United Way of Cass-Clay (United Way) makes investments in measurable progress toward increasing access and reducing barriers for underserved, at-risk, and vulnerable individuals to achieve Bold Goals.
Donor Name: United Way of Cass-Clay
State: Minnesota, North Dakota
County: Cass County (ND), Clay County (MN)
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 01/25/2026
Size of the Grant: Not Available
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
Goals
Prevent Hunger and Homelessness
- Preventing hunger and homelessness for families and children ensures that basic needs are met today and that they’re addressing food insecurity and housing instability systemically.
- Outcome: All people have access to the food and housing solutions that meet their basic needs and ensure stability.
- Objectives
- Increase co-located pantries and food distribution in schools, healthcare facilities, and community based settings
- Public benefit navigation and application assistance
- Homelessness prevention and diversion tactics
- Emergency shelter and supportive services
- Housing focused approaches providing rapid access to permanent housing and supportive services
- Legal support tenants in eviction proceedings
- Rapid re-housing, transitional housing, and permanent supportive housing for targeted populations
- Street outreach – Integration with mainstream resources for holistic support
- System coordination and cross-agency case management
- Approaches: They prioritize low-barrier and Housing Focused interventions and other research validated approaches to crisis intervention. Coordinated entry and homelessness response system collaboration is required for partnership. As it relates to hunger-relief, they prioritize long term food security that emphasizes client choice, equity, nutrition and health, as well as client centered approaches to food distribution.
Prepare Children to Succeed
- Children who grow up in poverty are 3x more likely to experience poverty as adults. They know that focusing investment in support of children cradle to career allows us to intensively build stability, improve educational outcomes, and long-term impact on a child’s future economic outlook, health, and well-being.
- Outcome: All children are set up for success throughout their school careers, with the ultimate goal of increasing their economic mobility through educational attainment, career exploration, and mentorship.
- Objectives:
- Increase availability, accessibility, and affordability of high-quality programs
- Develop systems to identify children at risk of needing special education or additional supportive services through early interventions
- Support systems to deliver supplemental services for children and families needing additional support.
- Support programs that implement family engagement activities
- Ensure home environments support early development, families are able to identify barriers to childhood success, and families are connected with community-based resources
- Identify and deliver timely supports to students at risk of not meeting key benchmarks such as thirdgrade reading levels, chronic absenteeism, or on track to graduate on time
- Support quality rating and improvement system for all Out of School Time programs
- Career exploration opportunities and experiences (ie, apprenticeships, internships, volunteer opportunities, job shadowing, service learning, mentoring, etc)
- Parent engagement in children’s academic goals and progress
- Strengthen full-service community school models and service delivery
- Approaches: They prioritize programs that are high quality rated and embed supportive services or have strong cooperative relationships with other service providers. They emphasize the values of effective community schools that transform schools and learning environments into hubs for learning and holistic development. As with all of bold goals, they also emphasize a two generation approach in Bold Goal 2.
Strengthen Families
- Families can thrive when they have access to the tools, resources, and supports that help them improve their health, well-being, and economic stability. They focus on strengthening families through both economic pathways and by building upon the protective factors that help them stay well and reach their potential.
- Outcome: The community has systematically and incrementally decreased the rate of poverty and the social, emotional, and financial consequences of income instability while building family resilience.
- Objectives:
- Crisis hotline and helplines
- Ensuring access to support services and preventative or protective factors that support long term mental well-being and social connectedness
- Ensuring access to counseling, therapeutic interventions, crisis management, and peer support
- Employment preparation and placement services
- Resume preparation, job search, and interview skill building
- Complementary social services to address external and personal barriers to employment
- Sector based workforce initiatives
- Industry specific training with basic skills development (reading, writing, math, soft skills, ESL)
- Occupation specific training for low-skilled individuals in high-growth industries with education and supports – Work experience opportunities
- Social service integration (e.g. housing, disability, physical health, mental health, childcare, etc)
- Approaches: They also emphasize the need for access to “good jobs” that help to provide family sustaining wages or employment that creates economic stability and mobility. They prioritize partnerships across agencies and collaboration with employers, educational and training institutions. They continue to prioritize partnerships that enable better coordination of high-quality and well-timed services and are person-centered and trauma informed, with the focus of identifying gaps in services or problems that are blocking equitable access to essential resources and services families in community need to thrive.
Ultimately, these goals will collectively help to lift families out of poverty. These goals are rooted in community needs and the strategies and approaches they’re prioritizing are proven to build pathways out of poverty.
Eligibility Criteria
All applicants must meet and provide evidence of the following requirements:
- Use funding from this proposal to serve residents of Cass County, North Dakota, and/or Clay County, Minnesota. Applicants who serve a larger geographic area (i.e., statewide) may apply but must ensure that funding will support activities in these two counties.
- Maintain eligibility as a public agency, including Indian tribes and nonprofit private organizations, both secular and faith-based, which serve individuals in Cass County, North Dakota, and/or Clay County, Minnesota. This requires that private nonprofit organizations obtain and maintain a 501(c)(3) status with the Internal Revenue Service.
- They will accept fiscally sponsored applicants with a letter of support from their sponsoring organization.
- They accept applications from organizations that have been in operation for at least 2 years with their 501(c)(3) status or fiscally sponsored with strong financial documentation for at least 3 years.
- Be incorporated or chartered under appropriate local, state, or federal statutes.
- Abide by all applicable federal and state laws including anti-discrimination, equal opportunity, affirmative action, and anti-terrorism.
- Have an active, locally based board of directors that meets regularly, makes policy decisions, and holds election of officers.
- Have an administrative structure with defined lines of responsibility, a mission statement, and bylaws.
- Be financially stable and able to ensure appropriate stewardship of the funds entrusted, perform a regular budgeting process, and be able to submit IRS Form 990 and/or audited financial statements.
- Have current license, certification, and permits if applicable.
- Be able to demonstrate effectiveness of programs and services through measurable outcomes.
For more information, visit United Way of Cass-Clay.
