Grant Opportunities

SOUTHERN PARTNERS FUND

Regular Grant Cycle (RGC)

Request for Proposal Release Date: March 25, 2019
Proposal Submission Deadline: May 9, 2019

Overview

Southern Partners Fund’s grantee partners strive to transform their communities from within by building sustainable and lasting movements to reverse inequities in the rural South. Every day, people are tackling huge problems in their own backyards to alleviate the effects of poverty, lack of resources, and poorly performing education systems that persist in these areas. Individuals are engaged and empowered through the hard work and prevailing spirit of the people who make up these grassroots community organizations. SPF is proud to partner with such extraordinary groups through its Regular Grants Cycle awards.

SPF believes that general operating support grants provide key organizational capacity building, particularly for small to midsize community-based organizations tackling social, environmental and economic justice issues in the rural South. Regular Grants Cycle awards have helped organizations increase their capacity to address a variety of shared causes, including:

  • Voter Rights & Engagement
  • Education Reform
  • Immigration Rights
  • Environmental Justice
  • Healthcare Reform
  • Women & Girls' Leadership
  • Disability Rights
  • Youth Leadership
  • LGBTQ Rights

Applicant Information

Applicants may request general operating support or project support. During this cycle, Southern Partners Fund (SPF) will not consider grants to organizations with operating budgets over $350,000 for general operating support. If the budget is over $350,000, an organization may apply for project support.

The review process includes a site visit and interview for organizations new to SPF. Otherwise, a phone interview is all that’s required for previous SPF grantees. Organizations under consideration will be contacted by a grants committee member to schedule a site visit interview or phone interview.

The grants committee meets to discuss proposals and make grant decisions. During this meeting, the committee will discuss the application, additional documentation submitted by the applicant, and any additional information gathered during the site visit and/or phone interview.

Applicants will typically receive notification of the board’s decision after October 15, 2019.

All organizations that are selected for grants must submit final reports. All new organizations that are selected for grants must submit final reports on the use of the grant, as described in their application. All outstanding final reports must be received by SPF before a new request is considered.

Organizations that have been funded for five consecutive years through the Regular Grants Cycle must sit out one cycle before they are allowed to apply again. If your organization is unsure about your status, please contact the Programs Office at grants@southernpartnersfund.org. This policy does not include special initiative, justice fund, or discretionary fund cycles.

Grant awards range from $5,000 to $15,000.

To receive announcements regarding the regular grants cycle, contact the program department at grants@southernpartnersfund.org and request to be placed in the program departments email database.

Justice Fund for Disaster Relief and Renewal

Climate change poses a clear and present threat to the economic and social development of the South, not to speak of increasing environmental disasters. When hurricanes devastated communities from Florida to Louisiana, SPF brought funders together to create a funding collaborative focused not just on aide, but equitable redevelopment. SPF learned that the hardest hit and slowest to recover communities are those with the least developed infrastructure, i.e. the lowest income communities, often of color (the 9th ward of New Orleans stands as a glaring example).

We learned from grantee advocates and community groups engaged in intergenerational organizing throughout the South that young adults and youth of color become even bigger targets for law enforcement during natural disasters. SPF argued that the goal of relief should not be to restore those communities to their underserved, inaccessible, impoverished norms, but to lift them to new standards of health and wholeness, both economically and politically.

SPF’s Justice Fund for Disaster Relief and Renewal was born with the specific goal of maximizing re-development efforts following a natural disaster. These are powerful opportunities for community organizing to push for long-term racial and social equity. Let us use these disasters as a launchpad for promoting equity.