NOTE: Nominations for the Civil Society Awards are now closed. However, the Manhattan Institute welcomes award nominations on a rolling basis. To tell us about an outstanding nonprofit leader—and their organization—who is contributing to a vibrant civil society in your community, please email: [email protected]

About

History has shown that free markets are the best way to organize economic activity. But the Manhattan Institute understands that in a healthy society, markets are complemented by charitable and philanthropic enterprises, which both help those in need and prepare people to realize their full potential. Since its founding, the United States has been characterized by a vibrant civil society in which nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations—with the help of volunteers and private philanthropy—work to address social challenges.

To support and reinvigorate this tradition, the Manhattan Institute established the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative in 2001, now known as the Tocqueville Project. Directed by MI Senior Fellow Howard Husock, it combines research, writing, events, and conversations with scholars, practitioners, government officials, and community leaders to make the case for the value and benefits of a strong civil society. The goal of the Civil Society Awards program is to find and recognize the best of America’s new generation of nonprofit leaders.

Tocqueville wrote that “Americans of all ages, all conditions and all dispositions, constantly form associations... religious, moral, serious, futile, enormous or diminutive.” This combination of association and philanthropy has given us everything from the Boy Scouts to Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Just as we have private entrepreneurs, we also have social entrepreneurs, who address societal challenges and find private funds to do so. These individuals develop solutions to emerging needs and problems, while helping to keep our social fabric from fraying. It is their work that the Civil Society Awards highlight and encourage.

Manhattan Institute welcomes nominations for our Civil Society Awards on a rolling basis. To tell us about an outstanding individual—as well as their nonprofit organization—who is contributing to a vibrant civil society in your community, please visit our nomination page. 

NOTE: The Online Pre-Application Survey is the first required step in the SC Ministry Foundation responsive grant process. This is represented by the 'pre-proposal' deadline. 

About SC Ministry Foundation

The SC Ministry Foundation is a public grant-making organization that promotes the mission and ministry of the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati.

Purpose

Since its formation in 1996, the Foundation has awarded grants to nonprofit organizations where Sisters are actively involved. In addition, the Foundation makes grants to other unrelated nonprofits working to address issues of concern to the Sisters of Charity.

Responsive Grants

Responsive grants are awarded for core programs, planning, pilot programs or program expansion with evidence-based strategies that lead to measurable outcomes. Initial funding requests generally accepted in January, with funds awarded approximately six months later.

The Foundation considers grant requests from organizations demonstrating good stewardship, measurable outcomes and impact in areas of particular concern including education, healthcare, social services and empowerment of women in today’s world. Examples of issues recently supported by grants include:

• Revitalization of Price Hill, Cincinnati
• Care for Creation
• Immigration Reform
• Abolishment of the Death Penalty
• Abolishment of Human Trafficking.

The Challenge

Good health is the foundation of a thriving community. Yet not everyone in America is afforded the opportunity to achieve their optimal level of health, due to systems, policies, and practices grounded in racism that create and perpetuate inequities.

BUILD seeks to support communities in their efforts to advance health equity—to ensure that no one is disadvantaged from achieving their full health potential because of social position or other socially determined circumstances.

The Award

With a specific focus on strengthening cross-sector and community-driven partnerships, BUILD awards are designed to support collaborations ready to put Bold, Upstream, Integrated, Local, Data-Driven plans into action. Organizations jointly applying for a BUILD award should have a strong track record of working together; have developed their joint priorities and implementation plans with strong levels of community engagement and leadership; and be primed to advance equitable systems-level changes in their community.

For this fourth cohort, BUILD is looking to support up to 19 innovative community collaboratives that include a: 1) community-based organization, 2) hospital/health system and/or health plan, 3) public health department, and 4) residents, who are all working together in dynamic ways to address upstream challenges and drive sustainable improvements in community health. Inclusion of additional cross-sector partners such as businesses, universities, foundations, and others that are aligned with proposed efforts are encouraged.

Each award will include:

• Up to $300,000 in funding over three years
• A robust array of coaching and support services
• Specialized trainings and capacity building opportunities
• Participation in a national network of peers engaged in similar work
• Opportunity to spotlight your local work on a national level

About The BUILD Health Challenge Awards

The BUILD Health Challenge’s mission is to contribute to the development of a new norm in the U.S.: one that puts multi-sector, community-driven partnerships at the center of health in order to reduce health disparities caused by systemic or social inequity.

With a specific focus on strengthening partnerships between community-based organizations, hospitals and health systems, local health departments, and others, The BUILD Health Challenge awards are designed to support collaborations ready to put Bold, Upstream, Integrated, Local, Data-Driven (see below descriptors) plans into action. Organizations jointly applying for The BUILD Health Challenge award should have a strong track record of working together; have developed their joint priorities and implementation plans with strong levels of community engagement and leadership; and be primed to advance equitable systems-level changes in their community.

This effort is grounded in the following principles and rooted in health equity:

• BOLD: Aspire toward a fundamental shift beyond short-term programmatic work to longer-term influences over policy, regulation, and systems-level change.
• UPSTREAM: Focus on the social, environmental, and economic factors that have the greatest influence on the health of your community and produce more equitable outcomes, rather than on access or care delivery.
• INTEGRATED: Align the practices and perspectives of communities, health systems, and public health under a shared vision, establishing new roles while continuing to draw upon the strengths and diversity of each partner.
• LOCAL: Engage neighborhood residents and community leaders as key voices and thought leaders throughout all stages of planning and implementation, with a particular focus on populations most affected by health disparities and inequities.
• DATA- DRIVEN: Use data from both clinical and community sources as a tool to: disaggregate data to identify inequities and understand areas of highest need, measure meaningful change, facilitate transparency among stakeholders, and generate actionable insights.

What Outcomes Are Expected? 

The BUILD Health Challenge aims to place multi-sector, community-driven partnerships at the center of promoting health equity. To do so requires a concerted effort to shift the systems that affect upstream, social determinants of health. We recognize that this type of change is a long-term proposition and nuanced, and it also requires a laser-like focus on this shift as a specific goal. Competitive projects should articulate how their activities will result in systems changes that will ultimately improve health outcomes. 

About the Foundation

A firm handshake, a clear steady gaze, a welcoming smile, a persuasive energy and a dynamic achiever… this was Frank Doyle. He attended Fordham and Rutgers Universities and he, along with his wife Gertrude R. Doyle combined education with a dedication to the belief that when opportunity knocks, it’s wise to open the door. From New Jersey to Nevada, Florida to California, Frank found challenges and embraced them with a zest and vigor that never said, “it can’t be done.” The seventh son of immigrant parents his was a life well lived. After the passing of Frank M. Doyle in 1996, Gertrude R. Doyle founded The Frank M. Doyle Foundation, Inc. Initially, the foundation provided scholarships to students in the Huntington Beach, California area. As described by Gertrude R. Doyle,

“The Frank M. Doyle Foundation offers your community a unique and unsurpassed opportunity. There is no minimum grade point average; there is no income cap. Age is not a factor. Both need based and merit scholarships are awarded. Our recipients attend trade schools, community colleges, state universities, the University of California system, the University of Nevada system, schools outside of California and Nevada, both public and private. They school to become beauticians and graphic artists as well as doctors and lawyers. The foundation’s focus is to enable students to pursue further education in order to encourage the endurance of a productive, prosperous, and resourceful community.”

Over the years, the foundation expanded the scholarship application pool to include students from Orange County, California Community Colleges, Washoe County, Nevada students, and certain vocational school students to its application pool. The foundation also branched out beyond the academic world and began providing grants to nonprofit organizations in an effort to fulfill Mr. and Mrs. Doyle’s dream of a better world for all. In late 2008, after the passing of Gertrude R. Doyle, the foundation adopted the name, The Frank M. and Gertrude R. Doyle Foundation, Inc., and in 2018 became “The Doyle Foundation, Inc.”

The Doyle Foundation, Inc. awards grants for the betterment of life.

NOTE: CASE will review up to the first 250 applications.

About the Fred Morgan Kirby Prize for Scaling Social Impact

The Fred Morgan Kirby Prize for Scaling Social Impact (F. M. Kirby Impact Prize) is an annual global prize of $100,000 USD in unrestricted funds that amplifies and accelerates the work of enterprises working to scale their impact on social or environmental problems around the world.

The Institutional Challenge Grant encourages university-based research institutes, schools, and centers to build sustained research-practice partnerships with public agencies or nonprofit organizations in order to reduce inequality in youth outcomes.

To do so, research institutions will need to shift their policies and practices to value collaborative research. They will also need to build the capacity of researchers to produce relevant work and the capacity of agency and nonprofit partners to use research.

Applications are welcome from partnerships in youth-serving areas such as education, justice, child welfare, mental health, immigration, and workforce development. We especially encourage proposals from teams with African American, Latinx, Native American, and Asian American members in leadership roles. The partnership leadership team includes the principal investigator from the research institution and the lead from the public agency or nonprofit organization.

Goals

The award supports research institutions to build sustained research-practice partnerships with public agencies or nonprofit organizations in order to reduce inequality in youth outcomes.

Research institutions will need to address four important goals:

• Build a sustained institutional partnership with a public agency or nonprofit organization.
• Pursue a joint research agenda to reduce inequality in youth outcomes.
• Create institutional change to value research-practice partnerships within research institutions.
• Develop the capacity of both partners to collaborate on producing and using research evidence.

The Award

The award will provide $650,000 over three years, in support of:

• Up to $50,000 for up to 9 months of joint planning activities (e.g., refining protocols for partnering, selecting fellows, finalizing partnership and data sharing agreements, etc.).
• Fellowship support for the equivalent of one full-time or two half-time mid-career fellows per year for two years. In addition, universities are required to commit to a 1-for-2 match on the mid-career fellows. The grant pays for two full-time equivalent fellows, and universities are required to fund one additional full-time equivalent fellow.
• Up to three years of support for the partnership to conduct and use research to reduce inequality in youth outcomes.
• Resources to advance the proposed institutional shifts and capacities of both partners.
• Indirect cost allowance of up to 15 percent of total direct costs.

Current grantees have the opportunity to apply for a funded two-year continuation grant in order to solidify the partnership and institutional changes. At the end of the five years, we expect the following results:

• The research institution has established a set of strategies that facilitate sustained research collaborations with public agencies or private nonprofit organizations.
• The public agency or private nonprofit organization has increased its capacity to use research evidence.
• Participating researchers have improved partnership skills.
• The research generated has been used in decision making and is likely to lead to improved outcomes for youth.

Our intention when we launched the Institutional Challenge Grant program was to make one award per year. Since 2018, the generosity of the Spencer Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and the American Institutes for Research have allowed us to make multiple awards per year. We intend to award at least one grant per year.

Sociological Initiatives Foundation Grant

The Sociological Initiatives Foundation supports social change by linking research to social action. It funds research projects that investigate laws, policies, institutions, regulations, and normative practices that may limit equality in the South. It gives priority to projects that seek to address racism, xenophobia, classism, gender bias, exploitation, or the violation of human rights and freedoms. It also supports research that furthers language learning and behavior and its intersection with social and policy questions.

The Foundation supports research that focuses on improving services and systems and increasing positive social and physical conditions through:

• Policy development
• Placement and shaping of the policy agenda
• Policy adoption or implementation
• Policy blocking
• Increasing advocacy capacity and political influence
• Shaping public sentiment
• Addressing challenges related to language and literacy

Language issues include literacy, language loss and maintenance, language policy, language and national security, bilingualism, language and gender, language and law, language disabilities, language and health, language and education, different language cultures, and second language acquisition.

In the context of social and racial inequality dating back centuries, the Foundation supports projects that address institutional rather than individual or behavioral change. It seeks to fund research and initiatives that provide insight into sociological and linguistic issues that can help specific groups and or communities expand opportunities and challenge injustices.

Grant sizes normally range from $10,000 to $20,000. We look for projects that have an explicit research design and a concrete connection to public or community impact. It is not enough to just write a report or add a focus group to a social change project. The research should build an organization or constituency’s potential to expand public knowledge, impact policy, and create social change.

Current Thematic Focus: Violence and Society

 The Sociological Initiatives Foundation seeks to support community-based research in the Southern United States focused on the broad topic of violence and society. It invites requests to support research and advocacy efforts that move beyond the familiar conceptualizations of what violence is, how we experience it, how we talk about it, and how we advocate for freedom and safety.

Background

The Sociological Initiatives Foundation has supported a wide range of community-based research projects. Most of the activist-scholar projects have addressed structural race, class, and gender inequities. As the Foundation sharpened its emphasis on addressing systemic racism and racialized violence against Black people, however, it recognized a common but less-interrogated thread in many of the projects it has supported over the years. Many projects contend with the raw brutality of everyday violence in communities – a pressing reality that is often made invisible, individualized, or ignored as a form of structural oppression.

The scale and pervasiveness of this violence is staggering. With the rise of gun violence, gender-based violence, police-brutality, the carceral state, religious extremism, hate-crimes, and so on, there is an opportunity to develop more imaginative and innovative ways to understand these complex realities and create new spaces to investigate, theorize, and take action. More importantly, the various methodologies of community-based research present an opportunity to involve the people and communities most deeply affected by violence in shaping theory, narrative strategies, policies, and social movements.

What the Foundation looks for in a project:

The Foundation will continue to give priority to projects that link research with action and involve community members throughout.

It will invite proposals that communicate:

Insight. Challenges “common-sense” notions of activists, policymakers, and institutions.

Intersectionality. Addresses the multilevel and intersecting nature, and structural foundations of violence in our institutions – especially for racially marginalized women+ and girls+

A learning orientation. Builds critical literacies and new narratives/framing that illuminate the embeddedness of violence in legal, political, social, and cultural systems.

A civic agenda. Creates alternative public spheres for dialogue and deliberation about violence.

Urgency. Has a sense of urgency and express a readiness for strategic action; and addresses the lack of deep sociological engagement in questions of violence.

Some examples of desired applicants are:

• community-led academic partnerships
• advocacy or community groups that conduct research that can withstand challenge in academic and policy arenas
• academics allied with a constituency through their research

Greater Toledo Community Foundation, is a public charitable organization created by citizens of our community to enrich the quality of life for individuals and families in our service area. The Foundation serves northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan with a particular emphasis on the greater Toledo area. The mission of The Sisters of St. Francis of Sylvania, Ohio is to live the Gospel in joyful servanthood among the people and as messengers of peace to commit themselves to works that reverence human dignity, embrace the poor and marginalized and respect the gift of all creation. Greater Toledo Community Foundation and the Sisters of St. Francis Foundation have partnered to support programming through the Sisters of St. Francis Foundation Donor Advised Fund (“Sisters of St. Francis Fund”).

Consistent with their mission statement, grants from the Sisters of St. Francis Fund support a variety of organizations and programs which are working in one or more of the following areas: (1) aiding in the fight against human trafficking and/or offering support to its victims; (2) offering support to immigrants and refugees; and (3) broadly advancing social justice and equal access to opportunity through other programs and strategies. 

• Human Trafficking – funding will be awarded to support survivor-informed activities including, but not limited to, comprehensive service delivery; economic opportunity and asset-building programs; physical and mental health supports; education initiatives and/or other kinds of anti-trafficking efforts that reach for systemic solutions and promote the respect and dignity of all. 
• Immigrants & Refugees – funding will be awarded in a variety of areas including, but not limited to, citizenship and naturalization efforts; economic opportunity and asset-building programs; physical and mental health supports; diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; civic participation activities; education and workforce development initiatives; workers’ rights and civil legal aid activities and/or other kinds of efforts that promote the well-being of immigrants and refugees. 
• Social Justice & Equal Opportunity – funding will be awarded in a variety of areas including, but not limited to, activities that promote equal access to housing, employment, education and health care; equitable and sustainable neighborhood development; civil and/or environmental justice work; and/or other approaches that promise to uplift the ability of marginalized or underserved communities to define their own futures and access opportunity. 

The Sisters of St. Francis Fund envisions communities in which all members have equal opportunity to thrive. Grants are provided primarily for programming but, in limited cases, may support general operations or capital projects. The Sisters of St. Francis Fund anticipates making multiple awards ranging from $5,000 to $50,000. Grants are typically awarded for a one-year project period. Funds are limited and will be awarded on a competitive basis.  

Funding Opportunity

Wallace is seeking expressions of interest from groups of organizations that are working together to promote youth development, are seeking financial support to strengthen their work and can help us determine new directions for our Learning and Enrichment programs.

We seek not individual organizations, but groups of organizations working together in formal or informal partnerships to support adolescent youth development. We could fund, for example, a partnership between a school district, the community’s office of health and human services and an out-of-school time intermediary to work with community partners to support unhoused adolescent youth’s physical, mental and educational needs. Each group of organizations selected will receive grants averaging $200,000 for a year of work, as well as access to other supports such as peer learning and technical assistance.

Wallace has three goals for this effort:

• To support innovative partnerships that serve youth and strengthen the communities in which they reside;
• To learn about those partnerships’ strengths, challenges, and opportunities for improvement; and
• To use what we learn during this period – which we are referring to as an exploratory phase – to inform the design of future Wallace initiatives.

What Participation Entails

This one-year, exploratory phase is intended to support and strengthen collaborative strategies communities are using to promote youth development, help Wallace learn more about those strategies and inform Wallace’s future efforts in the area. In particular, we are looking to fund projects over the course of one year that are an element of a broader strategy or effort that would play out over a longer period of time.

Participants will use Wallace support to implement or improve their work, reflect on their progress and identify the resources they need to meet their objectives. Independent researchers, youth development experts and Wallace staff will study the work to help us learn more about the kinds of partnerships that exist, the goals they hope to achieve, the strategies they employ to achieve them, the barriers they confront and the supports they need to make progress. Researchers will share their findings with Wallace and the partnerships selected to participate in the exploratory phase.

We intend to use lessons we learn from this exploratory phase to help design our next initiative in learning and enrichment, which will likely span five to seven years. That initiative will, we hope, produce further insights and evidence that could benefit the broader youth development sector.

We therefore ask grantees to commit to:

• One year of participation by a team that includes representatives from each of the organizations partnering to implement the funded strategy;
• Work with a research team that will study the work by convening focus groups, conducting interviews and/or administering surveys; and
• Host researchers, consultants and/or Wallace staffers for site visits.

If participants request them, we may also offer access to peer learning opportunities and consultants who can provide technical assistance. We expect to have a better sense of offerings and activities once we have selected grantees for the exploratory phase and learned more about their needs. ​

Projects

We anticipate that projects might include:

• Professional development to adults serving youth
• Human resources strategies to recruit, train, and retain high-quality instructors
• Comprehensive cross-sector planning that includes stakeholder engagement
• Mapping existing youth service offerings
• Engaging the broader community
• Giving young people a greater say in programming
• Managing finances and/or mapping of existing funding streams, and
• Planning for continuous improvement, through, for example, identification of required data sources, roll out of a data system, and staff training.

Demographic Information

Wallace is interested in exploring projects that serve adolescents who are facing systemic challenges or who are impacted by structural factors that make it difficult to thrive. For example, this may mean that a young person who is:

• Living in a high-poverty community
• Unhoused
• Systems-involved (e.g., juvenile justice or foster care)
• LBGTQ+
• An English-language learner
• A migrant or an immigrant
• Dealing with a learning difference or a physical, mental or behavioral disability
• And/or others, as identified by communities