Deadline: 2-Mar-22
The Peter and Elizabeth Tower Foundation offers opportunities to apply for funding through the Community Change Grant Program.
Focus Areas
- Intellectual Disabilities
- Children with intellectual disabilities are identified early and receive services that meet their evolving needs.
- Young people with intellectual disabilities are engaged in meaningful, social, vocational, and educational pursuits.
- Families understand intellectual disabilities and secure needed support.
- Communities embrace young people with intellectual disabilities and provide them with a full range of supports and opportunities to engage in community life.
- Learning Disabilities
- Children with learning disabilities are identified early, diagnosed, and connected to services that meet their ongoing individual needs.
- Youth with learning disabilities understand how they learn and pursue resources that support them accordingly.
- Young adults are confident and do not view their learning disability as a liability.
- Young adults with learning disabilities are ready for work and/or educational pursuits.
- Families are informed about learning disabilities and can identify and navigate available services.
- Communities value persons with learning disabilities and accommodate their needs.
- Mental Health
- Stigma related to mental illness is eliminated.
- Children with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges are identified early and connected to appropriate services.
- Young people with mental health challenges understand and manage their conditions and behaviors.
- Families understand mental health challenges and help young people live productive lives.
- Communities offer meaningful opportunities and appropriate support to young people with mental health challenges and their families.
- Substance Use Disorders
- Community members understand the prevalence and harmful effects of alcohol and drugs on young people and work to address them.
- Resources for substance use disorders prevention, treatment, and recovery are readily available.
- Families provide safe environments that support healthy and informed choices about alcohol and drugs.
- Young people make healthy and informed choices about alcohol and drugs.
Funding Information
- The Foundation has allocated a total of $1.45 million for its 2022 Community Change portfolio, with preliminary applications accepted in two grant cycles.
- Owing to their community-wide or systems-level focus, Community Change grants may be larger than those seen through the Foundation’s Programs & Services portfolio (which typically range from $15,000 to $50,000 per year).
Eligibility Criteria
- It’s easiest for us to accept grant applications from:
- Not-for-profit organizations with a 501(c)(3) designation that are not private foundations;
- Not-for-profit public benefit corporations;
- Public or diocesan school districts; or
- Private or charter schools
- The Foundation will be making grants to organizations currently providing services in one or more of these regions:
- Massachusetts: Barnstable County, Dukes County, Essex County, Nantucket County
- New York: Erie County, Niagara County
- At a minimum, grant partners currently provide prevention, treatment, and/or recovery services to people aged 26 years or younger from at least one of these populations:
- People with intellectual disabilities (including autism spectrum disorders)
- People with specific learning disabilities
- People with mental illness/mental health challenges
- People with substance use disorders
- The ideal grant partners serve one or more of the populations listed above and intentionally work to improve equitable outcomes for individuals with a host of individual identities relating to — alone or in combination – race, sexual identity, gender identity, immigration status, housing status, and other disability status.
For more information, visit https://thetowerfoundation.org/what-we-fund/apply-for-a-grant/