Community Foundation for Oak Park

Grants

Introduction

The Community Foundation issues grants from both its general fund and its special funds. The general fund, which must also support the operation of the Foundation (e.g.: insurance, post office box), is somewhat limited. Grants from the general fund are usually $500 or less. Among the special funds, many of the donor-defined funds — especially the scholarship funds — have their own methods for issuing grants; for those funds, the information on this page does not apply.

Note:The Articles of Incorporation, by-laws, and policies of the Community Foundation restrict grants from our general fund to programs and projects that directly benefit the community of Oak Park (the area covered by ZIP code 91377). Some of our special funds might support grants directed outside this community. Please review our special funds and consider the restriction on our general fund before soliciting any grant. Also consider the Criteria described below.

Please see our log of recent grants issued by the Community Foundation and our activity committees.

How To Apply For A Grant

(NOTE: The following was revised by the Board of Trustees on 10 August 2005.)

The Community Foundation is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization that functions as both a fund-raising and grant-making foundation. These guidelines are to assist the grant applicant in submitting an effective proposal that can be reviewed and acted upon by the Foundation. These guidelines apply equally to requests for grants from outside agencies and to requests from the Foundation's own activity committees.

Note that, when the policies of the Board of Trustees — including the policy on Grants and the Grants Committee — conflict with these guidelines, the policies shall prevail.

Criteria:

Grant requests will generally be considered only from agencies operating within or serving the residents of Oak Park. Exceptions are made for donor-defined funds whose specific policies provide for not restricting grants to Oak Park.
The Board of Trustees has identified the following categories in which unmet needs exist:
- education,
- recreation,
- the environment,
- cultural programs, and
- social services.
Grants for projects in other categories will be considered.
The Community Foundation was established under directions to give special priority to services to the youth of the community. That remains our priority. However, grants for other projects will also be considered.
Some special funds of the Community Foundation were established with policies that provide explicit exceptions to the above criteria. However, no such exceptions exist for any of the following criteria.
- Grants will be issued only to non-profit organizations that, when hiring staff and providing services, comply with the Community Foundation's policy "Non-Discrimination".
- Grants cannot be made to the following:
  - individual persons;
  - political campaigns or activities, including campaigns for or against ballot propositions;
  - endowments;
  - building campaigns;
  - religious purposes;
  - businesses, however organized, including proprietorships, partnerships, and for-profit corporations;
  - organizations based outside the United States;
  - to pay existing debts or replenish fiscal resources used to pay debts; or
  - any purpose inappropriate for a public-benefit, tax-exempt charity.
  The officers of the Community Foundation are individually authorized to summarily reject any grant request for any of the above prohibited purposes without submitting the request to the Grants Committee.
- A grant cannot be made for the sole purpose of buying publicity. The Community Foundation does not purchase advertisements in any media. However, the purchase of publicity as a minor expense within a larger, grant-eligible project is permitted; this expense will be evaluated as part of the project's budget as presented in the application.

Submission and Processing:

Proposals must be submitted with the approved Community Foundation grant application form, to the attention of the Grants Committee.
After submission, lobbying of any trustee or member of the Grants Committee will result in rejection of the request. Any contact from the submitter should be directed only to the president of the Community Foundation, except for contacts initiated by the Grants Committee or by an authorized trustee.
Submitters should be aware that the Foundation operates entirely with volunteers and is therefore not organized to respond to emergency requests.
Proposals and applications will be reviewed by the Grants Committee for appropriateness of the request and compliance with Community Foundation policies. To ensure efficient processing of a proposal, the submitter must designate a knowledgeable person who can be contacted by the Grants Committee to obtain clarification of the proposal. The Grants Committee, which might meet only quarterly, will make a recommendation to the Board of Trustees.
The Board of Trustees, which generally meets only quarterly, will review the Grants Committee's recommendation and vote to approve or deny the grant. If the Board of Trustees approves the grant, the approved amount might be changed from what was requested. The Board of Trustees may also impose conditions on a grant (e.g.: making it a "challenge grant" that requires the submitter to raise matching funds from other sources).
Approved grants will be paid at a time that minimizes the impact on the Community Foundation's cash flow.

Grant Form Instructions

For Word

The policy presented above includes a grant application form. Since you are reading this from a Web page, however, a special on-line version of the form is available. Before accessing that application, please read the following instructions:

Print this Web page so that you can refer to it while completing the application. Depending on your Web browser settings, this may be four pages.
Access the application on the Community Foundation's Documents page. Either download the file and then open it with Word, or else open it in Word directly through your Web browser.
Please do not change page margins, existing text, or formatting.
After the application is open in Word, select the ¶ button on the Word toolbar to expose paragraph marks and other markups within the document.
Each area to be completed is coded in blue. However — depending on your computer, monitor, and setup — those areas may or may not be colored. It is not necessary that colors appear, but the use of color will help you to follow these instructions.
In addition to the blue coding, yellow highlighting is used where information is to be entered on a line. (As with the blue coding, this is merely to help you follow these instructions and is not required.)
*··* The lines are bounded with asterisks with two spaces between, as indicated at the left. Start entering the required information just after the first space; this will cause the underline to extend for the length of the entry. Please limit the input on a line so that it does not break and form a second line.
Enter requested text at the ¶. These are set to the Courier New font sized at 10 points with a 0.5 inch indentation from the left margin. Except for the font, please do not change this setting. If your computer does not support Courier New, then Courier, Letter Gothic, or any sans-serif font may be substituted; substitutions should still be sized at 10 points. Do not substitute Times, Times Roman, or any similar font. If you need only one paragraph for an item, you may omit the second paragraph. If you need more than two paragraphs, use your Enter key at the end of a paragraph to create new one.
On the second page, three items request financial information. You may use spread sheet printouts or other attachments to provide those data. However, the final amounts must be entered where indicated with yellow highlighting.
If you have any attachments to the application, select the highlighted box at the bottom of page 2 and then enter an X in the box.
Please print the completed application with a black-on-white printer; a color printer is not needed. Blue items should appear black; yellow highlighting may leave a very light shadow.
Sign the printed application near the top of page 1, where indicated. This signature must be by someone authorized to make binding commitments on behalf of the applicant organization.
Mail the signed application (postal mail not E-mail) to the Community Foundation's post office box.

For Hardcopy from PDF

The PDF file on the Community Foundation's Documents page replicates the form approved when the policy statement above was approved.

Print this Web page so that you can refer to it while completing the application. Depending on your Web browser settings, this may be four pages.
Access the application on the Community Foundation's Documents page. Either download the file and then open it with Acrobat, or else open it in Acrobat directly through your Web browser.
Using Acrobat, print the application.
Follow the instructions on the form itself.
Be sure to include totals for project costs and revenues and for requested grant amount (items #4-6) on the form itself, even if the requested supporting figures are on attachments.
Sign the printed application near the top of page 1, where indicated. This signature must be by someone authorized to make binding commitments on behalf of the applicant organization.
Mail the signed application (postal mail not E-mail) to the Community Foundation's post office box.

Problems with the above instructions or with the application form should be brought to the attention of the Community Foundation's Webmaster.

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Scholarship grants from the Foundation's special funds and activity committees to students graduating from Oak Park schools are paid to the Oak Park Unified School District, which in turn issues checks to the individual students. Similar arrangements might be possible with other grants but only if (1) the intermediate agency or organization is willing and (2) the arrangement is not an attempt to evade Internal Revenue Code prohibitions against donors and those controlling grants from benefiting themselves or members of their families.

Last updated 17 October 2007

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Community Foundation for Oak Park • P. O. Box 291 • Agoura, CA 91376-0291

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