Application Process

In order to be fair to all applicants, the Foundation has adopted the following 4 step grant application process to select organizations that will be funded.  All organizations must follow this procedure.

1. Qualification step:  The potential applicant carefully reviews the Foundation guidelines, funding priorities, grant process and funding criteria using this website to determine whether the organization and the program are something that the Foundation would consider funding.  If you think that your organization qualifies, you may proceed to Step 2.
2. Letter of Inquiry step:  In this step the potential applicant, creates an account in our online grant application system and chooses to apply using the “Short Form” or “Standard Form” application process.  Both processes require the organization to provide information about the potential project to be funded.  Once submitted, the Letter of Inquiry is reviewed by the Foundation to determine if the project and organization is a good match with our mission and current funding priorities.  If the Foundation determines that there is a good match, the prospective applicant will be notified via email and asked to submit a full grant proposal.  If the Foundation determines that the program or organization is not a good fit, the organization will receive an email explaining our decision to discontinue the application process.  The letter of inquiry step saves both the potential applicant and the Foundation time and valuable resources that are required to complete and review an application that has little chance of being funded. Letters of inquiry received within 4 weeks of the upcoming grant deadline will not be reviewed until after the grant deadline.
3. Application evaluation step:  Once a full grant application is received, the Foundation board carefully evaluates the proposal against our grant criteria.  Our grant criteria includes (but is not limited to) how closely the program fits our mission, current funding priorities, type of support requested and amount of community support for the project.  After each Board member has evaluated & scored the grant application, an average Board evaluation score is obtained.  Only applications that score a 70% or higher move to Step 4 (Board discussion).    Applications scoring less than 70% in the evaluation phase are automatically denied funding.
4. Board discussion step:  At the board meeting, every application scoring higher than 70% in Step 3 is discussed.  The Board looks at how the application rates compared to other applicants in the same cycle.  Individual grants that score highly, still may not be funded due to limited funding dollars.  Occasionally a grant request will be tabled for further investigation.  In this case, the applicant will be notified and a site visit or meeting will be scheduled to discuss the program further.  All Board decisions are final and all applicants will be notified of the decisions within 2 weeks of the Board meeting.