Improvements to the Community Innovation Grant Program

We launched the Community Innovation program in 2013 to inspire and support community problem solving. Community Innovation grants invest in great ideas and the people who power them. They support communities coming together to solve community challenges. Over the years we’ve adapted the program to be more supportive by eliminating deadlines and accepting applications year-round, and more recently, expediting applications for COVID-19 relief.

We are now adapting Community Innovation grants to be even more open, equitable and responsive to community needs. We are simultaneously challenged by a global pandemic, a deepening recession and a reckoning with long-standing racial injustice. To better respond to these and other needs, we are announcing changes to the Community Innovation grant program. We streamlined the application with fewer, simpler questions. We made our selection criteria simpler and more focused on impact. And we will continue to expedite applications to support projects that address urgent needs.

We remain committed to advancing equity in all our work. Community Innovation grants will now have a greater emphasis on making the region more equitable in opportunities and outcomes, particularly related to racial equity.