Deadline: 23-Jul-21
The Delaware Community Foundation is seeking applications for its Vision Grants Program to support interventions and initiatives that will address community challenges.
The Strategic Response Fund Vision Grants Program seeks applications for innovative solutions to emerging and evolving needs arising from or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Goals
The goal of the Vision Grants Program is to improve service to Delaware communities by helping organizations:
- Institute innovative approaches to address systemic issues that impact Delaware and that no one organization could solve independently. This could include for-profit/nonprofit joint ventures, public-private partnerships, coordination in a geographic area, and/or issue-area collaborations.
- Reposition and/or integrate services across multiple agencies where current operating models no longer fit or can be improved, creating catalytic impact on the partners’ capacity, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability and financial health.
- Merge in cases in which two or more organizations can increase effectiveness, sustainability and better serve their constituencies by joining together than remaining separate.
Funding Information
- Grants will range from $20,000 to $30,000.
Eligibility Criteria
- An application must be submitted by a “Lead Organization” that will serve as the grantee for the initiative.
- The Lead Organization must be a 501c3 public charity, religious organization or government agency. Private and/or for-profit entities and agencies of other statuses may be partners, but they cannot serve as the Lead Organization.
- A Lead Organization must only submit one application in a given round.
Ineligible
The Vision Grants Program does not fund:
- Ongoing staffing, programmatic, operational, or capital costs of the organization(s).
- Program-level only collaboration that does not involve a fundamental shift in organizational service models. (e.g., a nonprofit that provides afterschool programming that works with a school is not likely to be awarded a Vision Grant).
- Grants directly to individuals.
- Political campaigns or lobbying activities.
- Proposals that exclusively serve religious purposes, although religious organizations providing non-religious community services will be considered.
- Capital expenses, unless they are key part of the transformative initiative.
- Endowments.
- Previously incurred expenses.
Evaluation Criteria
Applications will be evaluated based upon specific criteria, which will be defined in a rubric. Successful applications will:
- Be high-impact and outcomes-oriented, indicating how the client(s) or community will benefit.
- Be collaborative, in which two or more organizations align, join forces, consolidate, and/or leverage strategic alliances to better fulfill their missions (for-profit, government and nonprofit entities are eligible in this initiative). The Strategic Response Fund is not likely to invest in proposals that only involve one organization (e.g., internal reorganization/repositioning) or any short-term activity (e.g., partnering to organize a conference).
- Demonstrate how they will significantly improve measurable efficiency, quality, and effectiveness of systems/delivery models.
- Present innovative, systems or sector-changing initiatives.
- Define desired outcomes for the initiative.
- Have approval of boards of each organization.
- Have a lead organization with proven leadership, and a good governance plan that describes the organizations’ capacity to undertake the initiative.
- Define a concept that has merit that can be developed into an executable program/project.
- Define opportunities for sustained, long-term impact among partners and/or the community.
- Define how the Strategic Response Fund can play a catalytic role in the process.
- Where possible, be supported by evidence-based success stories and national best practices.
- Define opportunities and potential for serving as a model for other nonprofits and funders.
For more information, visit https://www.delcf.org/vision-grants/