*PLEASE READ THOROUGHLY BEFORE SUBMITTING YOUR REQUEST*
These funds will provide temporary, short-term bridge funding for health and human service nonprofit organizations that provide direct assistance for emergency and basic needs to individuals and families residing within a United Way’s service area (Benton, Carroll, Montgomery & Tippecanoe). Deadline to apply is August 31st, 2026.
For this purpose, emergency and basic needs means:
- Organizations working in the emergency arena on a daily basis address the dangerous or difficult situations that require immediate action to prevent loss of life, health, or shelter by interacting directly with ALICE households (including those that are at or below the Federal Poverty Level).
- Organizations working in the basic needs arena provide ALICE households (including those that are at or below the Federal Poverty Level) with food, shelter, clothing, personal care items, prescription medication, healthcare (including mental health care), or transportation to receive medical services.
To be eligible organizations must:
- Be a health and human services focused nonprofit; and
- Provide direct assistance addressing emergency or basic needs, predominantly to ALICE households or households at/below FPL; and
- Serve individuals or households within the United Way’s footprint; and
- Have a strong rationale for need that reflects changing community or public funding conditions; and
- Be able to expend funds within a defined and reasonable timeframe; and
- Be facing a financial shortfall that cannot be backfilled with its own resources
Non Acceptable Use of Funds:
- Funds must neither supplement nor back-fill short falls in the United Way’s regular allocations/community investment process.
- Organizations funded with this grant must not further sub-grant this award
- No administrative fee may be taken from these funds, neither by the United Way nor by the requesting nonprofit.
Excluded Activities:
The following activities cannot be support with these funds and requests for the below purposes will rejected.
- Regular, budgeted activities &/or normal overhead/operational expenses
- Bonuses
- Coalition building
- Meeting expenses
- Mileage/per diem
- Organizational development
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- Animal welfare/care
- Athletic or physical conditioning
- Beautification/landscaping
- Capital projects
- Character-building
- Collateral to establish a line of credit or secure a loan
- Activities that request or require the target beneficiary participate in religious or political observances or rituals or be affiliated with the nonprofit organization in order to receive services
- Public, private, or charter education programs
- Public relations/marketing
- Recreation/entertainment/arts
- Relocation
- Sports leagues/extra curricular sports
- Sports equipment/uniforms
- Supplementary educational activities (such as field trips, enrichment programs,
camps, extracurriculars)
- Debt relief outside of immediate, emergency assistance
- Debt producing projects/projects that unintentionally increase target beneficiary’s household expenses
- Equipment (likely a Statewide Capital Projects Initiative request)
- Gifting programs
- Investments, endowments, building reserves
- Planned program expansion
- Religious/ political or quasi-political
activities
- Organizations that directly receive significant funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. or whose parent organization receives significant funding from Lilly Endowment Inc.
