Our Grantmaking - How We Learn, Lead, and Grow
Since 1986, the Vermont Community Foundation has been helping to build a healthy and vital Vermont, where basic human needs are met and our communities are successful and sustainable. One part of that work involves making grants – in 2009 the Foundation awarded over $10 million, including more than $900,000 through our staff-directed grantmaking to Vermont nonprofit organizations. These grants support a breadth of issues including hunger, housing, arts, cultural heritage, social justice, animal welfare, and environmental sustainability.

The Foundation is committed to being an effective grantmaker, which means several things:

• We learn about community needs across the state and seek out Vermont nonprofit and community leaders who demonstrate knowledge and success.

• Given our unique view, we can provide leadership by identifying and elevating opportunities for new collaborations and approaches.

• We share this learning in an effort to leverage and grow our collective impact.

Our Community Fund Grant Rounds
One of our signature grant programs is our Community Fund grants. We are constantly striving to improve this program, and in 2009 we made a decision to provide general operating support through our Community Fund grant rounds. This grantmaking strategy was well received by the nonprofit community and allowed organizations to remain focused on their core work, especially during challenging economic times.

For 2010, the Foundation’s Community Fund grant rounds will once again offer general operating support for a broad range of issues and organizations; we’ve also made some changes to our guidelines (see below). These changes apply only to our two Community Fund grant rounds, and do not affect the rest of the competitive grant rounds and grantmaking done by donors who give through the Foundation.

• Currently we are considering applications from organizations with budgets smaller than $1.5 million. 
Given our limited resources within the Community Fund program and since our average grant size is less than $5,000, we believe our grants have greater impact when awarded to smaller organizations. We will continue to seek out ways to partner with organizations that have larger budgets. 

• Currently we are not considering applications from child care providers.
We believe that affordable childcare is a critical issue and must be addressed at a large-scale level. The Permanent Fund for the Well Being of Vermont’s Children, a Vermont Community Foundation supporting organization, has been spearheading efforts to create a sustainable childcare and early education system in Vermont for many years. For the foreseeable future, our funding efforts in childcare issues will be focused on their work. If you would like to learn more about our work in eary childhood, please contact Jen Peterson at jpeterson@vermontcf.org.  

• Generally we do not fund applications from independent/private schools.  
At this time, the Foundation is focusing its education-related efforts through a partnership with the Permanent Fund for the Wellbeing of Vermont’s Children and through its Access to Higher Education initiative. If you’d like to learn more about the Access to Higher Education initiative, please contact Peter Espenshade at pespenshade@vermontcf.org.

We encourage you to be in touch with one of our philanthropic advisors if you have any questions. Don’t forgot that the Foundation offers a host of services to all Vermont nonprofits – from our popular foundation directory to managing endowments to providing a turn-key planned giving program. Click here to learn more.

View the Winter 2010 Grantseeker Forum video (1/29/10).

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