Grants for Native Americans

NOTE: Although unsolicited proposals are rarely considered, inquiries about future support for projects that fall within the Child Well-being Program’s grant-making strategies can be submitted through a letter of inquiry.

Mission

The mission of the Child Well-being Program is to promote children’s healthy development and protect them from abuse and neglect.

About Doris Duke and Child Well-being

Doris Duke took a special interest in the needs of children, supporting nearly 85 child welfare organizations during her life. In her will, Doris Duke expressed her interest in "the prevention of cruelty to children."

Goals

Children’s well-being and ability to thrive are strongly tied to the safety and stability of both their families and the communities where they live. These factors provide the foundation for healthy physical and emotional development during childhood. All children should be able to grow up in secure, positive, healthy and inclusive environments that allow them to reach their full potential. Unfortunately, many children in the US experience a long legacy of unjust historic and systemic inequities and disparities that rob them of access to the fundamental factors that allow others to flourish. By funding efforts that strengthen the social service systems that serve these families and support the needs of children and caregivers together, the Child Well-being Program aims to promote children’s healthy development, prevent maltreatment, and ally with communities to create improved and more equitable outcomes for their children. 

To accomplish this goal, the program focuses its grant making in three areas: 

• Support Place-Based Approaches to Improving Well-being
• Strengthen and Coordinate Service Systems
• Build a Pipeline of Diverse Social Service Leaders

Strategies

The Child Well-being Program’s grant-making strategy is designed to foster the long-term well-being of children, families, and communities by funding efforts to protect and improve the health and positive development of populations experiencing disproportional historic and systemic inequities in the US. We have a particular interest in supporting work that bolsters collaborative and culturally, geographically and locally relevant programs with and for families; for Native American or Alaska Native communities; and for youth in or transitioning out of foster care.  

• Cultivate partnerships between organizations and systems that serve children and families to increase health equity and well-being.
• Coordinate efforts across a variety of social service systems.
• Implement interventions that meet the needs of children and families in their neighborhoods and communities.
• Increase access to prevention and treatment services.
• Communicate lessons and outcomes broadly to inform policy and practice.
• Invest in developing and supporting the next generation of leaders committed to implementing effective programs and policies serving children and families.

NOTE: While The William S. Anheuser Charitable Fund accepts grant applications by invitation only, we welcome inquiries.

William S. Anheuser Charitable Fund

The William S. Anheuser Charitable Fund, a Donor-Advised Fund of YouthBridge Community Foundation, follows the guiding principle to Enrich, Enlighten, Encourage and Educate a few to Enable them to Pay It Forward.

Upon recommendation of the Fund Advisors, YouthBridge provides grants in the following areas:

Children, Youth and Their Families; Women

In the United States we focus on organizations, projects, or programs that:

• Empower the working poor and single working mothers
• Ensure basic needs for the poor
• Support Native Americans
• Provide education or job training

Outside of the United States we focus on organizations, projects, or programs that:

• Empower the disadvantaged economically
• Ensure basic needs for those living in extreme poverty
• Fight human rights abuses

Animal Care

• We fund organizations, projects, or programs supporting animals that provide comfort to people.

The Fund grants primarily to organizations based in Missouri or Arizona. To continue Mr. Anheuser’s tradition of mostly giving to smaller, nimble organizations, the Fund prefers to support small and mid-size organizations.

Mission

The mission of the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation is to advance society through the performing arts, conservation of the world’s oceans, and alleviation of poverty. The foundation was created in 2011 to honor Paul M. Angell, and strives to embody the legacy of his compassion, ingenuity and industriousness.

What We Fund

The Paul M. Angell Family Foundation makes grants in three priority areas: Conservation, Performing Arts and Social Causes. Grants for Conservation can be found here.

Performing Arts

The goal of the Performing Arts program is to support the presentation, perpetuation, and propagation of performing arts events, focusing on classical music and theater. Grantee organizations include professional performers, presenters, (including broadcasters) and educators. We are currently considering grants to the Chicago area, Cleveland, Detroit, and the Mid-Atlantic Region (from Washington, D.C. north to Philadelphia, PA). Please note that we currently do not fund dance or film. We also do not fund individual commissions.

Social Impact

The goal of the Foundation’s grantmaking in Social Impact is to promote equitable, safe, and thriving communities, particularly for low-income African, Latino/a, Asian, Arab and Native American (ALAANA). Achieving this goal requires long-term, comprehensive approaches led by those closest to the challenges and the possibilities.

The Foundation is committed to understanding and addressing the root causes of persistent inequities for ALAANA families and communities, including the profoundly harmful impacts of structural racism and white supremacy. The Foundation funds efforts that promote access to meaningful life opportunities, such as quality education, networks of support and healing, and financial assets and employment. The Foundation also supports antiracist education, organizing, and advocacy efforts that have strong potential to advance meaningful systemic change.

Public and private disinvestment has created unjust inequities in almost every realm of social, economic, and civic life of many ALAANA communities. At the same time, every neighborhood is home to creative and resilient individuals, families, businesses, and institutions. The Foundation’s grantmaking in Social Impact seeks to recognize both of these realities while it learns from and supports thoughtful and strategic changemakers. Priority areas are Education, Economic Empowerment, and Justice.

For more details, please read the foundation’s paper, “A New Grantmaking Model for Social Impact", found here.

*Please note, within Social Impact, we are currently only able to consider new grant requests within the Chicago metropolitan area. This does not apply to grant renewal requests.

Types of Support

• General Operating
  • This is the most flexible type of grant. Funds may be applied in any manner in which the organization sees fit, subject to its mission.
• Program/Project Grants
  • These grants are targeted to a specific program or goal. Applicants must submit a program budget and narrative to support their applications.
• Education
  • Education grants support programs which disseminate information crucial to the organization’s mission. They may include, but are not necessarily limited to: lectures, demonstrations, workshops, guided tours, exhibitions, and distribution of printed or online materials.

OUR TOWN: Grant Program Description

• Bring new attention to or elevate key community assets and issues, voices of residents, local history, or cultural infrastructure.
• Inject new or additional energy, resources, activity, people, or enthusiasm into a place, community issue, or local economy.
• Envision new possibilities for a community or place - a new future, a new way of overcoming a challenge, or approaching problem-solving.
• Connect communities, people, places, and economic opportunity via physical spaces or new relationships.

The National Endowment for the Arts plans to support a variety of projects across the country in urban, rural, and tribal communities of all sizes.

Project Types

Our Town projects must integrate arts, culture, and design activities into efforts that strengthen communities by advancing local economic, physical, and/or social outcomes. Projects may include activities such as:

Arts Engagement

Artist residency: A program designed to strategically connect artists with the opportunity to bring their creative skill sets to non-arts institutions, including residencies in government offices, businesses, or other institutions.

Arts festivals: Public events that gather people, often in public space or otherwise unexpected places, to showcase talent and exchange culture.

Community co-creation of art: The process of engaging stakeholders to participate or collaborate alongside artists/designers in conceiving, designing, or fabricating a work or works of art.

Performances: Presentations of a live art work (e.g., music, theater, dance, media).

Public art: A work of art that is conceived for a particular place or community, with the intention of being broadly accessible, and often involving community members in the process of developing, selecting, or executing the work.

Temporary public art: A work of art that is conceived for a particular place or community and meant for display over a finite period of time, with the intention of being broadly accessible and often involving community members in developing, selecting, or executing the work.

Cultural Planning

Cultural planning: The process of identifying and leveraging a community's cultural resources and decision-making (e.g., creating a cultural plan, or integrating plans and policies around arts and culture as part of a city master planning process).

Cultural district planning: The process of convening stakeholders to identify a specific geography with unique potential for community and/or economic development based on cultural assets (e.g., through designation, branding, policy, plans, or other means).

Creative asset mapping: The process of identifying the people, places, physical infrastructure, institutions, and customs that hold meaningful aesthetics, historical, and/or economic value that make a place unique.

Public art planning: The process of developing community-wide strategies and/or policies that guide and support commissioning, installing, and maintaining works of public art and/or temporary public art.

Design

Artist/designer-facilitated community planning: Artists/designers leading or partnering in the creative processes of visioning, and for solutions to community issues.

Design of artist space: Design processes to support the creation of dedicated spaces for artists to live and/or to produce, exhibit, or sell their work.

Design of cultural facilities: Design processes to support the creation of a dedicated building or space for creating and/or showcasing arts and culture.

Public space design: The process of designing elements of public infrastructure, or spaces where people congregate (e.g., parks, plazas, landscapes, neighborhoods, districts, infrastructure, and artist-produced elements of streetscapes).

Artist and Creative Industry Support

Creative business development: Programs or services that support entrepreneurs and businesses in the creative industries, or help cultivate strong infrastructure for establishing and developing creative businesses.

Professional artist development: Programs or services that support artists professionally, such as through skill development or accessing markets and capital.

Strengthening Communities

Through Our Town projects, the National Endowment for the Arts Endowment intends to achieve the following objective: Strengthening Communities: Provide opportunities for the arts to be integrated into the fabric of community life.

Our Town project outcomes may include:

Economic Change: Economic improvements of individuals, institutions, or the community including local business growth, job creation/labor force participation, professional development/training, prevention of displacement, in-migration, and tourism.

Physical Change: Physical improvements that occur to the built and natural environment including beautification and/or enhancement of physical environment, new construction, and redevelopment (including arts, culture, and public space).

Social Change: Improvements to social relationships, civic engagement and community empowerment, and/or amplifying community identity including civic engagement, collective efficacy, social capital, social cohesion, and community attachment.

Systems Change: Improvements to community capacity to sustain the integration of arts, culture, and design into strategies for advancing local economic, physical, and/or social outcomes including, for example: establishment of new and lasting cross-sector partnerships; shifts in institutional structure, practices or policies; replication or scaling of innovative project models; establishment of training programs; or dissemination of informational resources to support the creative placemaking field. 

The Impact Fund

Our mission is to provide grants, advocacy and education to support impact litigation on behalf of marginalized communities 

Grants

The Impact Fund awards recoverable grants to legal services nonprofits, private attorneys, and/or small law firms who seek to advance justice in the areas of civil and human rights, environmental justice, and/or poverty law. 

Since being founded in 1992, the Impact Fund has granted more than $8 million in recoverable grants. We award grants four times per year, most within the range of US$10,000 to US$50,000.

Funding Sectors

Social Justice

The Impact Fund provides grants and legal support to assist in human and civil rights cases. We have helped to change dozens of laws and win cases to improve the rights of thousands.

The cases we are funding allege that:

• In California, police used excessive force against #BlackLivesMatter protesters.
• In Colorado, female police officers face losing their careers because they can’t do enough push-ups and sit-ups.
• In Ohio and New York, a gun manufacturer knowingly sells to dealers that arm criminals.
• In Massachusetts, prisoners with Hepatitis C are going untreated.
• In North Dakota, Native Americans can’t vote because of a recent voter suppression law.
• In Florida, prisoners who request mental health services are abused and, when they complain, the abuse gets worse.

Environmental Justice

The Impact Fund provides grants to support local litigation for environmental justice, with a focus on marginalized comunities. These are often cases no one else will support. 

The cases we are funding are to stop:

• Proposed mining in the Superior National Forest that would contaminate groundwater, damage wetlands, and destroy the local Native American wild-rice economy.
• Unwanted development, after a community garden in New York was bulldozed in the middle of the night.
• Pollution from a lighter fluid factory in New Jersey that is causing illness to residents in a low-income neighborhood.
• Clear-cut logging that is threatening the health and livelihood of the local indigenous community in Ontario.
• Spraying pesticides at will in California.
• A new highway bridge that is the latest in a long history of environmental hazards heaped upon an African American and Latino neighborhood in Corpus Christi, severing it from the rest of the city.

Economic Justice

The Impact Fund provides financial and other forms of support to cases fighting for economic justice. From workers' rights to consumer protection for vulnerable populations, impact litigation is a powerful tool to hold corporations accountable. 

The cases we are funding allege that:

• In Texas, people with unpaid tickets are sent to “debtors’ prison.”
• In California, landlords lose their insurance when they accept Section 8 vouchers from low-income tenants.
• In Idaho, homeless people are jailed for sleeping outdoors, even when there are no shelters to take them in.

Additional Considerations

Is your case set up for success?

No one can guarantee a victory. That's why we look for a coherent strategy and a legal team with sufficient experience and resources to give the case the best chance of success.

Have you collaborated with anyone else?

Legal work can be all-encompassing. But taking the time to talk with others who have argued (or are currently arguing) similar cases can make a huge difference in the long run.

Do you need the money?

You probably wouldn't be reading this if you didn't need financial support, but just in case: We prioritize requests from applicants who need funding to keep their case moving forward.

Have the expenses already been paid?

Our grants can only be used for expenses that have not yet been paid. Raising funds for litigation costs can feel like a juggling act, we know. We’re available to talk by phone if you need help determining when to apply.

Have you estimated what your case will cost?

Litigation costs can be hard to predict, but we’ve found there is value in planning. Once you run the numbers, you might move securing co-counsel to the top of your list. (We can help.)

Have we funded your case before?

Occasionally we will fund a case more than once. In these situations, the case has lasted several years and has a new set of challenges and expenses.

The Sally Brown McInnes and John “Mac” McInnes Charitable Trust was created by Sarajane “Sally”Brown McInnes. Mr. and Mrs. McInnes were residents of Colorado and were passionate about providing for the welfare of animals and children’s health and overall well-being.  Mr. and Mrs. McInnes were also supporters of organizations serving Veterans, Native Americans, environment, arts, religion, and national treasures.

Mission

To perpetuate the generosity of the McInnes family by supporting charitable causes with a preference toward organizations located in or serving Colorado that promote animal welfare, children’s health, education and empowerment.

Program areas

• Arts 
• Education 
• Environment, animals 
• Health 
• Human services 
• Public/society benefit 
• Religion