CJP is pleased to announce our Young Adult Community Impact Grant (YACIG). This Grant was developed in order to maximize our awareness and response to the changing needs of the young adult community. Our transparent, efficient, and consistent process will ensure that organizations can identify and address needs, opportunities, and innovations within the communities that CJP serves. We will review applications with critical attention to:

• CJP Priority Focus Areas
• CJP Areas of Interest
• Collaboration
• Geographic diversity within CJP catchment area
• Impact
• Innovation

Your organization is eligible to apply for a Young Adult Community Impact Grant if they serve young adults (ages 18-40), including:

• College students
• Young professionals
• Young couples
• Established young adults
• Families with young children

Further guidelines to apply for a grant are below. Before starting your application, we highly recommend you reach out to our staff to talk through your idea. Email our Community Connectors, Caleb or Rachel; they are happy to help your organization through the process.

APPLY NOW

Our grant process is entirely online. If this is your first time applying for a YACIG, you will need to create an account with our system. 

Please note:

• First-time grantees need to provide a current copy of their organization’s W9, 501c3, Mission Statement, and EFT banking instructions
• Organizations that have previously received a grant from CJP, we do not require you to resubmit your W9, 501c3, and Mission Statement
• Organizations that have previously received a grant in the form of a check from CJP, please note that we will now require EFT banking instructions to complete the application

Application Guidelines

CJP Mission

To inspire and mobilize the diverse Boston Jewish community to engage in building communities of learning that strengthen Jewish life and improve the world.

CJP Community Impact Grant Fund Goals

CJP directs financial investments and services to organizational partners who are instrumental in helping us to achieve our goals. With our community investments, we:

• seek to strengthen the health and increase the breadth of our community
• invest in key priority areas that will shape our future and shared communal vision
• use a data-informed approach to drive change and prioritize opportunities to facilitate collective impact
• aspire to be a national model of a community that inspires people to find joy and meaning in Jewish life and which brings our values to bear on injustices in our Jewish and broader communities
• seek to provide unyielding and dignified support to all during challenging moments
   

CJP Priority Focus Areas

Caring for the Vulnerable: Ensuring more people are financially, physically, and emotionally secure, able to meet or exceed their basic needs in a community that preserves dignity for all

Broader and Deeper Engagement: Ensuring more people are deeply involved in Jewish life such that they attribute life choices to a growing and/or sustained sense of belonging to our community

Optimizing the Ecosystem: Ensuring more people are supported, engaged, and/or served by collaborative networks of healthy institutions and organizations whose work together advances our goals above

Within our overarching Priority Focus Areas for the FY 2021 (July 2020-June 2021), CJP has Areas of Interest which require attention and inspired communal solutions.

• Collaborative models which adopt a shared understanding of an engagement continuum across Greater Boston organizations and individual institutions. This critical network will facilitate meaningful hand-offs between organizations that will advance individual movement across a lifeline engagement continuum.
• We seek to have deeper and more meaningful impact on promoting inclusion and belonging within and beyond the Jewish community. We are looking for proposals that align with our social justice work to mirror issues of critical importance within the Jewish community, including equity, homelessness, immigration, and antisemitism.   
• Areas of focus which relate to our Priority Focus Areas and make direct impact in response to the COVID-19 environment.

Young Adult categories of grant support

The Fund welcomes applications for new and ongoing results-oriented projects or initiatives which support CJP’s Priority Focus Areas (listed above); can demonstrate a measurable and sustainable impact; and involve one of the following areas:

Organizational Capacity Building that brings a nonprofit to the next level of operational, programmatic, financial, or organizational maturity. Organizational capacity building reflects an investment in the effectiveness and future sustainability of a nonprofit to effectively deliver its mission. This may also include an urgent or acute need that an organization can demonstrate how it provides unique and critical services to one or more CJP regions.

Community Enhancement Initiatives are the creation of events, actions, programs, or initiatives — virtual or otherwise — that strengthen or enhance a community-building effort to support communities of any type, including those based in geography, spirituality, interest, age, or identity. Community Enhancement Initiatives may include innovative pilots, small-scale programs, or initiatives that help an organization learn how a large-scale project might work in practice and help provide learnings for the Greater Boston Jewish community more broadly. A pilot program provides a platform for the organization to test ideas, prove value, and reveal deficiencies.

Young Adult Community Impact Grant Fund guidelines
 

• Applicants must select to submit its application to one of the two Categories of Grant Support: Organizational Capacity Building or a Community Enhancement Initiative
   
• Applicants must select all demographic groups relevant to proposal.
   
• Applicants are eligible to apply for up to $15,000 of funding (although this is the maximum amount, smaller project applications are also eligible and encouraged)
   
• Applications will be accepted in two rounds. Round 1 application will be due by Monday, December 7, 2020 with decisions and funding to be provided by late December. 
   
• Applicants may only receive one grant from the Fund per fiscal year
   
• Applications must support organizations or projects being carried out within the CJP catchment area
   
• The Fund awards grants for a one-year period. For a Community Enhancement Initiative grant, funding comes with the possibility for renewal for a second year at 50% of the year one grant, pending an evaluative conversation, with the opportunity to modify current work based on learnings from year one. Our goal is for all grantees to move toward a self-sustaining model.
   
• Grantees will be required to sign a grant agreement and comply with mid-year and end-of-term data and reporting requirements
   
• Program and publicity materials for your program receiving funding must include the CJP logo (available at www.cjp.org/logos) and this tagline: This program is supported in part by a grant from Combined Jewish Philanthropies.
   
• For applications involving collaborations between and among organizations, letters of support from all partners must be included
   
• All grants must demonstrate consideration for program accessibility and participation for individuals with disabilities
   
• All applicants must be a public charity with an IRS letter of Determination, have arranged for a fiscal agent, or be a synagogue or other religious organization that is a currently operating house of worship in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
   
• Applications from new and existing organizations are invited
   
• Funding is not available for the following:
  • Requests for capital projects
  • Requests for endowments
  • Requests for scholarships
  • Organizations that currently receive more than $50,000 in funding from CJP. If your organization currently receives more than $50,000 from CJP and you would like to propose program ideas or capacity building, please contact your CJP relationship manager for discussion.

How are YACIG grant recipients selected?

All applications for a YACIG are reviewed by a committee of young adult lay leaders who have been trained in the grant review process, and who have a variety of experiences and perspectives on young Jewish life in Greater Boston.

Contact

Questions? Contact Caleb at caleba@cjp.org