Understand Our Grantmaking

As a funder, our focus is on this central idea: Let’s help make more lives better by connecting more people with more opportunities. As part of that work, we pay particular attention to supporting people and communities in the Philadelphia region that have historically been shut out of opportunities and resources for a variety of reasons. 

In each of our five programs, we have specific objectives we are pursuing through grantmaking to help achieve that central idea. The program objectives are intended to make our funding transparent and accountable. 

We make grants in two ways. 

• Requests for Proposals (RFPs): The majority of funding is awarded through RFPs that are released throughout the year on a predictable and public schedule. Each RFP seeks to advance a specific objective and includes the specific criteria we’ll use to evaluate your proposals and the total grant funding that is available. Any organization implementing a project that can advance the RFP’s objective is welcome to apply for funding.
• Open Application: We also make other grants, on a much more limited basis, through our open application process to help address gaps in the pursuit of an objective or to support time-sensitive projects that will make a significant contribution toward an objective. We learn about these ideas through our ongoing engagement with communities across the city. You can share your ideas for advancing an objective at any time.

The Foundation’s Board of Directors sets budget allocations for each of our grantmaking programs. To advance the Foundation’s grantmaking value of transparency, and to help our community understand how resources are being used, we are providing our initial budget allocations below. Budgets have been allocated to advance the specific objectives that the Foundation developed through considerable stakeholder input. In addition, they are reflective of the Foundation’s past experience in a sector along with potential funding opportunities that staff and Board have identified in the next several years. You will see that newer programs are generally smaller than programs where we have more experience. As we learn more from our community and grantees about these newer program areas, it is possible that allocations may change. Our Board will be reviewing budget allocations on a periodic basis to ensure that we are using funds most effectively to advance the defined objectives and to sustain work that is having significant positive benefits for residents and their communities.

Grant budget allocation by program