To be eligible for a United Way grant, you must meet all of the following criteria:
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Agencies that operate in our service area (Olmsted, Dodge, Winona, and Fillmore counties)
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Agencies that serve primarily people living at or below the ALICE survival threshold (which you can learn more about here) and/or 300% or below the Federal Poverty Level
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Agencies designated as one of the following:
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501c3 non-profit
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Government agencies/units
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Faith-based organizations, provided they can demonstrate that there will be no explicitly faith-related content included in their programming and that there are no discriminatory restrictions on service recipients
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Community organizations without 501c3 status, provided they can document their relationship with a proper fiscal sponsor
With specific funding opportunities, there may be more narrow eligibility, so please read all request for proposal documents.
We periodically open funding opportunities, typically one per year. We currently do not have plans to open a funding opportunity in the calendar year of 2025 in order to focus staff time on community engagement projects that help us understand our expanded service area.
There may be minimums and maximums specific to the request for proposal you are applying for, so please review all materials related to that funding opportunity. We recommend a requested amount that is no more than 1/3 of your existing program budget.
A list of needed documentation will be included in the request for proposal webpage, application, and grant portal. Typically, we ask for the following things:
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A program budget
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Most recent board approved financial statements
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Current Board of Directors names and contact information
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IRS 990
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(If applicable) Fiscal host agreement
We recommend thoroughly reading all request for proposal information, including application questions, our rubric, and our research. We highly encourage all interested applicants to attend or watch the recording of our information sessions we host for each opportunity.
Additionally, our staff offer support to applicants throughout the process by answering questions and making recommendations on how you can potentially set yourself up for success. We also typically contract with a “grant guide”, that offers a few hours of free consultation for certain organizations, should they be interested. Organizations that are eligible for grant guide support must fit the following two criteria:
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Do not employ a full-time grant writer
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Have annual revenues of less than $1 million
Grant guides are not meant to substitute support of United Way staff, so please reach out to staff with any other support needed.
We ask our partners to report a few key things to us each year, by Mid July. We ask for the following:
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An unduplicated count of people served
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Key demographics of people served (city of residence, gender, income, race, disability status, etc)
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2-3 other impact measures decided together with UW staff at beginning of funding
We would love to have a conversation with you to learn more about what community needs you are addressing and how. There may be ways you can plug into projects or collaborations we know of! We believe one of our greatest strengths is connecting you with like-minded people who can support your work. We invite you to collaborate with us by:
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Updating your agency profile on 211, the largest local database of resources in our community so people who need your services can find them
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Updating your agency profile on Get Connected, the only public community-wide volunteer platform, so people who want to give back can find out how
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Signing up for our Community Impact newsletter to learn about other great work being done in our community that may help the people you serve