The Nathan Cummings Foundation Grant Program – United States

Deadline: 30-Apr-24

The Nathan Cummings Foundation is offering two types of funding opportunities: grants and program-related investments (PRIs).

Both grant and PRI proposals must align with NCF’s interconnected goals of racial justice, economic justice, and/or environmental justice.

Focus Areas

Racial Justice
- Their vision for racial justice is the removal of structural barriers and hierarchies based on race. It seeks to reimagine political, economic, and social systems in ways that allow all people to thrive, regardless of their racial identity.
- Focus Areas
  - To advance racial justice, they support organizations that address the following focus areas:
    - Civic Engagement: BIPOC and other marginalized communities face long-standing and concerted efforts to restrict and suppress their participation in the public sphere, especially in civic processes. They support efforts to ensure these communities have the access and capacity to participate freely in shaping the policies, practices, and institutions that impact their everyday lives.
    - Racial Wealth Gap: As a product of centuries of policies and practices, extreme racial wealth inequality persists in the United States, especially among Black communities. They support efforts to repair this harm, build wealth, and address the root causes of the racial wealth gap.
    - Racism + Oppression: White supremacy is at the root of their society’s most unequal systems, institutions, and policies. They support efforts to build the infrastructure and capacity necessary to create systems that are free from oppression and allow them all to thrive.
Economic Justice
- Economic justice means that everyone has opportunities to participate and thrive in the economy, including those who are marginalized by their current economic systems. The principles of economic justice create a stronger economy because prosperity and equity go hand in hand.
- Focus Areas
  - To advance economic justice, they support organizations that address the following focus areas:
    - Economic Security: Economic security is a necessary baseline for people to survive and thrive, especially amidst conditions of rising inequality. They support efforts that systemically mitigate economic precarity and secure a path to a more stable future for poor and low-income people.
    - Access to Capital: Generations of discriminatory lending and investment practices have prevented BIPOC and women from accessing the capital required to bring their innovative ideas to the marketplace and profit from them. They support efforts to provide more access to capital for historically excluded entrepreneurs and to cultivate an ecosystem in which they can prosper.
    - Monopoly Power: Monopoly power drives many of the corrosive and pressing problems in their political, economic, and social systems. They support efforts to decrease corporate power and create a level playing field for workers, marginalized communities, and small businesses.
Environmental Justice
- Environmental justice is the right of all people and communities to a clean, healthy, and safe environment. It promotes equal environmental protection under the law and in fact. It empowers all communities to make informed decisions and fully participate civically and economically in the creation of environmental solutions.
- Focus Areas
  - To advance environmental justice, they support organizations that address the following focus areas:
    - Environmental Harms: BIPOC and low-income communities are disproportionately harmed by environmental hazards. They focus on efforts to prevent and repair these environmental disparities and ensure the affected communities can meaningfully engage in forging solutions.
    - Inclusive Participation in the Green Economy: A Green Energy transition is well underway, but the economic opportunity that goes along with it is not distributed equitably. They focus on efforts to ensure that BIPOC-led environmental organizations and diverse companies can fully take advantage of the investments, benefits, and opportunities of the Green Economy.
    - Regenerative Economic Models: Achieving environmental justice and addressing climate change requires a shift from extractive to regenerative economic models. They focus on social entrepreneurs and innovators who are building regenerative projects and models based on sustainability, ecological restoration, and community wealth-building and resilience.

What type of grants do you offer?

They believe that social change takes time and requires long-term investments. They also see immense value in supporting new, innovative, and exploratory work. To reflect this, they have a range of grant types:
- Venture Grants (Up to $100k for one year) These grants are short-term and designed to provide expedited support to social entrepreneurs with breakthrough, emerging, and innovative solutions. They serve to mutually explore new relationships and partnerships.
- Advancement Grants (Up to $250k annually for up to two years) These grants are designed to provide two-year support to project-based work and/or help scale organizations and promising solutions.
- Enterprise Grants ($250k+ annually for more than two years) These grants are designed to provide multi-year, unrestricted funding to partners that have deep alignment across their REEJ focus areas and offer the most opportunity to use all their financial and non-financial resources to support their solutions.

What is a Program Related Investment (PRI)?

Just like grants, PRIs must advance the foundation’s mission and accomplish one or more of the foundation’s tax-exempt purposes. Also, like grants, PRIs must not be used to influence legislation or take part in political campaigns on behalf of candidates.
Unlike grants, PRIs are made with the expectation that some or all the capital will be returned to the foundation in the future, according to terms that the foundation and the PRI recipient agree to. That said, they do not make PRIs for the purpose of financial gain. Therefore, they may be able to structure financing with more favorable and flexible terms than a traditional financial institution would.
They will consider PRIs in a variety of forms, including debt and equity instruments.
Criteria for PRIs
- They will award PRIs using the following criteria:
  - Alignment with one or more NCF focus areas (see above)
  - Alignment with NCF’s values, including a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion
  - Ability to return capital according to agreed-upon terms
  - Ability to provide agreed-upon impact data to evaluate progress in NCF focus areas
  - Inability/difficulty obtaining sufficient capital through conventional financial institutions
  - Opportunity for learning that enhances the work of NCF and its partners
  - Opportunity to catalyze action and investment from others
  - Opportunity to demonstrate and amplify successful models and approaches that may be overlooked or underutilized by traditional sources of funding

Funding Information

The overall grantmaking budget in 2024 is approximately $17 million.
- The budget for funding economic justice work in 2024 is $2,900,000, of which approximately $1 million of the 2024 budget for economic justice is available to support new partners.
- The budget for funding environmental justice work in 2024 is $2,900,000, of which approximately $1.5 million is available to support new partners.
- The budget for funding racial justice work in 2024 is $3.8 million, of which approximately $2 million is available to support new partners.
- The target budget for funding program-related investments in 2024 is approximately $3 million. Note: They have dedicated $22 million, five percent of the endowment, to be deployed in the coming years.
Most of their grants range from about $50,000 – $250,000. They anticipate the typical PRI will range from $200,000 to $500,000.

Eligibility Criteria

They support organizations based in the United States and U.S. Territories. They are particularly interested in work focused on the U.S. South. They are not currently accepting proposals for work in the Israel-Palestine region as they are still aligning their strategy for that geography, but they will share more later this year about funding opportunities.

Ineligible

The following are ineligible for financial support:
- 501(c)(4) organizations
- Individuals
- Requests outside the United States and U.S. Territories.
- Social or direct service projects that are not a part of a larger advocacy strategy. For example, they do not support direct services (e.g. cash transfer, work development programs, food and education services, housing assistance, etc.).
- Fundraising events, sponsorships, panel requests, or galas
- K-12, extra-curricular, religious, or community arts education programming
- Religious communities, congregations, and churches
- Community gardening and greening projects
- Conservation projects
- Projects addressing diseases including medical research, personal health, and wellness programs

For more information, visit NCF.