Grants for Youth Programs
Grants for youth leadership and development programs.
Looking to fund programs that aid youth leadership and development, or provide enrichment opportunities for youth? The Instrumentl team has compiled this list of grants for youth programs to get you headed in the right direction.
Read more about each grant below or start a 14-day free trial to see all youth grants recommended for your specific programs.
DanPaul Foundation Grants
The DanPaul Foundation
Mission
The DanPaul Foundation will use its resources to help train teachers and parents in early childhood development, protect children from abuse and neglect, stimulate children's personal social responsibilities, and offer them opportunities for enrichment and growth.
The Foundation will also encourage children to be concerned and informed about the environment and the underprivileged, particularly with regard to clean air and water, and adequate housing and nutrition for all.
Beliefs
The DanPaul Foundation believes that children should have ample opportunities for enrichment in their lives, and thus strives to provide many different ways to enrich and expand children's minds through direct programs and monetary support to organizations doing similar work.
We have provided or currently provide grants related to the following program areas:
- Workshops, Conferences, + Seminars: We strive to offer educational workshops, conferences, and seminars for parents and teachers on topics related to early childhood development.
- Student Scholarships: We aim to help students attending post-secondary education institutions by providing need-based and academic scholarships.
- Scientific Endeavors: We desire to advance scientific endeavors which seek to improve the quality of life for everyone in the world.
- Clean Air + Water: We hope to pass on knowledge and practical life skills to youth regarding their personal responsibility to the environment, teaching them about issues surrounding clean air and water.
- Child Advocacy: We believe in protecting children from abuse and neglect and particularly love to support programs that provide education and assistance to children as well as organizations advocating or caring for vulnerable children.
- Homelessness: We want to encourage young people to take a personal interest in seeing that adequate housing and proper nutrition, especially for the underprivileged and homeless, are available.
- Poverty + Neglect: We seek to help those in poverty as well as educate youth about their responsibility to consider the underprivileged and take care of those most in need of life's basic essentials like adequate housing and proper nutrition.
- Refugee Enrichment: We wish to help refugee youth by supporting programs that provide them enrichment and help them transition to life in a new country.
The DanPaul Foundation provides grants to 501(c)3 tax-exempt non-profit organizations as defined by the IRS. The Foundation is interested in providing funding to programs that directly serve the health, education, development, and welfare of the world's youth.
Grants range from a few hundred dollars up to $15,000 per calendar year.
Hearst Foundations Grants
Hearst Foundation
Hearst Foundations' Mission
The Hearst Foundations identify and fund outstanding nonprofits to ensure that people of all backgrounds in the United States have the opportunity to build healthy, productive and inspiring lives.
Hearst Foundations' Goals
The Foundations seek to achieve their mission by funding approaches that result in:
- Improved health and quality of life
- Access to high quality educational options to promote increased academic achievement
- Arts and sciences serving as a cornerstone of society
- Sustainable employment and productive career paths for adults
- Stabilizing and supporting families
Funding Priorities
The Hearst Foundations support well-established nonprofit organizations that address significant issues within their major areas of interests – culture, education, health and social service – and that primarily serve large demographic and/or geographic constituencies. In each area of funding, the Foundations seek to identify those organizations achieving truly differentiated results relative to other organizations making similar efforts for similar populations. The Foundations also look for evidence of sustainability beyond their support.
Culture
The Hearst Foundations fund cultural institutions that offer meaningful programs in the arts and sciences, prioritizing those which enable engagement by young people and create a lasting and measurable impact. The Foundations also fund select programs nurturing and developing artistic talent.
Types of Support: Program, capital and, on a limited basis, general and endowment support
Education
The Hearst Foundations fund educational institutions demonstrating uncommon success in preparing students to thrive in a global society. The Foundations’ focus is largely on higher education, but they also fund innovative models of early childhood and K-12 education, as well as professional development.
Types of Support: Program, scholarship, capital and, on a limited basis, general and endowment support
Health
The Hearst Foundations assist leading regional hospitals, medical centers and specialized medical institutions providing access to high-quality healthcare for low-income populations. In response to the shortage of healthcare professionals necessary to meet the country’s evolving needs, the Foundations also fund programs designed to enhance skills and increase the number of practitioners and educators across roles in healthcare. Because the Foundations seek to use their funds to create a broad and enduring impact on the nation’s health, support for medical research and the development of young investigators is also considered.
Types of Support: Program, capital and, on a limited basis, endowment support
Social Service
The Hearst Foundations fund direct-service organizations that tackle the roots of chronic poverty by applying effective solutions to the most challenging social and economic problems. The Foundations prioritize supporting programs that have proven successful in facilitating economic independence and in strengthening families. Preference is also given to programs with the potential to scale productive practices in order to reach more people in need.
Types of Support: Program, capital and general support
MI: Civil Society Awards
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
NOTE: Nominations for the Civil Society Awards are now closed. However, the Manhattan Institute welcomes award nominations on a rolling basis. To tell us about an outstanding nonprofit leader—and their organization—who is contributing to a vibrant civil society in your community, please email: [email protected]
About
History has shown that free markets are the best way to organize economic activity. But the Manhattan Institute understands that in a healthy society, markets are complemented by charitable and philanthropic enterprises, which both help those in need and prepare people to realize their full potential. Since its founding, the United States has been characterized by a vibrant civil society in which nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations—with the help of volunteers and private philanthropy—work to address social challenges.
To support and reinvigorate this tradition, the Manhattan Institute established the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative in 2001, now known as the Tocqueville Project. Directed by MI Senior Fellow Howard Husock, it combines research, writing, events, and conversations with scholars, practitioners, government officials, and community leaders to make the case for the value and benefits of a strong civil society. The goal of the Civil Society Awards program is to find and recognize the best of America’s new generation of nonprofit leaders.
Tocqueville wrote that “Americans of all ages, all conditions and all dispositions, constantly form associations... religious, moral, serious, futile, enormous or diminutive.” This combination of association and philanthropy has given us everything from the Boy Scouts to Big Brothers Big Sisters.
Just as we have private entrepreneurs, we also have social entrepreneurs, who address societal challenges and find private funds to do so. These individuals develop solutions to emerging needs and problems, while helping to keep our social fabric from fraying. It is their work that the Civil Society Awards highlight and encourage.
Manhattan Institute welcomes nominations for our Civil Society Awards on a rolling basis. To tell us about an outstanding individual—as well as their nonprofit organization—who is contributing to a vibrant civil society in your community, please visit our nomination page.
New Earth Foundation Grant
New Earth Foundation
Vision
In 1997, John Loveland founded New Earth Foundation. His vision for New Earth Foundation was, and it still is, assisting to create an enhanced worldwide awareness, manifesting as universal respect for all forms of life, the responsible use of Earth’s resources in sustainable ways, and a common realization that all is interconnected and One. New Earth Foundation envisions greater wisdom in handling human affairs, an increased understanding of other cultures, and the willingness to cooperate.
Mission
It is New Earth Foundation’s mission and delight to fund innovative, humanitarian projects according to the vision of New Earth Foundation, from community efforts that create models of social sustainability, to educational innovations that prepare youth to be future socially responsible leaders; from strategies that offer economic advances, to environmental initiatives that curb pollution and save the planet’s precious resources and earth's natural biosphere.
What NEF Seeks to Fund
New Earth Foundation seeks to fund innovative projects that enhance life on our planet and brighten the future. Smaller, newer 501(c)(3) organizations are the focus of grants given, so that the foundation’s gift can make a more significant contribution to the work of the recipient organization.
The grants given by NEF support a wide variety of projects in many fields of endeavor, including but not limited to environmental initiatives that are working to help eliminate pollution and to save the planet’s ecosystems, community efforts that create models of social sustainability, educational innovations that prepare youth to become the socially responsible leaders of the future, and strategies that offer economic improvement and opportunities.
NEF particularly appreciates projects that are replicable so that excellent ideas and work can multiply and benefit many.
Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation Grant
Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation
Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation Grant
The Foundation will consider requests to support museums, cultural and performing arts programs; schools and hospitals; educational, skills-training and other programs for youth, seniors, and persons with disabilities; environmental and wildlife protection activities; and other community-based organizations and programs.
Olive Tree Foundation Grant
The Olive Tree Foundation
NOTE: The Olive Tree Foundation begins accepting grant applications in the first quarter of each year. The increased number of applications we receive each continually exceeds expectations. To ensure our small staff can effectively and fairly review the requests, we decreased the number accepted in 2022 to 50.
About the Foundation
The Olive Tree Foundation, Inc., is an independent philanthropy established in the United States in 1997.
Our mission: The Olive Tree Foundation strives to support U.S.-based nonprofits that provide food, shelter, medical care and education for those in need; make arts and culture more accessible and equitable; invest in community and youth and adult development; and protect the environment.
Grantmaking
Organizations eligible to apply for grants from The Olive Tree Foundation focus on:
- Basic necessities: We support nonprofits that provide food for the hungry, shelter the indigent and infirm and provide medical (physical and emotional) care to those in need.
- Youth education and development: OTF support nonprofits that develop the academic skills of youth. Key objectives should include character-building; fostering ethics, teamwork, self-esteem and self-confidence; broadening horizons and aspirations; strengthening unique abilities and talents; developing community awareness and involvement; improving academic, communication and interpersonal skills.
- Adult education and development: We support nonprofits that promote literacy and workforce development through various programs that empower adults to become self-sufficient and self-sustaining.
- Community development: We support nonprofits involved in the protection of civil rights and the creation of environmental infrastructures that enhance quality of life in the communities they serve.
- Arts and Culture: We support nonprofits that improve the quality of life in communities through arts and cultural enrichment and/or renovate structures that preserve a historical heritage.