2023 Community Grants Program FAQs

The LOI is an abbreviated application on which applicants briefly outline their funding request.  Program staff and trained volunteers will review the LOIs for program fit—alignment with the program guidelines, funding priorities, and available funding—before inviting competitive applicants to formally apply by submitting supplemental information.

501(c)(3) organizations, Tribal entities and government entities are eligible to submit an LOI and may be invited to apply for a grant. Other types of organizations may work with a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor to become eligible. An official agreement outlining the relationship with the fiscal sponsor must be submitted with the LOI.

Please note: Fiscal sponsorship materials will not be accepted past the LOI deadline of July 20, 2023.

Organizations NOT eligible for a fall cycle Community Grants

1. Organizations that received a 2023 spring cycle general operating support Community Grant award are not eligible. 
2. Organizations that received a 2022 Community Grant  for project/program, capacity building or capital project are not eligible to apply in 2023. 

Contact your regional program officer if you have questions about your organization’s eligibility.

In addition to the general eligibility requirements above, organizations must meet the cycle eligibility for organizational enhancement. See the definitions of “capacity building, “small capital projects”, “new or expanding programs” in the FAQs below and review the Program Guidelines.  

Your letter of inquiry should be submitted and received by July 20, 2023, at 5 pm. We experience an influx of submissions close to the LOI deadline and highly recommend you submit your LOI and receive email confirmation of your submission via MyOCF. If you do not receive confirmation of your submission by email, your application has not been submitted. 

LOI declines and invitations to formally apply for a Community Grant will be sent by email on September 14. Invited applicants can submit their application between September 15 – September 27, 5 p.m. We strongly encourage applicants to block these days out in advance on their calendars to ensure adequate time to submit the application.

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, benefit priority populations, and clearly demonstrate the timeliness, feasibility and impact of an OCF grant of this size.  

No. All 2023 grants will be one year in duration. 

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

Yes – if you met the eligibility criteria for spring 2023 but did not receive funding you are eligible to apply again in Fall 2023.

Generally, no. If an organization received a 2022 Community Grant they are not eligible to apply in 2023 unless they are culturally specific, small rural and/or an organization that focused on populations facing bias and/or discrimination and did not receive funding in the spring 2023 cycle. (see definitions in FAQ below)

Yes, LOIs and applications submitted to this program are reviewed independently from other OCF programs. Other applications with other grant programs will not affect your eligibility or competitiveness for this program.

New activities a) did not exist before and are b) planned or developed to address a gap or meet a need for either the organization or the community it serves.

Expanding activities build off previous successes to further improve or significantly increase impact on more or different people or communities. Expansion can include offering a project or program to a new or different population/county/community or to reach significantly more of the same population within the same community. Requests to support ongoing, incremental growth are not competitive. There is no single definition of what qualifies for a significant expansion given the variety of contexts and needs. We encourage you to include a rationale for why this request is a significant expansion given the need and community.

In the context of OCF’s Community Grants Program, capacity building costs relate to new or expanded activities that help to develop the organization. Examples include but are not limited to: strategic or business planning, board development, volunteer coordination, program planning, marketing and communications, etc. 

Small capital projects are costs associated with new or expanded building construction, renovation, or equipment. Total project costs not to exceed $500,000. 

We highly encourage organizations to apply for needs that align with our funding priorities. The examples below highlight a few proposals that demonstrate a strong alignment with our eligibility guidelines:

Project A (program): A regional arts organization requests funding for a guest curator program, compensating local Black, Indigenous and artists of color in designing shows that emphasize the organization’s commitment to presenting work by historically marginalized community members and actively addressing the difficult history of their region.  

Project B (small capital): A local nonprofit applies for capital funds to support the build-out of a mobile food kitchen to support BIPOC entrepreneurs with their food-related business in Portland Metro region.

Project C (capacity building): A small land trust on the Oregon Coast applies capacity building funds to contract financial management support to free the executive director’s time to focus on a partnership with an under-resourced municipality to protect the local residential drinking water source.     

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

• Primarily serve one or more communities of color and demonstrate intimate knowledge of lived experience of the community, including but not limited to the impact of structural and individual racism or discrimination.
• The organization’s leadership and staff represent the community served and its mission, activities and outreach intentionally focus on one or more communities of color
• The population served recognizes the organization as specific to their community.
• Communities of color include, but is not limited to: Black/African/African American, Indigenous/Native American, Latinx, Asian/Asian American, Middle Eastern, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander

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

Organizations that are specific to populations that have experienced bias and/or discrimination are those that:

• Primarily serve one or more populations that have experienced significant bias or discrimination due to sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, immigrant/refugee status, or national origin.
• The organization’s leadership and staff represent the population served
• Organization’s mission, activities and outreach intentionally focus on one or more populations that have experienced bias and/or discrimination
• Populations that align with this category include immigrants and refugees, people experiencing disabilities and LGBTQI+ communities 

In the context of OCF’s Community Grants Program, an organization is small and 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 cash expenses from the most recently completed fiscal year.

This definition was developed by Ford Family Foundation.

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.

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

Your application will be accessible to OCF donors regardless of request type or size. We also encourage you to share information with donors by filling out the Organizational Profile Form on our website. The latter is not an application but does allow you to share your organization's needs with donors.

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

If your organization’s most urgent need is operating support and you don’t fit the criteria, 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.  

Questions are included in the Program Guidelines. 

Review criteria are included in the Program Guidelines. 

There are no reporting requirements for grantees that receive 2023 fall Community Grants awards. However, grantees may receive an open invitation in 2023 to connect with a regional program officer to share more about the organization’s goals and explore how OCF can partner with the organization. 

The spring 2024 cycle will accept LOIs in March with fund distribution in June 2024.

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

If you have not been receiving email updates, please subscribe to our nonprofit newsletter list 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.