Community Engagement Grants

Community Engagement Grants

Funder: PKD Foundation

Program Overview:
The Community Engagement Grants program supports PKD Centers of Excellence in implementing community-level initiatives, programs, and events that educate and spread awareness of PKD. In 2023, the PKD Foundation awarded $40,000 in community grants.

Mission and Goals

Built upon the belief that the best way to provide PKD-centered care is through patient-focused, comprehensive care with coordination and support of an integrated care team guided by patient navigation services. The program's mission stands on three pillars:
• Understanding PKD through research
• Ensuring better care for all individuals with PKD
• Educating and empowering the community

Award Details

• Funding Amount: Up to $6,000 per grant for one year
• Funding Contingent: Upon designation in the PKD Center of Excellence program

Eligible Project Types

The community grant cycle solicits applications in the following areas:
• Host a patient educational or awareness seminar
• Improve underdiagnosis and misdiagnosis of PKD among the general chronic kidney disease community
• Encourage primary care and non-specialized clinicians to refer patients with PKD to specialists at the PKD Foundation Centers of Excellence and Partner Clinics
• Collect and address challenges from patients in your community around barriers to accessing local care
• Support shared decision-making around dialysis modalities and related barriers
• Improve support of preparations for transplant, including early education and the transplant evaluation process, especially for those candidates affected by the race-based calculation to estimate eGFR
• Training in diversity, cultural sensitivity, and working with underrepresented groups within the ADPKD community (individuals with disabilities, people of color, individuals who speak a non-English language)
• Active outreach initiatives to underrepresented groups within the ADPKD community
• Identify the social determinants of health that affect your community and identify a plan to assist patients in overcoming those barriers
• Note: Proposal topics are not limited to the above suggestions

Eligibility Requirements

• Applicants must be team members in the PKD Foundation's Centers of Excellence program
• Grants do NOT support:
- Indirect costs - Salary costs for individuals employed on the project - Capital expenses (computers, furniture, building fixtures)
• Requests for funds can support:
- Participant costs - Facilitator/instructor expenses (person providing direct service to participants)
• Grants require at least two investigators:
1. Clinician, nurse practitioner, patient navigator, or other care team member 2. A patient stakeholder
• PKD Foundation encouraged including members of the center's Patient Advisory Panel in the initiative planning process

Project Requirements

• All funded organizations and institutions must demonstrate a commitment to diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion
• Projects should be impactful, measurable, and have potential to be sustainable and scalable through future support
• Projects can be new or existing grant-supported areas and/or pilot initiatives

Review and Award Process

• Review conducted by the PKD Foundation's COE Advisory Panel review committee
• Award amounts are justified in each proposal
• Each grant is funded for one year
• Funds must be used solely for purposes specified in the approved proposal

Reporting Requirements

• Grantees must submit a final Progress and Financial Report
• Grantees are encouraged to present results at PKD Foundation's annual Centers of Excellence or PKD Connect Conferences
• Attribution required: Awardees must provide appropriate attribution of the PKD Foundation in any publication, news release, or presentation resulting from the funded work
• Suggested attribution language: "This project was partially funded by a grant from the Polycystic Kidney Disease Foundation, pkdcure.org. The Foundation had no role in care team design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the communication for publication."
• PKD Foundation must receive a copy of any publication and/or news release

Liability and Responsibility

• The PKD Foundation serves as a grantor, not a sponsor
• Responsibility for liability issues and all reporting requirements (local, state, and federal regulations) resides with the employment institution, not the PKD Foundation

Geographic Scope: United States (PKD Centers of Excellence and Partner Clinics)

Contact: Not specified in provided materials; likely available through pkdcure.org or Centers of Excellence program office