The Competitive Grantmaking Process
The Community Foundation follows a grantmaking process designed to closely align our grantees’ work with our mission, vision and values. Our rigorous process ensures that our donors’ dollars are directed to local nonprofit organizations that share our high standards of integrity — and impact.
Our competitive grantmaking dollars come from charitable funds created by individuals, families, businesses and organizations to benefit nonprofit organizations doing personally meaningful work primarily in our region.
For new grantseekers, we recommend attending one of the Community Foundation’s annual grantseeker sessions, where members of the Community Impact team will walk agencies through key milestones in our competitive process.
The first phase in the process is submitting a Letter of Inquiry, also known as an LOI, that summarizes your project and outlines the challenge you seek to solve.
Once LOIs are reviewed by the Community Impact team, your agency may be invited back to the second phase: submitting a full proposal, which includes details on how you will approach your work, the staffing involved, the budgets, the projected outcomes, etc.
Once full proposals are accepted, the Community Impact team will move to phase three: conducting site visits to your organization. The visits — which are conducted in person or virtually — are an opportunity to clarify aspects of your project, provide additional details, tour our staff or Community Impact Committee members around your facility, etc.
The Community Impact Committee — made up of Board of Directors members as well as a slew of community volunteers — reviews all grant applications and recommendations submitted by the Community Impact team. The committee ultimately approves the slate of competitive grantees year over year in this phase.
As the final step, grants are awarded to nonprofit organizations twice a year: Summer program awards are distributed in April; all other awards are distributed in June.
Throughout the lifecycle of the grant, the Community Impact team will make regular contact or visits with grantees to communicate on the success of the project. Per the terms of the grant, grantees are required to give periodic progress reports. When appropriate, the Community Foundation requests stories of success from the projects to share with donors.
Our timeline for nonprofits with year-round or summer programs is as follows:
- Letter of Inquiry (LOI) opens December 5, 2022
- Letter of Inquiry (LOI) closes January 6, 2023
- Full Proposal invited late February 2023
- Full Proposal due late March 2023
- Summer Program Awards in April
- Site visits in Mid-March/Early April 2023
- Grants awarded in June 2023
Grant Timeline subject to change
For both year-round and summer programs we offer:
- Mini Grants of $500-$15,000
- Community Impact Grants of $15,001-$75,000
Application and reporting requirements will reflect the size of the grant. We suggest mini-grants for organizations that are newly established or have an annual budget of $250,000 or less.
The Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, age, sexual orientation, or national origin. Applicants for grants from the Community Foundation must hold similar standards. Competitive grant applications from organizations known to have discriminatory policies will not be considered.
