Community Vision Fund

Purpose 

The Community Vision Fund seeks to fulfill community needs and advance well-being for all in Calumet, Outagamie, Shawano and Waupaca and the Neenah-Menasha area of Winnebago counties. The fund combines dollars from generous donors, which enable us to accomplish much more together than we could alone. See donors who have established endowment funds and Learn how to give now. 

The fund provides grants in five focus areas involving staff and community volunteers from our Board of Directors in our decision-making. Guided by our Foundation values, we aim to act as a trusted and supportive partner to our local charitable organizations using a process that’s designed to be accessible and responsive to changing community needs. 

What We Fund 

Focus Areas 

The Community Vision Fund’s focus areas are influenced by the Vital Conditions for Health and Well-Being and the Imagine Fox Cities’ community vision.

Grantmaking will typically focus on the following areas: 

• Arts and Culture
• Community and Neighborhood Development
• Environment
• Financial Stability and Well-being
• Nonprofit Effectiveness 

As we consider inquiries matching these focus areas, we prioritize requests that: 

• Invest in under-resourced and/or historically excluded communities and organizations
• Invest in rural communities
• Invest in systems change efforts and systems thinking
• Invest in organizations or programs led by people with lived experience (or those in closest proximity) to the issues we’re trying to address
• Apply a diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism lens  

Range of Grantmaking

•  We support a wide range of grant awards through this fund, from small grants for community events, projects, planning, and training to larger grants for activities like capacity-building, implementing new programs or initiatives, engaging in systems-change work, and supporting operational needs.
•  Grant awards typically range from $1,000 to $20,000, For community event sponsorship, up to $2,500. The average grant size from the Fund in 2023 was $16,000.
•  In most cases, grants will be for one year or less, however, multi-year grants may be considered for projects or initiatives that will take more than one year to implement and are in strong alignment with our focus areas and strategies.
•  If you’re requesting support for a large, complex, or multi-year initiative, be sure to contact staff before you apply.  

Read about grants awarded from January to June 2024 here or click below to see a summary of all grants made in 2023.  

 
Application Deadlines  

Grant inquiries are accepted on a year-round basis with rolling deadlines. Inquiries must be submitted through our grant portal at least 60 days prior to the start of an event, program or when funds are needed. Our staff will typically respond to inquiries within 2-4 weeks regarding next steps, which may include submitting a full grant application.  

 To Apply  

1.  To see if you qualify for a grant from the Community Foundation, carefully review our general grant policies. These policies include important information such as which types of organizations can receive grants, our nondiscrimination policy, faith-based funding policy, etc.

2.  All requests to the Community Vision Fund should be submitted via our online Grant Portal. Start from our Grant Portal landing page  where you will find information on registration, FAQ’s, and helpful tutorials.

3.  Once logged in, click on the “Apply” tab, and search for “Community Vision Fund Inquiry and Application” to complete a brief eligibility quiz.

4.  If eligible, you may submit an inquiry or “LOI (Letter of Inquiry).” Some requests may be approved from the inquiry stage. Others will require a next step of submitting a full application, which may take an additional
2-4 weeks to review, and potentially longer for larger, more complex requests.