Hearst Foundations' Mission

The Hearst Foundations identify and fund outstanding nonprofits to ensure that people of all backgrounds in the United States have the opportunity to build healthy, productive and inspiring lives.

Hearst Foundations' Goals

The Foundations seek to achieve their mission by funding approaches that result in:

• Improved health and quality of life
• Access to high quality educational options to promote increased academic achievement
• Arts and sciences serving as a cornerstone of society
• Sustainable employment and productive career paths for adults
• Stabilizing and supporting families

Funding Priorities

The Hearst Foundations support well-established nonprofit organizations that address significant issues within their major areas of interests – culture, education, health and social service – and that primarily serve large demographic and/or geographic constituencies. In each area of funding, the Foundations seek to identify those organizations achieving truly differentiated results relative to other organizations making similar efforts for similar populations. The Foundations also look for evidence of sustainability beyond their support.

Culture

The Hearst Foundations fund cultural institutions that offer meaningful programs in the arts and sciences, prioritizing those which enable engagement by young people and create a lasting and measurable impact. The Foundations also fund select programs nurturing and developing artistic talent.

Types of Support: Program, capital and, on a limited basis, general and endowment support

Education

The Hearst Foundations fund educational institutions demonstrating uncommon success in preparing students to thrive in a global society. The Foundations’ focus is largely on higher education, but they also fund innovative models of early childhood and K-12 education, as well as professional development.

Types of Support: Program, scholarship, capital and, on a limited basis, general and endowment support

Health

The Hearst Foundations assist leading regional hospitals, medical centers and specialized medical institutions providing access to high-quality healthcare for low-income populations. In response to the shortage of healthcare professionals necessary to meet the country’s evolving needs, the Foundations also fund programs designed to enhance skills and increase the number of practitioners and educators across roles in healthcare. Because the Foundations seek to use their funds to create a broad and enduring impact on the nation’s health, support for medical research and the development of young investigators is also considered.

Types of Support: Program, capital and, on a limited basis, endowment support

Social Service

The Hearst Foundations fund direct-service organizations that tackle the roots of chronic poverty by applying effective solutions to the most challenging social and economic problems. The Foundations prioritize supporting programs that have proven successful in facilitating economic independence and in strengthening families. Preference is also given to programs with the potential to scale productive practices in order to reach more people in need.

Types of Support: Program, capital and general support

What does this program do?

It provides loans and grants to Microenterprise Development Organizations (MDOs) to:

• To help microenterprises startup and growth through a Rural Microloan Revolving Fund.
• Provide training and technical assistance to microloan borrowers and micro entrepreneurs.

What is an eligible area?

• Rural areas outside a city or town with a population of fewer than 50,000 residents. Urbanized areas near a city of 50,000 or more may not be eligible.
• The borrower’s headquarters may be based within a larger city so long as the project service area is located in an eligible rural area.
• The lender may be located anywhere.

Check eligible addresses for Business Programs here.

 What kind of funding is available? 

Grants are available to provide technical assistance to rural micro-entrepreneurs or microenterprises, up to $205,000 annually. Funding at the requested level is not guaranteed, and at least 15 percent matching funds are required.

Loans of $50,000 to $500,000 may be used for establishing a Rural Microloan Revolving Fund managed by the Microenterprise Development Organization. Total aggregate debt is capped at $2.5 million.

NDN Collective

NDN is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building and narrative change, we are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.

Community Self-Determination Grants 

Purpose and Approach

Community Self-Determination Grants are intended to support community-based and community-driven sustainable solutions in all three of NDN Collective’s core strategies to Defend, Develop and Decolonize. Grants are intended to support and invest in the long-term visions and sustainability of Indigenous communities and Indigenous-led organizations, fortifying the self-determination of Indigenous Peoples to create a just, equitable, and sustainable world for all people and the planet. Significant, flexible, multi-year funding will include the infusion of general operating support, capacity building, capital and holistic support for comprehensive initiatives and specific programs.

Community Self-Determination Grants are intended to strengthen and leverage long-term financial sustainability of Indigenous-led organizations, including capital support and investments. This type of funding will not only give Indigenous organizations the kind of runway that has been long understood as healthy for startups and private-sector companies, but transformative for community-based and grass-roots organizations, including those who are closest to the issues and the impact. While we fund national efforts, we intentionally prioritize grassroots, community-based efforts. Climate justice and Indigenous justice are at the heart of the intent behind the Community Self-Determination Grant.

NDN’s grantmaking approach is based on reciprocity and mutual aid, which may include thought partnership and capacity building resources. Relationship is at the core of this approach, encouraging systemic change and participation in which the people most affected take responsibility for one another and for changing systemic conditions. It is up to the community to determine the steps for true self-determination. NDN funds can support the material needs of communities while also addressing root causes and solution building that is shaped by the community. This approach encourages innovative, creative and free thinking for long-term change.

NDN will remain steadfast in its commitment to uphold and advance regenerative, Earth-centered principles of community and economic development. ‘Regenerative’ is the ability to regrow, renew or restore, particularly after loss or damage. NDN’s commitment to a new and better normal is also part of community self-determination, resilience and sustainability, therefore NDN seeks to support Tribes, Indigenous nations, communities and organizations who are also committed to more innovative, sustainable solutions. NDN is deeply committed to supporting Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination that supports justice and equity for people and the planet.

These principles and the NDN Collective’s framework of Defend, Develop, Decolonize will be utilized as a lens in which to review and select grantee-partners.

Community Driven Solutions

Because this program focuses on community-driven solutions, we encourage larger nations and organizations to coordinate among your various departments to submit an application reflecting your community’s efforts to Defend, Develop and Decolonize.

It is the intent of NDN Collective to provide meaningful support across multiple regions, therefore, applicants will be expected to describe their community self-determination efforts within one of the following strategic focus areas that is best suited for their community’s intentions and goals. New or expanded initiatives, or capacity building of existing efforts and entities may also be supported.

Defend

"Indigenous Peoples, communities and nations defend and protect our land, air, water and natural resources."

Efforts may include but are not limited to protecting and reclaiming lands, water, and natural resources, such as:

• Grassroots, frontline organizing and community mobilization to defend and protect clean water, air and land from extractive industries and exploitation;
• Indigenous-led environmental movements and efforts to stop the extraction of the earth’s natural resources on and near tribal territories.
• Direct action efforts of the climate and environmental justice movement.

Develop

"Indigenous Peoples, communities and nations are developed in a resilient, regenerative and sustainable manner based on our values and connection to land, culture and identity."

Efforts may include but are not limited to community and economic development/resilience based on sustainable, regenerative principles, climate change solutions and mitigation, such as:

• Sustainable food systems, food sovereignty and security initiatives; sustainable community agriculture, gardens, food harvesting and processing, community hunting and fishing, sustainable herd management, shared community food pantries and food distribution;
• Community water initiatives; protecting or developing clean water sources; community pumps or wells, water purification and sanitation, ecological wastewater treatment systems, such as constructed wetlands, greywater systems, and composting toilet implementation, and bioremediation of contaminated soils and water;
• Community planning and implementation of sustainable, regenerative, and innovative solutions for community preparedness and resiliency;
• Renewable energy sources, i.e.; wind, solar, geo-thermal
• Energy transition that is environmentally, socially and economically just; that reduces carbon emissions and footprints; Net-Zero initiatives;
• Financial planning and transition to new or alternative revenue streams based on regenerative principles of economic and community development;
• Resilient and regenerative infrastructure improvements or development, including housing, broadband or increased internet speed and capacity; improved or upgraded software systems and technological training to support virtual and tele-abilities to learn, access health, conduct business, up-to-date communications access;
• Capital investments for economic mobility to diversify economies, long-term regenerative business development in various sectors, including decreasing risk of a larger investment; investments in building the capacity of people through education, training, and consulting to be well-equipped leaders in creating just, and resilient economies and infrastructure.

Decolonize

"Indigenous ceremonies, cultures, languages and ways of life are revitalized, recognized and celebrated."

Efforts may include, but are not limited to intergenerational transmission and continuity of language, culture, ceremonial practices, traditional governance and decision-making structures, and lifeways, such as:

• Governance and leadership transformation, transition or development grounded in Indigenous values and practices, including constitutional reforms, reintegration of traditional governance structures, or decentralized, consensus-based decision making practices;
• Indigenous health and safety; providing and reclamation of Indigenous health, wellness, community care, healing and medicinal practices, including social, emotional, and cultural support;
• Language revitalization – Community immersion programs; teacher preparation and language apprentice programs; family language nests;
• Decolonized education models;
• Youth, family and community initiatives to restore, renew and support Indigenous language, cultural practices, creativity and lifeways;
• Community harmony, safety and protection efforts, including addressing physical and sexual violence; Indigenous peace-making and conflict resolution initiatives, community restorative justice practices, protocols and teachings.

Funding

Grants of $100,000 per year, with commitments of two years, are available to Indigenous-led organizations working in the defense, development, and/or decolonization of Indigenous Peoples and Mother Earth, with a maximum grant award of $200,000 for commitments over two years.  

Walmart’s more than 2 million associates are residents, neighbors, friends and family in thousands of communities around the globe. Walmart works to strengthen these communities through both retail business and community giving, and we support and invest in communities through local giving. The following programs have open application processes with specific deadlines for eligibility and consideration.

Local Community Grants

Each year, our U.S. stores and clubs award local cash grants ranging from $250 to $5,000. These 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.

Areas of Funding

• There are eight (8) areas of funding for which an organization can apply. Please review the areas listed below to ensure your organization’s goals fall within one of these areas.
• Community and Economic Development: Improving local communities for the benefit of low-income individuals and families in the local service area
• Diversity and Inclusion: Fostering the building of relationships and understanding among diverse groups in the local service area
• Education: Providing afterschool enrichment, tutoring or vocational training for low-income individuals and families in the local service area
• Environmental Sustainability: Preventing waste, increasing recycling, or supporting other programs that work to improve the environment in the local service area
• Health and Human Service: Providing medical screening, treatment, social services, or shelters for low-income individuals and families in the local service area
• Hunger Relief and Healthy Eating: Providing Federal or charitable meals/snacks for low-income individuals and families in the local service area
• Public Safety: Supporting public safety programs through training programs or equipment in the local service area
• Quality of Life: Improving access to recreation, arts or cultural experiences for low-income individuals and families in the local service area

Collections Assessment for Preservation (CAP) Program

The Collections Assessment for Preservation (CAP) program provides small and mid-sized museums with partial funding toward a general conservation assessment. The assessment is a study of all of the institution's collections, buildings, and building systems, as well as its policies and procedures relating to collections care. Participants who complete the program receive an assessment report with prioritized recommendations to improve collections care. CAP is often a first step for small institutions that wish to improve the condition of their collections.

Museums of all kinds may apply for a CAP assessment. These include:

• Aquariums*
• Arboretums*
• Art museums
• Botanical gardens*
• Children’s/Youth museums
• General museums (those having two or more significant disciplines, such as a museum of art and natural history)
• Historic houses/sites
• History museums (including those housed in historic buildings)
• Natural history/anthropology museums
• Nature centers
• Planetariums
• Science/Technology museums
• Specialized museums (limited to a single distinct subject, such as a maritime museum)
• Zoological parks*

* Botanical gardens and arboretums may use CAP to assess the preservation needs of both their living and non-living collections. Institutions with fully surveyed living animal collections (such as those accredited by the AZA) may use CAP to assess the needs of their non-living collections and the animals’ physical conditions and habitats. 

Benefits

A CAP assessment may assist your institution by:

• Providing recommendations and priorities for collections care that are specific to your collections
• Facilitating the development of a long-range preservation plan
• Serving as a fundraising tool for future collections projects

Every CAP report will contain an Executive Summary that provides a prioritized list of recommendations for improving your institution’s collections care. Though you may be aware of many of these issues already, the assessment can help you decide where to invest limited resources. It may be valuable in drawing the attention of your board or leadership to collections care concerns. If you are interested in seeking grant funding or private support for conservation or preservation activities, a CAP report can provide a professional argument for the need for such work. 

Allocation and Matching Requirement

Upon acceptance into the CAP program, participants are allocated a set amount of funding toward the cost of their assessment. Allocation amounts range from $3,500 to $3,900 per assessor based on the annual operating budget of the institution. Most institutions will have two assessors (a collections assessor and a building assessor).

• Annual Budget of the Institution = Less than $250,000 , Allocation per Assessor = $3,900
• Annual Budget of the Institution = $250,000 - $750,000 , Allocation per Assessor = $3,700
• Annual Budget of the Institution = More than $750,000 , Allocation per Assessor = $3,500

The cost of a conservation assessment is determined between each assessor and institution, but the fees always include two components: 1) the professional fee and 2) reimbursable expenses. In other words: Assessment contract amount = Professional fee + Reimbursable expenses 

• Professional fee : There is no standard professional fee charged by assessors. Each assessor’s fee schedule will vary based on location, experience, etc. 
• Reimbursable expenses :The assessor’s reimbursable expenses include fees such as the cost of travel to the site, hotel costs, meals, and other on-site expenses. 

Please note that CAP is not a grant. Allocation funds will not be sent to institutions; FAIC will send payment in the allocated amount directly to the assessor.  

1:1 Match Requirement

Participating institutions are required to meet or exceed a 1:1 match of the allocated funds. This match can be reached through any combination of:

• cash expenses to meet the total fees charged by the assessors
• the value of staff, volunteer, and board time committed to the CAP project
• inkind contributions toward the project
• overhead expenses

The Lawrence Foundation is a private family foundation focused on making grants to support environmental, human services and other causes.

The Lawrence Foundation was established in mid-2000. We make both program and operating grants and do not have any geographical restrictions on our grants. Nonprofit organizations that qualify for public charity status under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code or other similar organizations are eligible for grants from The Lawrence Foundation.  

Grant Amount and Types

Grants typically range between $5,000 - $10,000. In some limited cases we may make larger grants, but that is typically after we have gotten to know your organization over a period of time. We also generally don’t make multi-year grants, although we may fund the same organization on a year by year basis over a period of years.

General operating or program/project grant requests within our areas of interests are accepted. In general, regardless of whether a grant request is for general operating or program/project expenses, all of our grants will be issued as unrestricted grants.

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

Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation Grant

The Foundation will consider requests to support museums, cultural and performing arts programs; schools and hospitals; educational, skills-training and other programs for youth, seniors, and persons with disabilities; environmental and wildlife protection activities; and other community-based organizations and programs.

NOTE:

Application forms must be requested each year online prior to submitting an application. When you submit an LOI, a member of the foundation staff will be contacting you within the next five business days regarding the status of your request.

Full applications are due at the "full proposal" deadline above. 

The Foundation is dedicated to providing financial assistance to organizations committed to improving our world. Solutions to the problems of today's world still lie in the values of innovation, practicality, hard work, and compassion.

The Foundation considers applications for grants in the following areas:

• Education
• Social Service
• Health care
• Civic and cultural
• Environmental

The categories above are not intended to limit the interest of the Foundation from considering other worthwhile projects. In general, the Foundation guidelines are broad to give us flexibility in providing grants.

The majority of our grants are made in the U.S. However, like Dr. Scholl, we recognize the need for a global outlook. Non-U.S. grants are given to organizations where directors have knowledge of the grantee.