Grantmaking
The Geoffrey and Sarah Gund Foundation works to advance human welfare and equity through thoughtful, targeted grantmaking. We concentrate our support in four communities where the foundation has deep relationships and can be present: Cleveland, Martha's Vineyard, New York, and Philadelphia.
The foundation makes grants in four program areas: Arts & Culture; Education Equity; Health, Children & Families; and Community Development & Economic Justice. Alongside these, a separate Special Commitments category carries the founder's longstanding institutional relationships; it is described below and is not open to application.
Arts & Culture
We believe access to the arts should not depend on who you are or where you live. We fund organizations broadening who takes part in cultural life, with an emphasis on leadership and resources for communities that have long been underrepresented. Our focus is on smaller, community-rooted organizations. In certain circumstances we also support established institutions deepening their equity work.
What we fund: Equity-focused programming, leadership development, community engagement, and organizational capacity building in arts and cultural organizations.
What we do not fund: Work outside our four communities; unsolicited capital campaigns or endowments; conferences unless directly related to work we already fund.
Education Equity
Every child deserves a strong public education, but access to one remains deeply unequal. We fund organizations that strengthen public schools, expand opportunity for students who have been underserved, and clear the obstacles between young people and a good education. We are drawn to work shaped by the students, families, and educators closest to it, and to groups building the community support that keeps it going.
What we fund: Public school advocacy, college access programs, after-school programming, and community-based educational support.
What we do not fund: Work outside our four communities; independent and private schools; charter school expansion and school choice advocacy.
Health, Children & Families
Stable families and healthy communities depend on systems that meet people’s needs, and too often those systems fall short for the people who need them most. We fund work across mental health, health equity, and family stability, with a focus on communities that have been historically marginalized. We support organizations providing direct services, advancing policy, and building the support families rely on. We pay particular attention to health disparities rooted in race and income, and to the mental health of children and young people.
What we fund: Mental health access and advocacy, health equity initiatives, family support programs, and systems change work.
What we do not fund: Work outside our four communities; conferences unless directly related to work we already fund.
Community Development & Economic Justice
Economic opportunity underpins almost everything else we care about. We fund organizations working on affordable housing, workforce development, and economic mobility, with a particular focus on efforts led by the communities they serve. Lasting progress takes both direct investment in people’s economic lives and strong local organizations that know their neighborhoods well.
What we fund: Community development corporations, affordable housing advocacy, tenant rights, workforce development, urbanism initiatives, and regranting to community-based organizations.
What we do not fund: Work outside our four communities; direct real estate development; individual financial assistance; national policy work without a footprint in our four communities; partisan political activity of any kind.
Special Commitments
Alongside its four program areas, the foundation supports a small number of institutions and causes with deep personal significance to its founder. Special Commitments are made at the foundation's initiative and reflect longstanding relationships and personal conviction; they are not an open funding category. They are not competitive, are not subject to the foundation's geographic focus, and are not open to application or inquiry. All grants and commitments the foundation made before July 1, 2026 are carried in this category. Special Commitment grants follow the same eligibility, documentation, and payment standards as all other foundation grants.
Geography
We concentrate our support in four communities where the foundation has deep relationships and can be present: Cleveland, Martha's Vineyard, New York, and Philadelphia. These are the places where our family has lived, worked, and built ties across generations. Our geographic focus lets us be a real partner rather than a distant funder, understand local context well, and stay with the work long enough for it to matter.
Cleveland
Martha's Vineyard
New York City
Philadelphia
How our funding works
The same process applies across all four program areas.
- Invited proposals, with a door open for inquiry. The foundation develops its grantmaking through relationships and its own program research, and invites proposals in two cycles each year. There is no open application, and unsolicited full proposals are not accepted. But if you have read these guidelines and believe your work fits, we welcome a short email to [email protected]: a few sentences covering your organization and its mission, the community you serve in one of our four places, which program area your work fits, and the kind of support you would seek. Please do not send attachments or full proposals. We respond to every inquiry within a few business days, and if there appears to be a fit, we will invite you to share existing materials.
- Two cycles a year. The foundation runs a fall cycle and a spring cycle. Invited organizations receive a clear timeline with their invitation and a written decision within the cycle.
- Existing materials, not fresh narrative. Invited organizations share documents they already have: an annual report, a current budget and budget-versus-actuals, a proposal prepared for another funder. There is no need to write anything new for us.
- Flexible operating support, single-year as the norm. Single-year grants are the norm, made with renewal in mind; where the circumstances are right, we make multi-year commitments. Operating support is typically unrestricted, so organizations can apply it where it is needed most; we use project support where it is the better fit.
- Reporting scaled to the grant. Reporting is scaled to the size of the grant and to how well we know your work. For most grants a brief final report or a documented conversation is enough, and it should carry the numbers behind it: how the money was spent and what it made possible. For larger grants and newer relationships we ask for more detail. Interim reports are required only for multi-year grants. Every requirement is stated in the award letter, so you never have to guess.
- Grant size. Most grants range from $1,000 to $100,000.
Eligibility
- Public charities and government units. Grants are ordinarily made to organizations recognized as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and classified as public charities under Section 509(a), and to units of government, including public school systems, for public purposes. For grants to public charities, the foundation verifies public charity status before any grant is approved.
- No grants to individuals. The foundation does not currently make grants to individuals, including scholarships, fellowships, and awards.
- Other organizations. Grants to organizations that are not public charities (private foundations, foreign organizations, other entities) are rare, require additional legal safeguards under federal tax law, and are made only with the involvement of the foundation’s counsel.
- Fiscal sponsorship. The foundation accepts requests through fiscal sponsors, typically 501(c)(3) public charities that lend their legal and tax-exempt status to a group or project aligned with the sponsor’s mission. For these requests: the request must be submitted by, and under the name of, the fiscal sponsor, which is the foundation’s legal grantee; the request must include contact information for the sponsor’s Executive Director, President, or CEO, with the sponsored group’s contact listed as secondary; a written agreement between the sponsor and the sponsored group must be included; and the sponsor is responsible for all legal compliance relating to receiving, reporting, distributing, and acknowledging charitable funds.
- Discrimination. The foundation does not fund organizations engaged in discriminatory or illegal activities.
What we do not fund
Across all four program areas, the foundation does not currently fund:
- Organizations or programs based outside Cleveland, Martha’s Vineyard, New York, and Philadelphia, except through Special Commitments made at the foundation’s initiative
- Programs based outside the United States
- Grants to individuals
- Grants to organizations that are not public charities, except in rare cases with counsel involvement as described under Eligibility
- Partisan political activity, electioneering, or lobbying with grant funds
- Religious congregations for sacramental or worship purposes
- Conferences, unless directly related to work we already fund
- Unsolicited requests for capital campaigns or endowments
If you have read these guidelines and believe your work fits, we welcome a short email.
How to inquire →