Whether you are looking to start an organization or are continuing to fund one, you know that grants are an essential component of your financial stability. Grants make programming work, and these foundations are some of the top giving foundations in the nation if not the world.
There are nearly 2,000 organizations offering grants in the United States. Digging for grants is a lot of hard work and yet an important part of running and maintaining any organization. There are some foundations that stand out among the best in the world simply based on how much they contribute to global initiatives. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s total annual giving is over 4 billion dollars- by far the largest foundation on the planet.
Charitable foundations are responsible for much of the social justice we see on the planet and philanthropy is really what drives the public good in the US and in many ways across the world. So whether you’re looking to land a grant for your organization or you have private funds that you would like to invest smartly, then you’ll need to take a look at our picks for the 30 best grant-offering foundations in the nation.
- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the largest giving foundation on the earth. Their annual fund is not in the millions it’s in the billions. The foundation seeks to create opportunites for equity particularly where education and healthcare are concerned.
- Grant Areas: Global Grand Challenges
- Silicon Valley Community Foundation
- The SVCF seeks to “tackle the toughest challenges” and makes conenctions with philanthropists in the Silicon Valley area and across the globe. The SVCF values diversity including in the fields of education, concerning, housing and transit, immigration, and financial stability among these communities.
- Grant Areas: Civic Participation, Immigration, Common Core, Housing and Transit Grants
- The Ford Foundation
- The Ford Foundation seeks to “advance human dignity across the world” and is a social justice orientated thats mission seeks to expand human rights to all corners of the globe and engage civil rights, education and arts and culture.
- Grant Areas: Submit Your Own Original Idea
- The Lilly Endowment
- The Lilly Endowment focuses primarily on Indianapolis and Indiana and the focus is on communities in need as well as communities that live in low and moderate housing, engagement in the arts, veterans affairs, and disaster relief.
- Grant Areas: Community Development Education and Religion
- Jewish Communal Fund
- The Jewish Communal Fund helps people to give back. Making a charitable donation helps you to save on tax expenditures but there is always a better way to go about this process. That’s where the Jewish Communal Fund seeks to help. You can support your favorite charities with grant making.
- Grant Areas: Grand-making. Tax deductable grants
- The Walton Family Foundation
- The Walton Family Foundation is a multigeneration family-run foundation with a focus on envrionmental concerns as well as K-12 education. The foundation works with local organizations influenced by the Mississippi delta and has a focus in Northwest Arkansas.
- Grant Areas: Public Charter Start Up Grant
- The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
- The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation seeks to fund projects related to the following areas: education, environment, global development and population, performing arts, cyber, U.S. Democracy, Effective Philanthropy and special projects. While the majority of their funding is directed at their permanent programs, the special projects program is an opportunity for new ideas to gain financial stability or cross pollunate with existing ventures.
- Grant Areas: Special Projects
- Foundation for the Carolinas
- Foundation for the Carolinas in a philanthropic organization that offers funding to 13 counties in the Carolinas. All 510(c)3, Congregations, Governmental Institutions, and Educational Institutions located in the areas should apply. Investment areas include animal welfare, education, housing, arts and culture and more. These grants are for NC and SC organizations only.
- Grant Areas: animal welfare, education, housing, arts and culture and more.
- The Chicago Community Trust
- The Chicago Community Trust aims to “strengthen the Chicago region” and does so through philanthropic efforts that impact areas of great need in Chicago and the Greater Chicago Metropolitan area. Specifically the trust aims to bridge the racial and ethnic wealth gap.
- Grant Areas: Racial and Ethnic Wealth Gap
- W.K. Kellogg Foundation
- The goal of the Kellogg foundation is “lasting transformational change for children.” To achieve this goal the Kellogg foundation support thriving communities, working famillies,
- Grant Areas: Children, Early Childhood, Economic Vibrancy
- The David and Lucile Packard Foundation
- David and Lucile were philanthropists from Stanford who achieved much more than just one of the most profitable tech companies the world has ever known. They were philanthropists from day one and continue to support programming in multiple areas of interest.
- Grant Areas: Conservation and Science, Children Families and Communities, Population and Reproductive Health
- The Wells Fargo Foundation
- The Wells Fargo Foundation looks to improve the lives of underserved American citizens. The organization offers local and national grants.
- Grant Areas: Affordable Housing, Small Business Growth, Financial Health
- The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
- According to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation the humanities and the arts “deepen our understanding of the human condition and experience” and for this reason the foundation seeks to fund institutions of higher education who nurture the arts and humanities.
- Grant Areas: Humanities, Arts, Higher Education, Cultural Heritage
- Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
- Exploring the future to build a culture of health is a health equity initiative that seeks to fund organizations looking to meet the unique health needs of a community. Robert Wood Johnson foundation seeks to create a future for health in an ever-changing world.
- Grant Areas: Health Equity via Health Systems and Health Communities, Healthy Children and Families
- Simons Foundation
- The Simons Foundation seeks to support discovery-driven scientific research in a few specific fields including life science, autism research, and mathematics and physical sciences.
- Grant Areas: Mathematics and Physical Sciences, Life Sciences, autism research (Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative) and Outreach & Education.
- The Rotary Foundation
- This foundation aims to solve the largest problems facing the globe including providing clean water, promoting peace, supporing mothers and children, and growing local economies. Rotary Club members are encouraged to apply
- Grant Areas: Sanitation, Education, Women and Children Well Being
- New York Community Trust
- The NY Community Trust is a grant-making organization that aims to improve the ilves of New Yorkers for generations to come. The Trust
- Grant Areas: NYC Organizations with a focus on the Arts, Health, LGBTQ, Environment, Elderly,Education, Poverty, and Justice
- MacArthur Foundation
- The MacArthur Foundation seeks to support creative institutions looking to build a “more just peaceful and verdent world.” Headquartered in Chicago, MacArthur has an historic commitment to the metropolitan area though their programming extends far beyond Chicago notably in Nigera the most populated Afridan country. The MacArthur Foundation is looking to fund organizations that are influential and effective. Rarely does the MacArthur Foundation fun nonsolicited organizations though check their website regularly for exceptions.
- Grant Areas: Climate Solutions, Criminal Justice, Nuclear Challenges, Nigeria
- Robert W. Woodruff Foundation
- The Robert W. Woodruff foundation is a private foundation that seeks to invest in the wellbeing of the state of Georgia. If your organization has been established and has a strong following in Georgia then the Robert. W. Woodruff foundation may be a good place to seek out a grant.
- Grant Areas: Health, Education, Envrionment,
- California Community Foundation
- The California Community Foundation seeks to invest in long-term systemic solutions in Los Angeles County. These issues are ones that the CCF consider to be the most pressing issues facing Los Angeles. If your organization seeks to touch the lives of communities in Los Angeles, then check out the CCF.
- Grant Areas: Education, Health, Immigration, Housing
- The Columbus Foundation
- The Columbus Foundation is a philanthropic organization that seeks to connect donors to organization they believe in.
- Grant Areas: Many
- NoVo Foundation
- The NoVo Foundation seeks to address violence against women including women and young girls. The foundation aims to do this by addressing social and emotional learning and supporting local communities as well as indigineous peoples in America.
- Grant Areas: Adolescent Girls Rights, Ending Violence against Girls and Women, Advancing Social and Emotinoal Learning, Supporting Thriving Local Communities, Indigenous Communities in America
- The Carnegie Corporation of New York
- The Carnegie Corporation invests in knowledge and more specifically the “knowledge taht inspires informed action in democracy, education, and international peace.”
- Grant Areas: Education, Democracy, International Peace and Security, Higher Education and Research in Africa
- The California Endowment
- The California Endowment awards single and multi-year grants for 501(c)3 across the US and beyond. Their Building Health Communities initiative focuses on 14 places in the state of California.
- Grant Areas: Building Healthy Communities
- Genzyme Charitable Foundation
- The Genzyme Charitable Foundation seeks to support the scientific process in the area of disease and specifically in the following ares: asthma, atopic dermatitis, chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps, multiple sclerosis, oncology, rare blood disorders, rare genetic disease
- Grant Areas: Healthcare, Research, Global Humanitarian
- John Templeton Foundation
- The John Templeton Foundation seeks to understand “the most perplexing questions facing mankind.” They offers grants that support research and engagement in their major funding areas.
- Grant Areas: Science and the Big Questions, character virtue and development, individual freedom and free markets, exceptional cognitive talent and genius, genetics, voluntary family planning
- Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health
- The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health believes that children’s well being is a matter of public concern and that that children should have access to healthcare. Children with special healthcare needs are underseved and the pediatric healthcare system is underfunded. Charitable organizations seeking to address these disparities are encouraged to write a letter of inquiry to the foundation.
- Grant Areas: Programming for Children With Special Healthcare Needs
- The Rockefeller Foundation
- The Rockefeller Foundation seeks to improve access to a number of life’s essentials and they do so through investments and creative partnerships.
- Grant Areas: Nourish the World, Achieve Health for All, End Energy Poverty, Expand Equity and Economic Opportunity, Seize Upon Emerging Frontiers
- The San Francisco Foundation
- The San Francisco Foundation is a local grantmaking charity that seeks to facilitate positive change in the San Francisco Bay area and seeks to do so with equity grants and rapid response funding. Rapid response funding provides quick turnaround to frontline social justice workers.
- Grant Areas: Racial Equity
- The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation
- Over the past 60 years the Broad foundation has made a committment to science reseaarch and access to the arts and aims to expand public access to the arts. As graduates from Detroit public schools with a son with an incurable disease these endeavors are what make up the Broad Foundation.
- Grant Areas: Education, Science and the Arts