The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) invites eligible nonprofit organizations in the U.S. to apply for a grant to collect, analyze, and use data to address inequities in the physical, economic, and social conditions of a place.
Donor Name: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF)
State: All States
County: All Counties
Territory: American Samoa, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Island, Guam and U.S. Virgin Islands
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 03/18/2025
Size of the Grant: $10,000 to $100,000
Grant Duration: Less than 1 Year
Details:
Local data can be valuable tools to make progress on building places that offer everyone the chance to be as healthy as possible. Community organizations and residents can use data to understand challenges, set priorities, advocate for what is important to them, and hold others accountable for promised changes.
The goals of the Local Data for Equitable Communities grant program are to:
- Inform public policy and improve the physical, social, and economic conditions of places: Data can be a transformational tool for community-based nonprofits to answer questions directly relevant to on-the-ground efforts to improve the physical, social, or economic conditions of a place. With key data in hand, nonprofits can inform public discourse, resulting in program and policy solutions that reduce health inequities.
- Build local capacity to use data for action: A community with data capacity is one where people can access and use data to better understand and improve outcomes where they live. This grant program supports community organizations to collect, analyze, and use data about a locally relevant and timely issue. As they do so, their capacity to use and apply data is strengthened, which leads to a stronger influence in their communities to achieve important community-driven goals.
- Strengthen the use of equitable data practices: Equity should be a leading consideration in how data are collected and, ultimately, in who gets to interpret, disseminate, and leverage data to take action. People most affected by racial, economic, and geographic inequities in health and wellbeing need to be able to access, interpret, and contribute data to assess structural inequities in their communities. They should have the opportunity to participate in decisionmaking about how to address barriers and design solutions to improve healthy equity based on that data.
- Document successful practices for more communities to learn from and adapt: This grant program funds organizations to address immediate local needs and conditions, informed by data relevant to project questions that are locally determined. The program is designed such that resulting projects will create and disseminate a diverse and innovative set of practices that will be relevant and useful to other places.
Funding Information
Each award will be up to and including $50,000.
Grant Period
Awards will be nine months.
Project Examples
The following list provides project examples, but it is far from exhaustive.
- Examine the experience of renters of housing units that are corporate-owned to develop policy recommendations for improving housing quality and reducing the risk of displacement.
- Conduct listening sessions, a resident-led housing needs assessment, and data analysis sessions to mobilize residents for advocacy campaigns for housing justice.
- Train residents to collect and analyze environmental data while building capacity to advocate for environmental justice.
- Collaborate with a community group to better understand community safety priorities through surveys or focus groups and use these data to identify priority strategies and investments for local government.
- Develop new strategies to address structural barriers to employment by working with a coalition of regional funders to analyze how discriminatory and racist policies and practices in transportation have contributed to inequities in access to employment.
- Advance equitable access to quality recreation spaces by collaborating with a local recreation department and community groups to use data to assess the distribution of recreation spaces and identify priority locations for future investments.
Eligibility Criteria
- Awards will be made to organizations, not to individuals.
- Applicants must be nonprofit organizations that are tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) or Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code and are not private foundations or non-functionally integrated Type III supporting organizations.
- Universities, whether public or private, are ineligible to apply, but are eligible to partner with an applicant that is a Section 501(c)(3) or Section 501(c)(4) organization.
- Organizations that are fiscally sponsored by an eligible tax-exempt 501(c)3 or 501(c)4 organization are also eligible. The fiscal sponsor cannot be a university, whether public or private. The fiscal sponsor is required to provide the total amount of the award to the organization that will perform the program activities as described in the application less the fiscal sponsorship fee. The fiscal sponsorship fee is an allowable expense under the award. The Foundation may require additional documentation.
- Applicant organizations must be based in the U.S. or its territories.
- Applicants must focus their projects on local geographies, such as neighborhoods, cities, counties, metropolitan areas, or tribal areas.
- Organizations may only submit one proposal.
For more information, visit RWJF.
