Grants

For over 100 years your local United Way has been supporting organizations to improve the lives of Washtenaw County people. We envision an equitable community where opportunity is not limited and every member reaches their full potential. By the year 2030 we aspire to live in a community where: 

• Your zip code no longer determines your opportunity in life
• Life expectancy is the same across all populations and communities in our County
• The academic achievement gap is eliminated
• Everyone in our community has a home
• Poverty is not generational. If it exists, it is intermittent and brief
• Community members seek understanding and awareness of their own power and privilege and actively work to end poverty in our County
• Everyone in our County is able to thrive and meet their needs—housing, food, transportation, education, health expenses and childcare
 
Children entering kindergarten this fall will be graduating high school in the year 2030. Before those children don a cap and gown, there is much work to be done.  If our vision resonates with you, we invite you to apply for funding. 

POWER OF THE PURSE

United Way of Washtenaw County awards Power of the Purse grants annually as part of its Financial Stability Initiative. These grants provide support for programs, projects or initiatives that prioritize the financial wellbeing of people who identify as women, individuals and families with low incomes, communities of color, and historically and/or systematically marginalized groups.

This year’s investments were made to women of color led organizations who are helping women and families maintain their financial stability and meet their basic needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Food security, K-12 education supports, and wraparound supports are the types of services prioritized for funding.

 

Click here for a list of FY22 Power of the Purse grant recipients.

COORDINATED FUNDING

Washtenaw Coordinated Funders, a consortium of public and private funders,  has reached a decision based on community feedback, independent evaluation and the current state of the community to cease operations as a funding collaborative at the end of the fiscal year, June 30, 2021.  The group consists of the City of Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, Washtenaw Urban County, United Way of Washtenaw County, the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, and  St Joseph Mercy Health Ann Arbor. For those currently receiving funding, there will be no funding changes through June 30, 2021. 

Update as of 04/20/2021:

United Way of Washtenaw County (UWWC) is offering non-competitive, one-time transition grants for the period of July 1 - Dec 30, 2021 only to agencies who previously received program funding through the Washtenaw Coordinated Funders (COFU).
Please contact Jaime Hoffman, Community Impact Manager, jhoffman@uwwasthenaworg, for more information about this transition grant.
 
Application available online, April 20, 2021.
 
Application due, May 3, 2021 by 4p.
 
Past Coordinated Funding Investments
 

OPPORTUNITY FUND

Overview
These grants provide support for organizations whose work benefits people with low incomes, communities of color, and historically and/or systematically marginalized people. In addition to the above, the proposed work must align with one or more of the following criteria:
• Increase organizational capacity to deliver a community solution
• Leverage United Way support as match for additional grant funding
• Pilot a promising practice
• Engage in advocacy and/or community mobilizing 
• Aligns with one or more of United Way’s priority areas: early childhood; school-aged youth; safety net health & nutrition; housing & homelessness; older adults, financial stability.
• Prioritize systematic racial equity* 
 
Equity Commitment

Equity is a central tenet in United Way’s grantmaking. All applicants — regardless of where in their equity journey they may be today — must demonstrate a commitment to ongoing growth through the integration of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) principles into both their external programming or services and internal structures and operations. Learn more about how United Way thinks about equity at www.uwgive.org/equity

*Racial equity is the condition that would be achieved if one's racial identity no longer predicted, in a statistical sense, how one fares. When we use the term, we are thinking about racial equity as one part of racial justice, and thus we also include work to address root causes of inequities not just their manifestation. This includes elimination of policies, practices, attitudes and cultural messages that reinforce differential outcomes by race or fail to eliminate them.

Racial Justice [is defined] as the proactive reinforcement of policies, practices, attitudes and actions that produce equitable power, access, opportunities, treatment, impacts and outcomes for all.  Racial justice is the underlayer for all other forms of justice – we can’t achieve educational, environmental, criminal justice, etc. until we achieve racial justice. (Sources: Center for Assessment and Policy Development; Catalytic Change: Lessons Learned from the Racial Justice Grant making Assessment Report, Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity and Applied Research Center, 2009; Fakequity, 2019.)

NOTE:

  • Funds invested through this grant program are a complement, not a supplement, to other United Way and Washtenaw Coordinated Funding grant programs. 
  • The Opportunity Fund does not resource ongoing/core services of local organizations.
The Opportunity Fund application is closed for submissions as of Monday, 04/05/2021 at 4p EST.
 
Questions? Contact Jaime Hoffman, Community Impact Manager, jhoffman@uwwashtenaw.org.
 
To be notified of future UWWC grant opportunities, complete this online form.

Past Opportunity Fund Investments

COVID-19 Grant Investments

Please click here, to read more about our COVID-19 Grant Investments.

CONTACT

To be notified of future UWWC grant opportunities, complete this online form.

For more information about our work, contact:
Bridget Herrmann, Vice President of Impact and Advocacy, 734.677.7209, bherrmann@uwwashtenaw.org 
Jaime Hoffman, Community Impact Manager, jhoffman@uwwashtenaw.org 

In the service of transparency and improving the grant-making sector, please consider providing anonymous feedback about United Way of Washtenaw County at GrantAdvisor.org

United Way of Washtenaw County