Building Capacity for Health Advocacy Grant

Overview

_NOTE:_

* _Letter of Inquiry - For this step one can either -_
* _Schedule a 30-minute Zoom LOI interview with Rx staff between March 3rd and March 31st, 2025. The scribed notes from our conversation will serve as your LOI._
* _Or, you can submit a written LOI, following the guidelines outlined by the deadline above._
* _Full Proposal - Invite Only - The Rx Foundation will invite several applicants with a high-scoring LOI to submit a full proposal._

Building Capacity for Health Advocacy Grant

This grant program is open to 501(c)(3) nonprofits, or organizations with a suitable fiscal sponsor, anywhere in the United States. Grants will be awarded for up to five years in the amount of $150,000 annually. Applicant organizations are encouraged to budget a portion of the total award as sub-grants to nonprofit partners or coalition members that engage with the applicant in capacity-building efforts.

This grant program aims to:

* Enhance the capacity and infrastructure of nonprofit organizations across the U.S. These local, state, and national groups will advocate for social justice through improved health and healthcare.
* Create lasting networks to support advocacy, organizing, and civic engagement on health-related issues.

The Rx Foundation understands that many factors affect health and healthcare. This program seeks to foster the capacity to build lasting advocacy, organizing, and civic engagement efforts. These efforts will adapt as community needs, the policy environment, and priorities change. Key factors include equal access to coverage and care, health equity, social and economic needs like food and housing, the links between environmental issues and health disparities, racial justice, and income inequality.

Priorities

Capacity-building priorities under this program include, but are not limited to:

* Advocacy & Policy:
* Developing and implementing advocacy efforts to change policies, systems, and practices to advance health justice.
* This may include building coalitions, supporting community-driven policy agendas, conducting policy research, and promoting systemic change through a variety of strategies.
* Base–building:
* Organizing communities to create a strong active base of leaders and a broader collective of members to advocate for change and sustain long-term efforts.
* This may include developing leadership within the community, fostering relationships, and ensuring community engagement and leadership in advocacy, policy, and civic engagement efforts.
* Civic Engagement:
* Building, improving or expanding grassroots organizing, integrated voter engagement, and other constituent- and community-engagement strategies to increase civic participation.
* Communications & Narrative Change:
* Training, strategy, and resource development in communications and narrative change, including storytelling, messaging, digital organizing, traditional media, and social media.
* Data & Technology Resources:
* Improving access to and utilization of databases, data analysis, digital organizing, and other technology tools or strategies.
* Leadership Development:
* Investing in a diverse variety of current and emergent leaders to build skills that will empower them to lead and shape community-driven efforts today and in the future.
* This could include mentorship or peer-to-peer learning, trainings on management, strategic planning, and decision-making.
* Network- & coalition-building:
* Building or improving and expanding on existing partnerships to:
* articulate shared goals,
* develop and execute consistent communications strategies,
* set attainable milestones, and (4) track progress.
* Training:
* Host or participate in training to understand policy-making systems (e.g. legislative process, local government) and to build advocacy and community organizing skills (e.g. power-mapping, canvassing, phone banking), including advocacy and organizing training for direct-service organizations.

Background

Since 2019, the Rx Foundation has made more than $7M in grants under this program, supporting more than two dozen organizations working on advocacy, organizing, or civic engagement, with a funding model that emphasizes capacity-building and long-term progress.

Eligibility

_You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website._

* The Rx Foundation invites applicants who are:
* Non-profit organizations with 501(c)(3) status in good standing or with an appropriate fiscal sponsor
* Non-partisan grassroots, people-centered organizations
* Organizations that function as hubs or anchor organizations for building advocacy, organizing, and civic engagement capacity and infrastructure among networks or coalitions of nonprofit organizations
* Ready to share a clear vision for impacting health and health care, along with an analysis of and a practical plan for addressing gaps in strategy, skills, and infrastructure
* Able to demonstrate a track record of effective collaboration with partners

Ineligibility

* These grants do not support event sponsorship, capital campaigns, service delivery, academic research, or work that is strictly programmatic in nature.
* As a private foundation, the Rx Foundation is not able to make grants to 501(c)(4) organizations.