The Foundation for Community Justice first offered mini-grants in the 2019 fiscal year, awarding three grants totaling $98.00. The program has exploded since then. This past fiscal year (July 1 2025 — June 30 2026), the Foundation received 141 mini-grant requests and awarded approximately $12,300 to fulfill those requests. Many mini-grants paid for birth certificates and state IDs, cell phones and minutes, and permits and drivers’ licenses. We also covered a wide variety of needs including the purchase of several bicycles, space heaters, membership at the Y, noise-canceling headphones, dial-a-ride accounts, car repairs, vaccinations for a service dog, storage unit security deposit, mediation for divorcing parents and overalls and socks for someone to begin a landscaping job.
The application process is simple: agency staff members submit the one-page mini-grant application on our website. We do not require financial or other personal documents because we rely on the referring staff members to vet the need. Once a mini-grant application has been submitted, it is emailed to the foundation board members for approval. Once (if) three board members approve the mini-grant through email, a board member works with the agency staff member to figure out how to fulfill the mini-grant.
We do not give grant recipients money directly. Instead we provide checks payable to the vendor, gift cards if the requested item and its cost have been identified, or the items themselves to the agency staff to give to the recipient.
We have very few policies pertaining to mini-grants, and we develop policies when we find there is a need. As the mini-grant program has become better known, some agency staff have applied more than once for the same individuals. We have instituted a policy that we will provide mini-grants up to $150 per person per year, which coincides with our fiscal year. Another policy we adopted this year is that we do not fund generic requests for clothing, even though there is a shortage of good men’s winter clothing. The need is greater than we can meet, and we have no fair way to address the need for some and not others.
As the number of mini-grants has grown, we have not forgotten that the program is about individuals working to improve their lives and personal situations. Each recipient has reached out for help. In FY26, mini-grant requests have come from 11 programs at 9 agencies. Referrals have come from 32 clinicians from those agencies who understand each person’s story. We want to recognize that the local clinicians are unsung heroes, meeting people where they are. Not only are we making a difference for the minigrant recipients, we are enabling the clinicians to support their clients. We hear words of gratitude from both minigrant recipients and the individuals supporting them.