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All grant applications must be submitted online by following the link at the top of this page. But, before beginning your application, please review:
Getting Started
If you are thinking of applying for a grant, please make sure that:
1) You or one of your programs is consistent with one of our focus areas
§ For Community Giving requests, you or your program is in Cook County or Lake County;
§ For Education requests, you or your program is in Chicago. If you are a youth development program located outside Chicago, you do not fall within our Education focus area, but please review our Community Giving focus area; or
§ For Jewish Community requests, you or your program is in Cook County or Lake County, Illinois.
PLEASE NOTE: We accept applications by invitation only for;
- Jewish Community grants for organizations without programming in Cook or Lake County, Illinois.
2) You are a public charity under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. If your organization is also classified under Section 509(a)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, please contact us before applying.
3) You have a board of directors (or similar governing body) that is responsible for overseeing the organization’s mission and operations and your board has at least 5 unrelated members and at least 4 members who are not employees of the organization.
4) Your board members make meaningful personal financial contributions to you.
5) You can clearly state your goals, your plan to achieve those goals and how you intend to evaluate and analyze your outcomes.
6) If you are an established organization, you can provide recent evaluation results and your analysis of those results.
7) During your last fiscal year, you had actual cash revenue and expenses of at least $100,000, excluding in-kind revenue and expenses. If you are a new organization, please see our FAQs.
8) You have a broad base of non-governmental supporters or a plan to increase private funding in the upcoming year.
9) You have the capacity to fulfill a Circle of Service Foundation Challenge Grant. You are willing to raise funds from new donors and increased funds from existing donors, and you are able to specifically track these new and additional donations.
Applicant Checklist
- Organizational Information
- Programs and Services
- Population/Area served
- Goals
- Accomplishments/Challenges
- Staff salaries and length of employment
- Financial Information
- Financial statements for current and prior year to include expenses, deficits, assets, revenue
(from both private and government sources) and fee-for-service information
- Organization budget
- Program budget
- Details on major private organization and program supporters
- Board of Directors Information
- Board of Directors list to include corporate and/or organizational affiliations and terms of service
- Details of board giving and fundraising efforts
- "Give or get" information
To review all of the questions on our application, click here.
To review a sample application, click here.
Please note, however, that you must login online to complete your application---click here to begin your grant application.
Tips for Efficient Completion of the Grant Application
We suggest that you follow the following steps in order to most efficiently complete a grant application:
- After reviewing the rest of this page, click here to see all of the questions on our online application.
- Print the blank application.
- Review the information and documents requested in the blank application, and collect the requested information and documents.
- Review our templates for submitting an organization budget and, if applicable, a program budget. You are not required to use these templates, but, if you submit a budget in another format, please ensure that it includes at least as much information as provided for in the template.
- Click here to begin our online application. Complete the application, including by attaching the documents specified on the last page of the application. For the attachments, please attach documents in Microsoft Office or Adobe Acrobat (pdf) formats. Please note that you must "Upload" each document separately to properly attach the documents to your application.
Other Tips
You may find it useful to use your word processor to draft certain elements of your application and then to cut and paste the text into our online application.
Important: Do not use your browser’s Back button while filling out the application – you will lose all unsaved data.
As you are filling out the online application, we suggest saving regularly during the process. There is a button at the bottom of each page in the application permitting you to save, and we will see your application only after you click the “Submit” button.
When you choose “Save,” you will be prompted to set up a user account and a password. You (and any of your colleagues working on the application) will need this user name and password to return to your partially completed application. After you set up an account, you will receive an automated email with a link to your account. You also may stop working on your application before it is complete and return to it at a later time (using the user name and password). Once an application is submitted, you cannot add, modify or delete the application or any part of it through the online system. If you find that you need to make an important change to an application after you have submitted it, please contact us directly.
More Information
You will have an opportunity to review and print a copy of your application prior to submitting it.
We may contact you upon receipt of your application to request additional supporting documents, additional information or to request a site visit.
Need some help? Please review our FAQs before contacting us.
To review all of the questions on our application, click here.
To view a sample grant application, click here.
To begin a new application, click here.
To continue an incomplete grant application, click here. (You will need the user name and password that was used to create the online account.)
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