We understand the urgency of your needs and have developed a streamlined grant-making process to meet those needs.

We have four grant rounds per year with the following application deadlines:

• September 1
• December 1
• March 1
• June 1

Our Service Grants are a set of carefully scoped projects designed to bring professional, high quality capacity-building services to nonprofits who would otherwise have a difficult time securing the funding or finding the internal staff capacity to do the work. Please review our catalog of available Service Grants to identify the project that best fits your organization's needs.

If you are confused by our offering or need consultation in order to choose the best possible grant, please contact your local office for more information.

Applying for a Service Grant is easy and should only take a few hours of your time. There are four steps to submitting your online application:

1. Create an Account. Create an account for your organization by providing your contact information and your organization's IRS-issued Employer Identification Number (EIN) or fiscal sponsor.
   
   
2. Begin an Application. The application asks for the following info:
   • Section 1: Mission, program descriptions, and key facts
   • Section 2: Specific questions about your grant need (download the questions in advance)
   • Section 3: Key contacts at your organization
   • Section 4: Finances, budget and funding information
   • Section 5: Diversity of staff/board/constituents and environmental policy
   
   
3. Save your Application. Drafts can be saved online and returned to at a later date. We advise you to prepare your answers offline and then copy and paste your final responses into the online application, which will prevent you from losing information due to technical errors.
   
   
4. Submit. Once you have made final edits to your application, simply submit. You will receive an email confirming receipt of your application.

Qualified applicants will be invited to an in-person interview, where we discuss:

• The institutional strength of your organization and learn about your mission, strategies, programs and finances
• Your demonstrated need for our services
• The readiness of your organization to take on a grant at this time

In addition, the interview is an opportunity for you to receive consultation from our staff to ensure that the specific project you applied for is going to meet your organization's needs. In cases where we don't feel the requested project is the right fit, we can recommend a different project or give advice on other approaches or tactics for your organization.

Based on your application and interview we may make the decision to provide your organization with a Letter of Intent - signaling our intent to award a Service Grant.

We will then assign a volunteer team leader – called an Account Director - to meet with you on-site to determine if it is the right time for your project to begin, and to collect further details on the specific needs for the project. In most cases, this meeting leads immediately to signing a Service Grant Award and scheduling the project to begin.