GRANTS: How to Apply

How to Apply

• Funding Interests
• Eligibility
• Review Process
• Submit a Request
• Final Reports

Funding Interests

In 2012, the Kapor Foundation will focus on these areas of work:

• Voting Integrity and Civic Engagement
  
• College Access - College Bound Brotherhood
  
• Green Access (renewals only)
  
• Info Tech for Social Impact

Please click the above links to see more detailed information in each section.

We will have limited funds available for new grants in 2012. We will generally consider grant requests up to $30,000 for appropriately stable organizations. We’re not afraid to take a risk on unconventional or untried approaches to tackling social problems and are definitely interested in community organizations that haven’t had traditional access to support from foundations and donors. If this is the case with your organization, please feel free to contact us to discuss your program’s needs.

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Eligibility

In order to be eligible for a grant from the Kapor Foundation, an organization must have I.R.S. 501(c)(3) status and be classified as “not a private foundation” under Section 509 (a), or have a similarly qualified fiscal sponsor.

The Foundation never funds individuals for personal projects, and rarely funds:

• Organizations that are not qualified charities with I.R.S. 501(c)(3) status or that do not have a similarly qualified fiscal sponsor. Supporting organizations generally do not qualify for our grants.
• Academic research not related to or supportive of other ongoing Foundation interests, or that does not have practical applications which help our target populations.
• Special-event fundraising activities.
• Programs that do not address our interest areas.

We are particularly interested in working with organizations that have a racial justice analysis and an integrated use of information technology. Considerations include:

• Leadership/constituency of and focus on low-income communities of color*
  
• Appropriate diverse representation on staff and board*
  
• Appropriate use of available information technology to further mission, reach, and efficiency
  
• Based in the San Francisco Bay Area (preferred but not required)

*Foundation-supported grant projects should primarily impact people of color. For our purposes, this means that the majority of the program’s target population identify as Black/African American, Asian/Pacific American, Latino/Hispanic American, Native American, or mixed heritage.

We recognize that social change is not created piecemeal or in isolation; Foundation-supported work should clearly contribute to a greater social movement toward equity and fairness for all.

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Review Process

Please check the highlighted section of this page for deadlines, which usually happen on a quarterly basis. Applicants must have a conversation with the appropriate foundation staff BEFORE submitting a grant request. We usually follow up with a phone call or site visit to organizations we are interested in supporting before making a recommendation to our Board, which meets quarterly to consider grant recommendations.

Please contact us to discuss time-sensitive needs.

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Submit a Request

We have a paper-free process, so all grant requests must be submitted using our online application. Applicants must have a conversation with the appropriate foundation staff BEFORE submitting a grant request.

To access an application, you'll need to create an account in our CyberGrants system. Once you have a username and password, you can begin the online application. You may want answer our grant application questions in a Word document first and then cut and paste them into the appropriate fields. For strategic grants, you can use our electronic sample application (MSWord) to craft your application responses prior to online submission. For a sample Brotherhood grant application, click HERE. However, we will not accept email submissions of grant requests.

If at any point you have questions about the online application, please contact us or online support at CyberGrants.

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Final Reports

Final Reports (called Impact Reports in CyberGrants) are vital to helping us to gauge the achievements and challenges of grant recipients' work, and by extension, ours. This report will be read by both our staff and, at times, external evaluators. Please view your grant agreement or your CyberGrants account to see if you are required to submit a final report. To find more information about final reports and to submit a final report, please click HERE.

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