All applicants must meet the following in order to apply:
- Be a non-profit organization, exempt from federal income taxes under second 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (and not be classified as a 509(a)(3) supporting organization), or a governmental body, such as a school or municipality.
- Serve the people of greater Green Bay – Brown, Kewaunee, and Oconto Counties, Wisconsin.
- Conduct business without discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual preference, age, marital status, disability or national origin.
- Program or project support and/or equipment related directly to projects
- Technology and equipment improvements to develop greater organizational efficiencies or capacity
- Staff and board training and planning that enhance organizational capacity or develop greater organizational efficiencies
- Other priorities as determined by the Grants Committees (see individual grant program guidelines for more information)
- We do not fund sponsorships
Each grant program is different. See individual grant program webpages for more information. For more details contact Martha Ahrendt at martha@ggbcf.org.
In general, proposals will be evaluated on the following criteria. Strong programs will:
- Address a well defined need/with a clearly defined action to meet the need/opportunity.
- Improve the quality of life for our community and/or its residents.
- Use innovative approaches to address community issues.
- Help the organization become self-sufficient.
- Use partnerships and/or collaboration to leverage additional impact.
- Be feasible and likely will succeed.
- Demonstrate a reasonable level of risk.
- Propose appropriate and reasonable budgetary items.
- Attract additional funding and leverage resources.
- Create well-defined, meaningful, and measurable project outcomes and methods to report actual outcomes. (Measurement complexity should be relative to the size of the grant request.)
- Have long-term impact, especially relative to cost.
- Not have received a grant for a similar purpose from the same granting program in the past 18 months.
- Have a positive standing with the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation regarding previously received grants, including the complete and timely submission of required final reports (and mid-term reports where applicable) about measured impact, activities, and expenditures within one year of an award.
Granting programs generally do not fund:
- Annual appeals, capital campaigns or other fundraising activities or events. (General solicitation letters may not be acknowledged.)
- Religious activities or programs that serve, or appear to serve, specific religious organizations, groups or denominations.
- Individuals
- Endowments
- Debt retirement, deficit financing, reduction of an operating deficit or replenishment of resources used to pay for such purposes.
- Lobbying or legislative activities
- Capital improvement requests
- Programming or expenses occurring before the grant is awarded.
- Efforts substantially serving people outside of Brown, Kewaunee and Oconto counties, Wisconsin. The Kopseker Trust is an exception to this. For more information, see the Kopseker Trust Grants description on our Grant Process Overview page.