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
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 03/03/2026
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.
Goals
The goals of the Local Data for Equitable Communities grant program are to:
- Inform public policy and improve the physical, economic, and social 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, economic, or social 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 issue with new opportunities or momentum for action. As they do so, their capacity to use and apply data is strengthened, which leads to an increased influence in their communities for achieving important community-driven goals.
- Strengthen the use of equitable data practices: Equity should be a leading consideration in what data are collected and how, 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, contribute, and interpret data to assess structural inequities in their communities. They should have the opportunity to participate in decision-making about how to address barriers and design solutions to improve health 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. Resulting projects will offer a diverse and innovative set of practices that will be relevant and useful to other places.
Funding Information
Each award will be $50,000.
Grant Period
Awards will be for nine months.
Uses of Funds
Award funds should cover actual costs of the project including personnel and other direct costs. If the grantee is a 501(c)(3) public charity, grant funds will also cover indirect costs to support the applicant organization’s general operations. In keeping with RWJF policy, funds may not be used to support clinical trials of unapproved drugs or devices, to construct or renovate facilities, and for lobbying or political activities. Additionally, funds should not be used as general operating support, to subsidize individuals for the cost of their healthcare, or to substitute for funds currently being used to support similar activities to the proposed project. Additional budget guidelines are provided in the online application materials.
Geographical Areas
Applicants must focus their projects on local geographies in the U.S. or U.S territories:
- Neighborhood(s) within a city or county (do not need to be contiguous);
- City, county, or other municipality (must be contiguous if multiple are the focus of the project);
- A single metropolitan area; or
- A tribal area
Eligible Projects
RWJF welcomes creative and innovative ideas and recognizes that the changes needed to address inequities in the physical, economic, and social conditions in a community shaped by structural racism are going to take time. This grant opportunity is intended to catalyze initiatives and collaborations working with community members to bring about these changes.
Eligible Activities
This grant program provides flexibility for applicants to determine what data are needed to answer their proposed project questions and how those data are collected, analyzed, disseminated, and ultimately put to use by community members to bring about changes in local policies and practices. There is no preference for qualitative or quantitative data and applicants should choose the methods that are best suited to produce the information that is needed. Please note, if a project requires review by an institutional review board (IRB), applicants should account for time and resources for IRB preparation and review.
Eligible Topics
The conditions in the places the live, learn, work, and play have a critical influence on the health. To transform health in the lifetime, the must address systems that create barriers or prevent opportunities for health. While there is a long list of conditions that may impact any given geographic community, only the following community conditions are eligible under this CFP. Applicants must select only one of the following conditions of their selected geography as the primary focus of their project:
- Built environment
- Climate and environment
- Community safety
- Healthy food access
- Housing or
- Transportation.
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 of 1986, as amended (the Code). The following eligibility exceptions apply:
- Not eligible to apply: All universities, whether nonprofit, public, or private, whether tax exempt under the Code or not.
- Not eligible to apply: All state and local government agencies, whether tax exempt under the Code or not, including but not limited to agencies representing states, cities, towns, and villages; public health departments; school districts; and public schools.
- Not eligible to apply: Private foundations or nonfunctionally integrated Type III supporting organizations, whether tax exempt under the Code or not.
- Also eligible are organizations that are fiscally sponsored by an eligible tax-exempt 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) organization. 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 in those cases.
- Applicant organizations must be based in the U.S. or its territories.
- Applicants cannot be a current grantee of the Local Data for Equitable Communities program.
- Organizations may submit only one proposal.
- Applicant organizations may contract with and collaborate with any type of organization for their projects, including universities and government agencies. Only one eligible nonprofit organization may represent the collaboration as the applicant and be the Foundation’s contact in the application process.
- The applicant organization must play a substantive role in the project.
For more information, visit RWJF.
