GRANT CYCLE JUNE 2021 TO MAY 2022
General Information
The Peninsula Endowment typically awards one-time nonrecurring grants supporting innovations enabling access to written materials for persons with visual disabilities (“Innovation Grants”). Innovation Grants are awarded to community-based IRC Section 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit charitable, educational, or scientific organizations physically located principally in Northern California, USA. Innovation Grants are awarded on an annual grant cycle (June to May) basis. The Peninsula Endowment may award several or no Innovation Grants in any given grant cycle, in its sole discretion, depending on the quality and quantity of IGAs submitted during that grant cycle.
Qualifying Nonprofit organizations eligible to receive Innovation Grants from the Peninsula Endowment are required to submit an Innovation Grant Application (“IGA”). In the IGA, a prospective grantee will describe the project they would like funded and respond to a few basic requests for information about the project. The projects described in IGAs should demonstrate innovations enabling access to written materials for persons with visual disabilities that are designed to educate, enhance, and enrich the lives of persons with visual disabilities principally residing in Northern California.
Innovation Grants can be requested for any amount between $5,000 and $50,000, without any priority given to the amount of funds requested. That is, larger grant requests will not be considered more or less favorably than smaller grant requests. Much more important than the dollar amount requested is the innovative nature of the project, the benefits to be achieved by participants in the project, the likelihood of success of the project, the financial needs of the applicant, the due diligence of the applicant to confirm that persons with visual disabilities will actually achieve the intended benefits, and how the grant funds will be used.
<;p>The projects supported by the Innovation Grants can be of any duration (i.e., one month, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, etc.). The one-time nonrecurring Innovation Grants typically will be awarded in one lump sum at the beginning of the project, and it is recommended that projects target a duration of roughly 1 year or less, given the annual grant cycle of the Peninsula Endowment. Having said that, the Board will strive to be flexible based on the nature of submitted IGAs. Thus, if a submitted IGA describes a very worthwhile innovative project which might continue for multiple years the Board will not consider the multi-year nature of the project to be a negative. Similarly, if an IGA is submitted which describes a multi-year worthwhile project, but the application is for support for only the first year, then the Board may choose to award a one-time nonrecurring Innovation Grant to support the project for just that first year and encourage the grantee to submit an IGA in future grant cycles for additional one-time nonrecurring Innovation Grants to support the project in later years if the project is still viable and generating successful outcomes.