2025 Community Grants Program FAQs

501(c)(3) organizations, Tribal entities and government entities are eligible to apply in the 2025 Cycle of the Community Grants Program. Additionally, organizations may work with a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor to apply. Applicants must submit formal paperwork confirming the fiscal sponsor relationship with their application.

Please note: Fiscal sponsorship materials will not be accepted past the application deadline of January 14, 2025.

Organizations that received a Community Grants award in 2024 are NOT eligible for the 2025 Spring Community Grants Cycle for general operating support. To confirm whether you received an award in one of these previous cycles, please review the list published here.

For this cycle: if you are an arts and culture organization, we are asking you to apply to the Arts and Culture Rebuilding Program. 

All eligible organizations based in Oregon or primarily serving Oregon communities are eligible to apply.

Yes – applications submitted to this program are reviewed independently from other OCF programs. Applications to our other grant programs will not affect your eligibility or competitiveness for this program.

Please note: If you are an arts and culture organization, we ask that you to apply to the Arts and Culture Rebuilding Program instead of Community Grants. The current cycle for that program closes on December 10, 2024.

There are no reporting requirements for grantees that receive a 2025 Spring Community Grants award. However, grantees may receive an open invitation to connect with a regional Program Officer to share more about the organization’s goals.

No – For the 2025 Spring Cycle, we have decided to remove the requirement for two community support references. You do not need to provide contact information for community references or submit a letter of support.

Program staff will instead closely review responses to the application questions to develop their understanding of your organization’s community engagement and impact.

Yes – if you met the eligibility criteria and applied for either the 2024 Spring or Fall Cycle but did not receive funding through Community Grants, you are eligible to apply again in 2025 Spring.

This includes if you were sent a decline letter for your 2024 Community Grants application but still received funding via a donor advised fund. Please review your 2024 response letter(s) or contact us at grants@oregoncf.org for assistance.

Community Grants typically do not fund:

• Individual schools
• Re-granting programs
• Lobbyists
• Public entities typically funded by government dollars
• Religious organizations
• Organizations doing scientific research
• Animal-focused organizations

A competitive Community Grants application clearly articulates the impact an organization’s programs and services have on the population served. Competitive applications demonstrate opportunities for community members to provide input on the direction of the organizations and the services they offer.

For the 2025 Spring Cycle, competitiveness determinations will also consider whether an organization is small rural, culturally specific, or culturally responsive. See the FAQs below for full definitions of these terms and the Program Guidelines for review criteria and competitive sample answers.

Due to highly limited resources, this program is prioritizing—but is not exclusive to— organizations that serve communities who have experienced historical underinvestment due to systems, practices, and policies. OCF aims to provide general operating support to communities who have been historically underrepresented in OCF's grantmaking, both in terms of requesting and receiving funding, and those who have not had the same level of access to outside sources of funding.

Regardless of whether your organization is small rural, culturally specific or culturally responsive, we encourage you to share your needs with donors by submitting information through the Organization Profile Form on our website. This form is not a grant application, but a tool to help OCF collect information on needs that can be shared with donors.

In the context of OCF’s Community Grants Program, an organization is small rural if they meet all of the following criteria:

• The organization is located in and serves a community or communities in Oregon with a population of 35,000 or fewer that is NOT directly adjacent to (or part of) a metropolitan area of 50,000 or more.
• The organization had less than $250,000 in operating expenses during its most recently completed fiscal year.

This definition was developed by The Ford Family Foundation.

In the context of OCF’s Community Grants Program, an organization is culturally specific if:

• It primarily serves one or more cultural communities.
• Leadership and staff represent the community served and its mission, activities and outreach intentionally focus on one or more cultural communities.
• The population served recognizes the organization as specific to their community.
• The organization demonstrates intimate knowledge of lived experience of the community, including, but not limited to, the impact of structural and individual racism or discrimination on the community; knowledge of specific disparities, barriers or challenges documented in the community and their influences on the structure of their program or service.

This definition was developed by the Coalition of Communities of Color.

Cultural responsiveness describes the capacity to respond to the issues of diverse communities. Organizations that are culturally responsive are those that:

• Provide services that have been adapted to maximize the respect of and relevance to the beliefs, practices, culture, and linguistic needs of diverse consumer/client populations and communities.
• Require knowledge and capacity at different levels of intervention: systemic, organizational, professional, and individual.

This definition was developed by the Coalition of Communities of Color.

Under-resourced communities have high proportions of low to moderate income residents and generally receive below average services and financial resources from government sources. Many, but not all, of them comprise an above average number of people of color, immigrants, and/or geographically-isolated individuals. People earn lower incomes due to many factors, but they often have been negatively impacted by social and economic marginalization. Some communities have been intentionally disenfranchised by decades of redlining and/or economic disinvestment that limits access to resources and services, devalues physical assets, and weakens community anchor institutions. Others may experience geographic isolation that results in limited investment in critical infrastructure such as medical facilities, internet connectivity and transportation. Combined, these conditions create what we refer to as under-resourced communities.

Questions are included in the Program Guidelines.

Review criteria are included in the Program Guidelines.

Example answers are included in the Program Guidelines.

Your last completed fiscal year is the one for which you have board-approved, final financial statements. If this does not line up neatly with the application deadline, there is narrative space in the application to provide context about your organization’s accounting practices.

For example, if your fiscal year starts August 1, you should use the operating expenses from your financial statements for the fiscal year ending July 31, 2024 in your 2025 Spring Community Grants application.

Contact information for regional Program Officers can be found here.

OCF welcomes your written stories, videos and photos so we can share them with prospective donors and the public. Real stories from nonprofits help us secure more gifts, and that benefits the entire nonprofit community. Email them to communications@oregoncf.org.

Do you have blanket photo and video releases for everyone pictured? If not, please make sure they each complete an OCF Photo Release Form.

The average award size is $15,000–$20,000. We will consider requests up to $40,000, especially for efforts that closely match Community Grants funding priorities, benefit priority populations, and clearly demonstrate the timeliness, feasibility, and impact of an OCF grant of this size.

However, award amounts will be decided in the context of the overall Community Grants Program budget and amount requested. This means you may receive a smaller award than requested. General operating grants will also not exceed your organization’s total operating expenses for your last completed fiscal year.

No – Funding awarded in the 2025 Spring Cycle must be spent within 12 months. Awards are not able to be renewed in subsequent years.

There are many factors that go into the final decisions about which applications get funded. In most cases the reason is some combination of these factors:

1. There is significant need across all regions of the state and while we do our best to prioritize the greatest needs, the amount of dollars requested historically far exceeds the resources available.
2. Your organization or request did not meet the eligibility criteria.
3. Your application did not adequately demonstrate how the community served is meaningfully engaged in your work.
4. Your application lacks detail on impactful service to priority populations.
5. Your organization's focus is listed in "what we don't fund."

Following a decline decision, you can reach out to your regional Program Officer for feedback on your specific application if you have outstanding questions.

We recommend you structure your application as if the reader is learning about your organization for the first time. While an OCF Program Officer is likely to be the first reader of your application, it may also be read by volunteers, OCF staff, or other funders, all of whom bring different levels of lived experience and community knowledge to their reading.

Information about eligible applications will be accessible to OCF donors and may be presented to peer funders interested in supporting your work. We encourage you to share additional information with donors by filling out the Organization Profile Form on our website. The organizational profile is not a grant application but does allow you to share your organization's current needs with donors. Your profile can be updated any time during the year.

Your application should be submitted and received by January 14, 2025, at 5 p.m. Pacific Time. OCF will not accept late submissions.

Email us at grants@oregoncf.org and we will get back to you as soon as we are able.

If you do not receive an email confirmation of your submission, your application has not been received by OCF. Your application must be submitted and received by January 14, 2025, at 5 p.m. Pacific Time. We experience a high volume of submissions close to the deadline and highly recommend you submit your application in advance. If you have questions about your application submission, please contact grants@oregoncf.org.

Approved and declined applicants will be notified by email in mid-May. Awards will be distributed on the same day via check or ACH.

More information about the 2025 Fall Cycle will be available on our website in late spring/early summer.

We will update the program website and organizations within our network when we have the final program details to share.