Faith-Based Grantmakers

Faith-based grantmakers are funders whose support comes from their religious affiliation. For example, The Campaign for Human Development is funded by the Catholic Church. Some of these faith-based grantmakers only fund organizations affiliated with a certain religion, while others will consider proposals from an array of nonprofit organizations. In addition, many states and provinces have a Council of Churches that may provide cash support to nonprofit organizations in their region.

Approaching a faith-based grantmaker, such as the Unitarian Universalist Funding Program (which supports secular nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and Canada), can often result in the first significant funds received for an unconventional project.

Faith-based grantmakers (houses of worship and religious philanthropic organizations) give to a wide variety of work, from climate change to economic justice. If you have not included religious grantmakers in your overall grants strategy, especially for a particular campaign or project, you may want to consider this source of grant revenue.

If you are a secular organization, consider setting an objective for your grants program to identify and secure at least one grant award from a faith-based funder for a non-religious activity. Many faith-based grantmakers give to more than just organizations in their denomination. You can also look at collaborating with a faith-based group. The size of the award is not really important. The idea here is to build a new relationship and diversify your income stream.

If you are a religious organization, you do not need to rely solely on funding from faith-based grantmakers. There are a number of independent foundations that will support faith-based organizations, as long as their programs do not exclusively serve the faith community.

Giving in the area of religion increased by 2.3% from 2018 to 2019. If you already receive support from a faith-based grantmaker, consider increasing your next request by 2% to 3%.

You will find that many faith-based grantmakers have fairly unique application guidelines. It is important to read through the guidelines carefully, as they may request very specific letters of support (perhaps from a local bishop or pastor). And there may be other requirements that are outside the norm when it comes to applications. 

Forming a partnership with another organization, or being part of a collaborative effort, appears to encourage support from faith-based grantmakers. The idea is to reflect the community and its needs and concerns, which can often be done most effectively through a collaboration with other organizations.

Go to our Charitable Giving database for the U.S. or Canada and use the Type of Grantmaker filter to select “Religious.” Our database includes a number of religious grantmakers accepting requests.

You can also reach out to churches in your area, as some may have grants programs. For the U.S., the National Council of Churches has an online directory; the World Council of Churches also has a member list. Once you identify churches, you can call them to determine if they have a grants program.

Most faith-based grantmakers have a detailed application process, which means you’ll be writing a substantial proposal. The key to many of these awards is to demonstrate human need. If you’re writing a proposal focusing on climate change, for example, you may want to articulate how not addressing the issue will impact the poor or disenfranchised.

Read through the grantmaker’s website, latest annual report, and perhaps review some of their social media posts to get a sense of the language they use. You want to mirror that language as much as possible in your proposal.

When writing a grant award report to a faith-based grantmaker, you should focus on the qualitative differences you have made in people’s lives. Sharing the quantitative data is important as well, but the emphasis should be on how your program has helped individuals.