2025 Fall Community Grants Program FAQs

501(c)(3) organizations, Tribal entities and government entities are eligible to apply in the 2024 Cycle of the Community Grant 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 July 11, 2025.  

In order to maintain funding opportunities for a broad array of organizations, the Community Grants Program requires a two cycle sit-out period. Organizations that received a Community Grant in Spring 2025 or Fall 2024 are not eligible for a 2025 Fall Cycle Community Grant. To confirm whether you received an award in one of these previous cycles, please review the list published here and here.

All eligible organizations based in Oregon or primarily serving Oregon communities may apply for the 2025 Fall Cycle. All proposal activities must occur within Oregon.

Yes, typically applications submitted to this program are reviewed independently from other OCF programs. Other applications or current funding with other OCF grant programs will not impact your eligibility or competitiveness for this program.

There are no reporting requirements for grantees that receive a 2025 Fall 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. The only attachments we are accepting are project budgets (required) and/or fiscal sponsorship agreements (only required for organizations working with a fiscal sponsor). 

Yes, you are eligible to apply for the 2025 Fall Cycle if your Community Grant application was declined and you received support from a donor-advised fund (DAF) instead. To confirm whether you received a Community Grant award in a previous cycle, please review the lists published here and here. 

The 2025 Fall Cycle does not have limits on overall budget size for applicants. The only budget size limitation in the 2025 Fall Cycle is the overall size of capital project budgets for applications of that type. For the 2025 Fall Cycle, capital project budgets must be $500,000 or less.

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

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

Community Grants typically do not fund:

• Animal-focused proposals
• Annual fund appeals
• Deficit funding
• Funding for public entities to replace government dollars
• Lobbying for a specific bill or candidate
• Projects in individual schools
• Purchase or activities outside the grant period of November 2025-November 2026
• Re-granting programs
• Religious activities
• Scientific research
• Tuition aid or scholarships for university, college, or other degree-bearing courses of study

The Community Grants program is not providing general operating support during this cycle. If your organization’s most urgent need is operating support, we encourage you to share that with OCF 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 to share with donors.  

Requests of this type will facilitate delivery of existing services to a new community or population, the launch of a new program built on previous success or deepening of service delivery, i.e., more opportunities for participation. More detail about these requests is included in the program guidelines on page 4.

Capacity building refers to costs relating to new or expanding activities that develop the organization’s internal ability to more effectively accomplish their community-focused mission. Examples include communications improvement projects such as increasing website accessibility, increase of FTE (through new positions or by increasing existing positions from part time to full time) or staff professional development. 

For the purposes of this application, a small capital project has a total cost of $500,000 or less, can be completed within funding period and stands alone (i.e., is not a “phase” of a larger-budget project). Project costs are associated with new or expanding building construction, renovation or equipment. Eligible examples include new freezers for a food distribution center, an ADA bathroom remodel or the acquisition of a new vehicle for outreach to isolated communities. A smaller phase of a capital project is not eligible if the total cost of the full project exceeds $500,000.  

Yes, choose the one grant request type for your application that is most closely aligned. Applicants will not be penalized for selecting the “incorrect” type; your initial choice will help us better understand your request. 

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, 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 on page 9. 

Review criteria are included in the Program Guidelines on page 13.

Example answers are included in the program guidelines on page 9.

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 Fall Community Grants application.

Program Officers are typically available to provide feedback on applications from the most recently completed cycle, whether or not the proposal was funded. However, they are not able to review draft applications before submission. 

The Nonprofit Association of Oregon has many references, as does the People’s Nonprofit Accelerator. Community libraries may have listings for grant writers or community college resources.

Your proposal budget should be tailored to the unique scope and needs of your project and include both income and expenses. The total budget could include details such as: 

• Personnel or consultants
• Equipment, materials and supplies.  
• Travel
• Indirect or overhead costs
• The total income could include details such as: 
  • All secured, pending and planned funding sources
  • The value of in-kind support (e.g., volunteers or donated equipment)

You can find budget samples here and here.

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.

Typical ranges are $5,000 - $30,000. We will consider requests up to $40,000, especially for efforts that closely match Community Grants funding priorities and clearly demonstrate the timeliness, feasibility, and impact of an OCF grant of this size. However, the average award size is usually $20,000 and amounts will be determined in the context of the overall program budget and amount requested. This means it is possible that your request may be partially funded. 

No. All awards in the 2025 Fall Cycle will be one year in duration.

Funding decisions are based on several factors, including alignment with program goals, strength and clarity of the proposal, and the number of applications received compared to available funds. If you'd like feedback specific to your application, we encourage you to contact a Program Officer. 

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 donors or other funders, all of whom bring different levels of lived experience and community knowledge to their reading.

Your application should be submitted and received by July 11, 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.

Your application must be submitted and received by July 11, 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 do not receive an email confirmation of your submission, your application has not been received by OCF. If you have questions about your application submission, please contact grants@oregoncf.org.

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

More information about the 2026 Spring Cycle will be available on our website in late fall/early winter of 2025.

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