Capital Campaign Grants

MichelleEberly

Our CF has typically not considered grant requests from nonprofits for capital campaigns for a couple of reasons, one being lack of unrestricted dollars to make such significant grants. Over the years, our unrestricted pot of grantmaking money has grown and recently we recently considered and awarded a large grant ($500,000) to a nonprofit for a capital campaign. As expected, we are now getting inquiries from other nonprofits asking for capital campaign support. I'm looking to see if other CF's consider these kinds of requests, and if so, what guidelines do you have for organizations applying?

mariasanchez

Hi Michelle, we have done capital grants in various amounts over the pat 20 years ($500 to $2mm) for things such as buying a refrigerator to a wing of a cancer center. For our capital grants program we use a 2-step process - first a letter of intent (2 to 3 questions) where a nonprofit will describe the project, they are looking support for, the stage of the campaign and amount of the potential request. Our grant committee reads the letter at their next meeting (every quarter) and discuss the letter. If the committee is interesting in learning more about the project, I will then provide an application that is more comprehensive (both the LOI and application are done through GLM). Once the application is received, a site visit is conducted, a meeting with the organization is schedule to discuss the application for staff conducts due diligence. When staff feels it is ready for committee review then a review package is put together for the grants committee to discuss at their next meeting where they will either recommend a grant or decline. visit our website ASFdn.org to see how we articulate eligibility and what we word things. Happy to talk to you more about it if you like by shooting me an email at msanchez@asfden.org so we can schedule a time to chat. happy to help.