Grant Guidelines

Please note that no new grant proposals are being accepted.

Overview

The Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund is made possible by contributions received from donors throughout the nation and the world in response to Hurricanes Katrina. The Fund aims to fill gaps in medium- to longer-term recovery efforts in areas affected by the hurricane, with the following goals:

- Financial self sufficiency - to help put people on a path to financial self sufficiency;
- Economic opportunity – to create new economic opportunities in the impacted region; and
- Quality of life – to improve the quality of life through economic, cultural and social revitalization of impacted areas.

To achieve these goals, the Fund will partner with regional, statewide, and community organizations to help fill gaps in the recovery effort. Hundreds of local private nonprofit organizations have been on the front line of disaster relief and will continue to play a vital role in the full recovery of the Gulf Coast. These organizations will provide the expertise, local knowledge, and dedication needed to help people and communities recover and rebuild.

PROJECTS TO BE CONSIDERED FOR FUNDING

The Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund will support projects that
1) provide missing and critical pieces of integrated community recovery and rebuilding, and
2) adopt an approach that recognizes and reflects the interdependent nature of elements needed to renew and rebuild strong communities such as housing, employment, and religious, educational and recreational institutions.

The Fund will not provide direct assistance to individuals or operate programs. It will work primarily through partnerships and collaborations with other organizations in the following categories:

- Intermediary grantmakers: Organizations with experience in grant making at the county/parish, state and regional level.
- Direct service entities: Institutions that operate directly (rather than as intermediary grant makers) at the community, county/parish, state or regional level (including national nonprofit agencies operating at those levels).

The Fund expects to conduct most of its grant making on its own initiative, but it will accept unsolicited applications that focus on meeting unmet or under-met needs in the integrated recovery and rebuilding process that demonstrate the following:

- Needs addressed in the project could not be met through other sources of financing (e.g., government funding; insurance; other private charitable donors);

- Coordination with other entities and programs to ensure that the project will work in unison with other key pieces of integrated community development (e.g., housing programs should show coordination with economic development programs; after-school programs should show coordination with school rebuilding)

Proposed projects should serve one or more of the Fund’s above-described goals.
Other factors to be considered in reviewing proposals for funding include cost effectiveness and avoidance of duplication; sensitivity to the multicultural nature of the population served and in project staffing; organizational stability and capacity.

Interested organizations may submit a letter of interest of no more than five pages, indicating the nature of the project, how and why it meets the above requirements and serves one or more of the above stated goals, and a proposed project budget.