grants from the Stronger Together Fund are directed where they are most needed.

Helping Build Better Futures

Our mission is to deliver great value to our customers every day. For over four decades, our deep commitment to the principles of providing value and caring for others has helped define our culture. It extends beyond the walls of our stores, distribution centers, and offices, and into our local communities around the world. The intersection of these principles defines our global community mission:

Deliver great value to our communities by helping vulnerable families and children access the resources and opportunities they need to build a better future.

Our Social Impact Areas

We bring our community relations mission to life around the world by focusing our giving on four social impact areas where we believe we can have the most impact and are critical to helping families and children succeed and thrive.

Basic Needs

We are passionate about supporting nonprofit organizations that help fill critical basic needs such as a warm meal, clean clothing, and a safe place to sleep for vulnerable families.

Education & Training

Our efforts have focused on quality enrichment and extracurricular programs that provide skills, resources, and opportunities to support school and career success for children, teens, and young adults.

Patient Care & Research

We support organizations that deliver services to families and children facing health challenges and life-threatening illnesses.

Empowering Women

We support programs that provide services ranging from help for those fleeing domestic violence, to others that offer education, training, and job placement resources.

Healthier Food for All

We aim to help people live healthier by increasing access to healthy food and bringing nutrition and healthcare together.

Expanding access to affordable, healthy food lies at the heart of Walmart’s purpose to help people save money and live better. Walmart and Sam’s Club provide access to low-cost, nutritious food through over 5,000 stores and clubs within 10 miles of 90% of Americans, as well as thousands more grocery delivery and pickup options.

Our philanthropy complements and expands the impact of our business by increasing access to healthy food in underserved communities and creating a closer link between nutrition and healthcare.

For nearly two decades, we’ve helped expand access to food by donating food and strengthening the charitable meal system. Since 2006, our network of Walmart stores, Sam’s Clubs and distribution centers have provided more than 7.5 billion pounds of food to local Feeding America food banks across the country. We've also supported local food banks in innovating, rescuing, and distributing food to those in need. And, through our annual Fight Hunger. Spark Change. campaign, each year we invite our associates, customers and suppliers to join us in supporting Feeding America member food banks.

Today, nearly half of Americans face chronic illnesses like diabetes and heart disease, and proper nutrition is crucial for managing and reversing these conditions to enhance overall health. As we continue our efforts to improve health outcomes so people can live better, we are focusing our investments on initiatives that more closely connect nutrition and healthcare for people with chronic illnesses. Our investments aim to complement the impact of Walmart’s business in improving the cost and convenience of healthcare, particularly for Americans in rural and underserved communities.

We focus on two key areas: 1) filling gaps in food access, and 2) accelerating the adoption of food as medicine programs.

Fill Gaps in Food Access

We use philanthropy to improve access to food for underserved communities by:

• Investing in building capacity and accelerating innovation in the charitable meal system so food banks can recover and distribute more food.
• Supporting user-friendly technology for nutrition benefits and incorporating these benefits into nonprofit and healthcare services.
• Identifying and testing innovative models that leverage nonprofit and retail strengths to get food to underserved communities.

Accelerate Adoption of Food as Medicine Programs

We use philanthropy to better connect nutrition and healthcare by accelerating the use of food as medicine programs by:

• Supporting high-impact research to help stakeholders better understand the effectiveness of food as medicine programs and the specific elements needed for successful programs.
• Developing nutrition and healthcare programs that are culturally relevant and resonate with people from all backgrounds.
• Increasing coordination between food and healthcare sectors through convening and knowledge-sharing.

Background

The Quality of Life Grants Program, created by the late Dana Reeve, strives to empower individuals with disabilities and their families by providing grants to nonprofit organizations that improve quality of life through inclusion, access, independence, opportunities for community engagement, and other life-enhancing endeavors.

As a pillar of the National Paralysis Resource Center, the Quality of Life Grants Program, pioneered by the late Dana Reeve, impacts and empowers people living with paralysis, their families and caregivers by providing grants to nonprofit organizations whose projects and initiatives foster inclusion, involvement and community engagement, while promoting health and wellness for those affected by paralysis in all 50 states and U.S. territories.

Priority Impact Grants - Tier 2

 Priority Impact grants fund priority issues for individuals living with paralysis. Grantee organizations will demonstrate capacity to implement the grant without intensive technical assistance and capacity building, as well as demonstrate capacity for program development, evaluation and sustainability.

Tier 2 — Grants of up to $30,000 for the following Priority areas:

• Assistive Technology
• Disaster Preparedness
• Respite/Caregiving

Tier 2 – Grants must be completed within 12 months

Assistive Technology – Assistive Technology grants are a new priority area that differs from the previous High Impact Innovative Assistive Technology (HIIAT) grants program (2015-2020) and the Direct Effect assistive technology project type grants. This new tier is open to all organizations with the continued emphasis on increasing the independence of people living with paralysis, to assist them to participate fully in the communities of which they are a part, and enhance their social, employment, education or finance-related quality of life through the use of assistive technology.

Disaster Preparedness – Grant funds support nonprofit organizations and programs that address the needs of emergency preparedness and the needs of people with paralysis in a natural disaster environment.

Respite/Caregiving – This grant area recognizes family caregivers and the vital role they play in caring for those with paralysis. Funds support nonprofits that offer exemplary and innovative respite care services that are evidence-based, appear promising, or are trying new service models.

• Forms of respite supported through this grant area are:
  • Emergency Respite
  • Home-Based Services
  • Sitter-Companion Services
  • Consumer-Directed Respite
  • Out-of-Home Respite
  • Family Care Homes or Host Family
  • Respite Center-based
  • Adult Day Healthcare Centers
  • Parent/Family Cooperative

Spark Good: Strengthening Community 

Small actions can lead to big impact, and Spark Good is the force multiplier.

Walmart Spark Good brings together all of Walmart and Sam’s Club’s community giving programs under one brand and puts customers and associates in the driver’s seat, making it easier to give to the causes they care most about.

Spark Good includes programs like local grants, round up, registry, space tool and associate giving and volunteerism.

Local Grants

Walmart believes that strengthening local communities creates value for business as well as society. That’s why we empower each Walmart store, Sam’s Club and distribution center to strengthen and support local communities through local donations, fundraising outside of facilities and participation in corporate cause-marketing campaigns.

Each year, our U.S. stores and clubs award Spark Good Local Grants ranging from $250 to $5000. Spark Good local grants are designed to address the unique needs of the communities where we operate. They include a variety of organizations, such as animal shelters, elder services, and community clean-up projects. 

About

The Growing Justice Fund is a collaborative effort aimed at advancing equity in the food system by investing in the leadership and solutions of Tribal, Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian, and immigrant communities. Through grants of $25,000 to $250,000, we support organizations working to strengthen food value chains, build local wealth, and promote good food procurement.

Fund Values

• Health and Equity & Racial Justice will be achieved when all people can participate and prosper in a just, fair and inclusive society and race is no longer a factor that determines who has the opportunity to reach their full potential for mental, physical and social wellbeing
• Economic Equity & Worker Justice will be achieved when all people and communities can access opportunities for safe, dignified work; participate in business ownership; and build the economic stability necessary to achieve and sustain wealth and prosperity
• Environmental & Food Justice will be achieved when all people and communities can access, shape and benefit from good food and food systems that address environmental racism, promote food worker rights, utilize regenerative agriculture practices and advance food sovereignty
• Collective Action & Partnership are the building blocks essential for transformation, since we go farther together than alone, and make better and more equitable changes when we listen to and leverage the wisdom of the collective

Fund Vision

Growing Justice envisions a future in which Tribal, Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian and immigrant people engaged in food markets as suppliers, producers, distributors, workers, & eaters at community-serving institutions are economically and physically thriving thanks in part to efforts by large community institutions to prioritize equitable good food procurement.

Funding Details

The Growing Justice Fund offers grants ranging from $25,000 to $250,000 to support community-led initiatives that advance equitable food procurement. These grants empower Tribal, Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian, and immigrant (BIPOC+) communities engaged in food markets to secure institutional contracts and gain economic viability. Through large-scale procurement opportunities with community-serving institutions—such as schools, hospitals, and elder care centers—these grants foster equitable access to food buying revenue and help build wealth in historically marginalized communities.

Planning Grants (up to $25,000) help organizations in the early stages of project development by funding strategic research, stakeholder engagement, partnership building, and project planning. These grants lay the groundwork for future implementation by strengthening leadership and preparing for sustainable initiatives.

Implementation Grants (ranging from $50,000 to $250,000) are designed for fully developed projects ready to scale. These grants focus on building infrastructure for equitable food procurement, supporting BIPOC+ producers, food hubs, cooperatives, and policy advocacy, ensuring that these communities thrive as key players in institutional markets.

About

Welcome to the Clif Family Foundation, an organization we started in 2006 to support grassroots groups led by people with vision and commitment. We believe that much of our nation's needed innovation will spring from grassroots organizations' daily efforts in local communities. The foundation has been proud to support hundreds of nonprofits that are working tirelessly to transform our food system, revitalize the environment, and enhance community health. Now that we’re grandparents, the urgency to build a healthy, just, and ecologically thriving world is even more personal. We look forward to expanding the reach and impact of the foundation in the years to come. This means working with nonprofits that prioritize people-centered solutions and address urgent gaps and historically underfunded priorities. We believe we can all do more good in the world. Together.

Strategic Priorities

• Regenerative and Organic Farming: Accelerate the adoption of regenerative farming practices, including organic, climate-resilient, equitable, and agroecological approaches.
• Food Production Workers’ Health and Safety: Amplify efforts to secure healthy, safe, just, and empowering working and living conditions for food production workers.
• Climate Justice: Expand community-centered solutions to climate change that build resilience and empower those who have been historically marginalized.
• Healthy Food Access: Advance food systems’ changes that make healthy and sustainably produced food accessible, affordable, and culturally appropriate.
• Inclusive Outdoor Access: Catalyze solutions that expand access to safe places to enable healthy physical activity and improve mental health.
• Indoors and Outdoors Safe from Pollution: Promote preventative health approaches by identifying and eliminating toxics from our air, water, soil, and human-made materials.

Open Call

These grants support general operating cost or specific projects and applicants must be registered as (or fiscally sponsored by) a 501(c)3 organization. The Foundation reviews applications twice a year; the deadlines are March 1 and August 1. Grant announcements occur approximately four months after the deadline. Typical grants range from $5,000 - $50,000 and last for one year.

Kubota’s Hometown Proud community grant program will invest in communities across the country by awarding 10 grants in 2025. Each grant is valued at $50,000 (includes $25,000 cash and $25,000 equipment voucher). Kubota will announce the 10 winning hometown projects on September 1, 2025. Nonprofit organizations with a community project are encouraged to enter; the application is easy: just fill out the form below and upload a short video!Now in its 5th year, the Kubota Hometown Proud grant program has helped fund various projects across the country, from building agricultural education centers to revitalizing community gardens, and we are proud to support initiatives that make a lasting impact on a local level. 

The mission of the Yass Prize and STOP Awards Initiative is to identify and support more best in class education providers who can tackle the big education challenges of the day and deliver an education for students that is Sustainable, Transformational, Outstanding and Permissionless. It’s more than an awards program or a philanthropic endeavor. It’s a movement intended to transform education for everyone.

The Yass Prize & STOP Award Initiative

It began In August of 2021, when the STOP Award – standing for Sustainable, Transformational Outstanding and Permissionless education was established to honor and advance the work of education providers who delivered a best-in-class experience during the Covid pandemic, initially by offering a $1 million prize. But the launch of the award uncovered hundreds of inspirational and innovative education entrepreneurs, and twenty were chosen to go through a robust evaluation, business accelerator and pitch process. In their generosity, Janine and Jeff Yass decided that all were deserving of a $100,000 semi-finalist STOP Award, and the Discovery Center of Springfield, put its $1 million grand prize to work expanding its new full-time education program to more students. After seeing the progress, we knew we couldn’t just “stop” there.

Today it’s known as the Yass Prize for Sustainable, Transformational, Outstanding and Permissionless education, and it is a rapidly growing effort to find, reward, celebrate and expand best-in-class education organizations from every sector, in every state, and to create unprecedented partnerships that accelerate impact with the speed and urgency our students deserve.

Who We Are

Mona Foundation is a non-profit organization that partners with grassroots initiatives around the world to educate children, empower women and girls, and enable them to transform their own communities.

Our goal is to alleviate global poverty and contribute to creating a just and prosperous world so that no child ever goes to bed hungry, is lost to preventable diseases, or is deprived of education for lack of resources. We believe that universal education, gender equality, and community building are the keys to achieving this goal.

Our Focus

All Mona Foundation activities focus on universal education, gender equality, and community transformation.

Universal Education

Learning is intrinsic to human reality and everyone deserves the opportunity to receive a quality education. Educated communities are healthier, more sustainable, and less vulnerable to economic volatility.

Gender Equality and Women and Girls’ Empowerment

Providing equal educational opportunities to girls and women yield a higher rate of return than any other investment that can be made in our communities. Equality not only guarantees basic rights, it is also vital to promoting the robust, shared growth needed to end extreme poverty. World Bank data demonstrates that gender equality and economic development are inextricably linked and increasing education specifically for girls and women has a direct effect on a nation’s economic development.v

There is also a multiplier effect to educating girls and women. More educated women tend to be healthier, participate more in the formal labor market, earn more income, have fewer children, and provide better health care and education to their children, all of which eventually improve the well- being of all individuals and lift households out of poverty. These benefits also transmit across generations, as well as to communities at large.

Community Building

All people have the right and the responsibility to lead their own lives and to contribute to the betterment of their own communities. The individuals most affected are the ones most ready to affect change.

Supporting communities in their own self-advocacy promotes empowerment, rather than dependency. Many students we support work with their communities to establish literacy programs, women health centers, parental trainings, cleanliness drives, tree plantations, and many other programs that stimulate harmony and community building in their communities.

Project Selection Criteria

The underlying basis for all the activities of the Mona Foundation is the belief that the key to poverty reduction and the development of human resources lies in universal education and gender equality.

We support grassroots initiatives around the world that educate all children, empower women and girls, train boys in lessons of equality, and emphasize service to the community. These educational programs address a significant deficit within a community (materially, or morally/spiritually) and focus on quality of teaching and learning, fine arts and character development to train capable, ethical, and altruistic leaders who contribute to the betterment of their families, communities, and ultimately their nation.

The role of Mona Foundation is to find and support educational programs that meet the following criteria:

• The program is founded and operated by residents.
• The program addresses a vital and significant deficit in the basic needs of children which prevent the full development of their capabilities as productive members of the society.
  • These needs must include education but may also include housing, food, and a nurturing environment in support of education.
• The program serves students of all backgrounds, regardless of age, gender, race or ethnicity, religion, and economic status.
• The program has a focus on education of girls and women and teaches all students the lessons of equality, oneness and service.
• The program seeks to develop human resources for the community, and trains capable, ethical, and altruistic students who contribute to the betterment of their families, communities, and ultimately their nation.
• The program has a history of success, having been established and functioning at least for three years.
• The program enjoys the support of the local community
• The program administrators have shown a long-term commitment to the development of the program, including not only ongoing maintenance but also capital development and expansion.
• The program administrators have the capacity to effectively manage funds received from external agencies.
• The program administrators are active participants in developing and implementing plans, and require and enjoy the participation of the community members in the long-term self sustainability of their program.
• In cases where the program delivers needed services to the marginalized segment of the population where financial sustainability is not feasible, community members participate and support the program in variety of other ways as their capacity may allow.

To foster collaborative relationships with our partner organizations, we carry out site visits prior to adopting new programs either by members of our Board, or designated representatives of the Board.