2022 Collective Grants
01/14/2022
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Through our Collective Grants, our members invest in three priority areas that have been identified by the broader WA Women’s Foundation community and chosen from the year’s themes. While priorities change year-to-year, our themes rotate annually on a two-year cycle. The themes are as follows:

Year 1 (starting the 2022 grant cycle)

  • Law, Justice & Incarceration
  • Housing & Hunger
  • Arts & Community Culture

Year 2 (starting the 2023 grant cycle)

  • Healthcare
  • Climate & Agricultural Justice
  • Education

The Collective Grants are made on an annual basis. The application process begins with an online Letter of Inquiry (LOI), which opens in October of each year after our priorities have been announced. Funding decisions are made and announced each June. Organizations selected for a WA Women’s Collective Grant Awards will be provided with a Letter of Understanding (LOU) that outlines the relationship between the foundation and the grantee.

Narrative Questions

This year, we ask nonprofit organizations to answer the following questions in their LOI:

  1. How does your organization serve communities affected by inequity due to race and/or gender identity?
  2. How is your organization accountable to the community being served?
  3. Describe how your organization addresses systemic gender and/or racial inequities in one of the following priorities:
    • School to Prison Pipeline: Focusing on the relationship between our education system and our justice system, and the trend of young adults being funneled into detention, creating a pipeline from school to jail.
    • Mental Health & Housing: Focusing on the intersection of mental health and housing and supporting organizations that address the many ways trauma and mental health can create additional challenges and unique needs in housing.
    • Community Cultural Preservation: Investing in systemically under-resourced communities by supporting the preservation of language, stories, performing arts, sites, crafts, relationships to land, forms of subsistence, and other cultural traditions.
  4. Share a story of your mission in action – a time when your organization was able to reduce disparities and/or achieve more equitable outcomes.

We do not dictate any word counts throughout this LOI, but we encourage brevity and succinctness. We recommend keeping each narrative answer to under 250 words.

Advocacy Grant

We have come to understand that systemic transformation is only possible with a wider coalition of voices demanding change. For this reason, we offer a grant to organizations that work in advocacy within each of our year’s chosen priorities. Organizations may opt into consideration for our Advocacy Grant while applying for the Collective Grants on the LOI form.

Women & Girls Grant

At Washington Women’s Foundation, one of our cherished values is to elevate and amplify the power of all who identify as women. Supported by the WFA Fund for Women, we offer the Women & Girls Grant to organizations and programs focused on women and girls within the year’s chosen priorities. Organizations may opt into consideration for our Women & Girls Grant while applying for the Collective Grant on the LOI form.

Minimum Eligibility Requirements

  1. Tax Exempt Status. Organization must currently qualify as tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) or 7871 of the Internal Revenue Code or be fiscally sponsored by another tax-exempt organization.
  2. Connection to Washington. Organization must operate programs or provide services within the state of Washington.

WA Women’s Foundation does not fund endowments, pass-through scholarships or out-of-state projects of Washington-based organizations.

Grant Criteria

Our funding is unrestricted and our grants should be used wherever they are most needed except that we do not fund endowments, pass-through scholarships, or out-of-state projects of Washington-based organizations.

We are most interested in understanding community needs and how your organization is addressing those needs through the delivery of services to those directly impacted by inequity.

We seek to support and collectively invest in organizations that are reflective of and embedded in the communities they serve, draw on the strengths and assets of these communities, and are accountable to these communities in order to achieve the long-term goals of increasing equity and reducing disparities.

This year, we invite Letters of Inquiry from organizations that meet all the following criteria:

  1. Is focused on providing services to people affected by inequity due to race and/or gender identity;
  2. Is accountable to the people being served. “Accountable” can mean one or more of the following:
    1. Ensures that people being served are visibly leading;
    2. Develops leadership of the people being served;
    3. Engages the people being served in ongoing decision-making, planning and assessment; and/or
    4. Draws on the strengths, assets, and lived experience of the people being served.
  3. Is addressing systemic racial and/or gender inequities in one of the following areas:
    1. School to Prison Pipeline
    2. Mental Health & Housing
    3. Community Cultural Preservation
  4. Can demonstrate how they reduce disparities and/or achieve more equitable outcomes.

Submission Deadline

Please submit your LOI by Friday, January 14 at 11:45 PM PT. Organizations will be notified by February 11 of their status.