History Grants

Our Mission

To act as a meaningful catalyst for progressive and secular social change.

Our Approach

With a dynamic approach to philanthropy, our family-based organization develops partnerships with best-in-class charity leaders who are passionately committed to improving the human experience through programs that are impactful, efficient and innovative.

Who We Support

The philanthropic goal of the Change Happens Foundation funding initiative is to assist innovative charities with a high-level of impact and a strong history of making good change happen. The top three areas of focus for the Change Happens Foundation grantmaking are science, the environment, and education.

Science

Research and education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics

Environment

Programs focused on conservation, climate change, and sustainable energy.

Education

Ideas and practices to educate and prepare students for bright and rewarding futures.

About The Chatlos Foundation

The Chatlos Foundation proclaims the Glory of God by funding nonprofit organizations doing work in the United States and around the globe. Support is provided to organizations currently exempt by the Internal Revenue Service of the United States.

Philosophy of Giving

Placement of an organization within our categories is determined by the organization’s overall mission rather than the project under consideration.

The Foundation’s areas of interest are:

Bible Colleges/Seminaries

Grants to Bible colleges and seminaries total 33% of Foundation distribution. History has shown grants in this category range in size from $5,000 to $20,000. To assure the Foundation that the philosophy of the institution is consistent with that of the Foundation, potential recipients are asked to sign our Statement of Faith.

Religious Causes

Grants to religious organizations total 30% of Foundation distribution. History has shown that grants in this category range in size from $5,000 to $15,000.

Liberal Arts Colleges

Grants to liberal arts colleges total 7% of Foundation distribution. History has shown that grants in this category range in size from $2,500 to $7,500. Priority consideration is given to private colleges.

Medical Concerns

Grants to medical organizations total 26% of Foundation distribution. History has shown that grants in this category range in size from $5,000 to $15,000.

Social Concerns

Grants to organizations involved in social concerns total 4% of distribution. History has shown that grants in this category range in size from $2,000 to $5,000. This category encompasses secular community programs which provide direct services such as child welfare, vocational training, prison alternatives, concerns for the aged and disabled, and men, women and families in crisis.

Giving Information

Program support remains a current priority for the Foundation.

On an initial basis, the Foundation tends to fund requests for amounts less than $10,000. 

It is important to note that it is not our intention to become a part of an annual budget. We expect the projects we fund to become independent of The Chatlos Foundation. 

Many organizations are worthy of funding, however, our funding is limited. Applicants should understand that rejection of the proposal in no way signals rejection of the proposer. 

The large number of requests we receive causes us to decline many proposals which are worthy of attention and funding. 

NOTE: Organizations that believe they meet these criteria can submit an organizational profile at any time. If your organizational profile falls within our priorities, selection criteria, and funding availability, we will follow up to learn more about your organization. Due to the volume of inquiries, we cannot respond to each organization individually.

Global Fund for Children invests in grassroots organizations around the world to help children and youth reach their full potential and advance their rights.

Our Model

We find.

• We research, explore, and identify innovative groups working with children and youth around the world.

We fund.

• We invest wisely, funding our partners’ life-changing programs for children and youth and keeping a watchful eye on how those funds are put to use.

Together we strengthen.

• We advise, mentor, and guide our partners. We build mutual trust, accountability, and enduring relationships. We provide tools for self-assessment. We support and help our partners grow.

We build networks.

• We connect our partners to each other and to national and regional networks. We bring together brilliant minds to share knowledge, fuel advocacy, and build movements of social change.

And when our partners graduate, we stand proud.

• Our greatest joy comes from knowing that we played a part in helping our partners grow strong enough to continue their important work for children without us.

Eligibility Criteria & Selection Guidelines

At Global Fund for Children, we invite you to join our growing grassroots network if you have shown great potential to improve the lives of children and youth who face poverty, injustice, and discrimination. As we embrace learning and collaboration, we hope you will serve as a model and resource for other community-based partners dedicated to the same big goals.

Focus Areas

Together with our partners, we are building a future where all young people enjoy equal resources and opportunities in society and can live to their full potential.

Our work advances the rights of children and youth across four focus areas and five regions. We have a deep commitment to courageous organizations that support young people facing poverty, injustice, and discrimination.

We support grassroots organizations that are not afraid to tackle the root causes of poverty with innovative, local solutions. Most offer holistic care to comprehensively address the needs of each child. Many become regional and national leaders in children’s rights—raising awareness, influencing policy, and ultimately impacting thousands of children and youth beyond their doors.

Education

Poverty and injustice—and the many hardships that accompany them—deny millions of children the opportunity to learn. We promote the right of all children to access high-quality education, regardless of their circumstances.

Worldwide, 124 million children and adolescents are out of school. Millions more who do attend school do not acquire basic skills in mathematics and reading. And every day, conditions beyond their control—gender, ethnicity, economic status, geography, conflict, disaster—force children and youth to drop out. But giving up on them isn’t an option.

At Global Fund for Children, we believe that educating children and youth is the key to building a more peaceful and just society. When we equip young people with education and skills, we unlock their potential to contribute to their families and transform their communities.

We support education from children’s earliest years to secondary school and on through university or vocational training. We place a strong emphasis on girls’ education to address the current and historical disadvantage for girls, improving access and quality and ensuring that girls have safe, girl-friendly places to learn. For refugees, children with disabilities, child laborers, and more, we prioritize inclusive, innovative educational programming that meets children and youth where they are and addresses their unique needs. For older youth, we support life skills, vocational, and entrepreneurship education so that they are empowered to make smart decisions, build financial resilience, and shape their own futures.

Gender Equity

Young people have the right to protect their bodies, raise their voices, and define their futures. But millions are denied these rights every day. We work to ensure that all children—regardless of their gender or their sexual identity—can be safe, learn, lead, and thrive.

Around the world, girls, young women, and LGBTQ youth—particularly those who are ethnic minorities or refugees, live in rural areas, or belong to other highly marginalized populations—face exclusion, violence, and discrimination. Too often, they are left out of decisions that determine their futures. At Global Fund for Children, we defend the right of all children to live free from discrimination and harmful gender-based attitudes and practices.

We believe that investing in girls delivers invaluable returns to the girls themselves, their families, and their communities, while confronting historical inequalities in societies worldwide. In fact, it’s essential to ending poverty and injustice. We also believe that traditional gender norms limit the full range of possibilities for boys and young men.

Through the work of our grassroots partners, we support girls’ education, sexual and reproductive health and rights, redefining masculinity, and the eradication of gender-based violence and harmful traditional practices, including child marriage and female genital mutilation/cutting. Our strategies engage entire communities—including parents, schools, community leaders, and local and national governments —to work collectively toward gender justice. We equip girls with knowledge and skills that will help them lead independent lives and empower them to become agents of change, while ensuring the men and boys in their lives are engaged in building a more equitable world.

We also support programs that specifically address the needs of LGBTQ youth and help them achieve equal rights around the world.

Our grassroots partners provide shelter to LGBTQ youth who are fleeing violence or persecution, run LGBTQ support groups and summer camps, and offer essential health information and services. Our commitment to gender equity also values advocacy on sexual rights and sexual and gender identity, helping to create a safe and welcoming world for all children and youth.

Youth Empowerment

Right now, the largest youth population in history is coming of age, and most of these young people live in the developing world. It’s a challenge—and an opportunity—we can’t ignore.

According to the United Nations, 89% of the world’s youth live in developing countries. At the same time, youth unemployment is on the rise. And work alone does not mean prosperity: nearly 40% of working youth live in poverty. Together, these challenges pose an enormous threat to our global economic and political stability—unless we seize the opportunity.

By investing in young people, we advance youth rights and work to transform the youth “bulge” into a powerhouse of innovation, opportunity, and social change.

At Global Fund for Children, we empower thousands of youth by equipping them with the skills and knowledge they need to lead lives of dignity, purpose, and economic stability. Our approach involves engaging young people who are also the least likely to have access to mainstream education and training, including girls, refugees, young people with disabilities, and youth engaged in hazardous work.

But economic opportunity is only part of the picture. We prioritize programs that advance young people’s political and civil participation and rights; that amplify youth voices, increase their decision-making powers, and raise awareness of their rights and needs; and that empower young people to educate and inspire their peers to act.

Freedom from Violence and Exploitation

All children deserve to grow up free from danger and harm—yet millions are threatened by war, trafficking, violence, and abuse. For survivors and children at risk, we work to bring safety and dignity to their lives.

Children and youth who live outside of mainstream society—and who are therefore most at risk of violence and exploitation—are often overlooked. Physical, psychological, and sexual abuse happen behind closed doors; poverty and inequality make children more vulnerable to sex and labor trafficking; war and community violence uproot children and youth from their homes and families. Their physical and psychosocial well-being is threatened. And too often, cultural norms make it acceptable to ignore their suffering.

Not on our watch. Global Fund for Children is dedicated to creating systemic change to end violence and exploitation for children and to help young survivors rebuild their lives.

Our grassroots partners provide protection and holistic care to trafficked children, migrants and refugees, child laborers, and survivors of sexual abuse and exploitation. They work to secure children’s legal identities—a critical step toward ensuring children’s safety and access to social services. They prevent future abuses by educating the public, training service providers, and combating harmful cultural norms and practices. And by pushing for better laws and policies to protect children and youth, they contribute to a growing movement that will not accept anything less than safety and security for every child.

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. 

OUR TOWN: Grant Program Description

ProjectsWe encourage applications for artistically excellent projects that:

• Bring new attention to or elevate key community assets and issues, voices of residents, local history, or cultural infrastructure.
• Inject new or additional energy, resources, activity, people, or enthusiasm into a place, community issue, or local economy.
• Envision new possibilities for a community or place - a new future, a new way of overcoming a challenge, or approaching problem-solving.
• Connect communities, people, places, and economic opportunity via physical spaces or new relationships.

The National Endowment for the Arts plans to support a variety of projects across the country in urban, rural, and tribal communities of all sizes.

Project Types

Our Town projects must integrate arts, culture, and design activities into efforts that strengthen communities by advancing local economic, physical, and/or social outcomes. Projects may include activities such as:

Arts Engagement

Artist residency: A program designed to strategically connect artists with the opportunity to bring their creative skill sets to non-arts institutions, including residencies in government offices, businesses, or other institutions.

Arts festivals: Public events that gather people, often in public space or otherwise unexpected places, to showcase talent and exchange culture.

Community co-creation of art: The process of engaging stakeholders to participate or collaborate alongside artists/designers in conceiving, designing, or fabricating a work or works of art.

Performances: Presentations of a live art work (e.g., music, theater, dance, media).

Public art: A work of art that is conceived for a particular place or community, with the intention of being broadly accessible, and often involving community members in the process of developing, selecting, or executing the work.

Temporary public art: A work of art that is conceived for a particular place or community and meant for display over a finite period of time, with the intention of being broadly accessible and often involving community members in developing, selecting, or executing the work.

Cultural Planning

Cultural planning: The process of identifying and leveraging a community's cultural resources and decision-making (e.g., creating a cultural plan, or integrating plans and policies around arts and culture as part of a city master planning process).

Cultural district planning: The process of convening stakeholders to identify a specific geography with unique potential for community and/or economic development based on cultural assets (e.g., through designation, branding, policy, plans, or other means).

Creative asset mapping: The process of identifying the people, places, physical infrastructure, institutions, and customs that hold meaningful aesthetics, historical, and/or economic value that make a place unique.

Public art planning: The process of developing community-wide strategies and/or policies that guide and support commissioning, installing, and maintaining works of public art and/or temporary public art.

Design

Artist/designer-facilitated community planning: Artists/designers leading or partnering in the creative processes of visioning, and for solutions to community issues.

Design of artist space: Design processes to support the creation of dedicated spaces for artists to live and/or to produce, exhibit, or sell their work.

Design of cultural facilities: Design processes to support the creation of a dedicated building or space for creating and/or showcasing arts and culture.

Public space design: The process of designing elements of public infrastructure, or spaces where people congregate (e.g., parks, plazas, landscapes, neighborhoods, districts, infrastructure, and artist-produced elements of streetscapes).

Artist and Creative Industry Support

Creative business development: Programs or services that support entrepreneurs and businesses in the creative industries, or help cultivate strong infrastructure for establishing and developing creative businesses.

Professional artist development: Programs or services that support artists professionally, such as through skill development or accessing markets and capital.

Strengthening Communities

Through Our Town projects, the National Endowment for the Arts Endowment intends to achieve the following objective: Strengthening Communities: Provide opportunities for the arts to be integrated into the fabric of community life.

Our Town project outcomes may include:

Economic Change: Economic improvements of individuals, institutions, or the community including local business growth, job creation/labor force participation, professional development/training, prevention of displacement, in-migration, and tourism.

Physical Change: Physical improvements that occur to the built and natural environment including beautification and/or enhancement of physical environment, new construction, and redevelopment (including arts, culture, and public space).

Social Change: Improvements to social relationships, civic engagement and community empowerment, and/or amplifying community identity including civic engagement, collective efficacy, social capital, social cohesion, and community attachment.

Systems Change: Improvements to community capacity to sustain the integration of arts, culture, and design into strategies for advancing local economic, physical, and/or social outcomes including, for example: establishment of new and lasting cross-sector partnerships; shifts in institutional structure, practices or policies; replication or scaling of innovative project models; establishment of training programs; or dissemination of informational resources to support the creative placemaking field. 

NOTE: The Unfunded List is not a typical grant opportunity but may result in networking opportunities that could lead to funding.

The Unfunded List

The Unfunded List began in 2015 when a handful of volunteers asked social entrepreneurs around the world to send us their best unfunded grant proposals. An expert volunteer evaluation committee read these proposals and every applicant received helpful and candid feedback. We published the best scoring proposals to our official Unfunded List and promoted it as far as we could. Seeing the potential from this first round we formed this not for profit, 501c3 organization dedicated to providing information about philanthropy to the social sector. We continue to review grant proposals twice a year but have expanded to provide comprehensive feedback to anyone doing social impact projects – just send us whatever written materials you have that best describe your organization and our experts will take a look. Currently, our evaluation committee is comprised of over 300 members and we are featuring four organizations on the official Unfunded List

Every applicant is guaranteed a comprehensive feedback report and receives equal attention from our committee. Whenever possible, we connect proposals with potential funders and this often results in the funding of proposals. Additionally, it is not uncommon for reviewers to follow up with organizations directly in order to become more involved a supporters, advisors, donors, etc.

Why do you charge $100

Finding a dozen relevant experts to read and review a grant proposal takes time and effort and money. It costs us about $1,000 per proposal review and our funders cover the majority of the costs of the program. In consideration, we do ask a small application fee to help cover these overhead costs and to ensure that we can continue to provide high quality feedback to unfunded ideas. The fee also ensures our applicants have some skin in the game and keeps the pool of proposals we receive at a manageable size. From experience, we have found that the fee leads to higher quality submissions.

If the $100 fee is an absolute impossibility for you and the only hurdle to submitting a proposal please contact us and we will work it out.

This is a one-time fee. If you pay it once then you are eligible to submit to us every round without the fee. Every round we reach out to past applicants with a special link to submit for free.