SFF: Mission-Aligned Grantmaking - Seed Grants

The Skees Family Foundation offers mission-aligned Seed Grants to nonprofits focused on job creation and readiness, primarily outside the U.S. These grants, beginning at $2,500 and increasing over three years, aim to support organizations with annual budgets of $250,000 or less. By prioritizing international efforts, the foundation seeks to maximize the impact of its limited resources, fostering growth in community-based organizations dedicated to alleviating poverty and promoting economic development globally.

NOTE: In order to be more efficient and sensitive to the time restraints of all potential nonprofit partners, we don’t accept grant applications. Our staff discover and research potential grantees. However, if you have thoroughly studied our mission and grantmaking and believe your organization is a good match, we welcome you to send a brief paragraph including your 501(c)3 tax-exempt number and your current fiscal supports and budget.
Our mission-aligned grants are focused on organizations whose primary work is outside of the United States.
Given our relatively small grantmaking budget, funding international programs allows each dollar to go further than it would in the U.S, enabling our foundation to have greater impact with our limited resources.We support organizations without geographic limitations through our discretionary board and family grants, both in the U.S. and abroad, that our family members are connected to and passionate about.
These grants are typically distributed every three years, and go out at the start of the new year.
Seed Grants are two- to three-year grants with increasing amounts each year: $2,500 year one, $5,000 year two, and $7,500 year three, if the organization’s self-determined benchmarks are met after year one and year two. Eligibility for this seed funding is generally available only to organizations with an annual budget of $250,000 or less, in order to ensure that the funds have a significant effect on the budgets of selected organizations.
We encourage our Seed Grantees to use these grants for internal capacity building, but we do not place formal restrictions on the funding. By fostering the growth of small organizations that align with our mission, Seed Grants enable our foundation to support and work with social entrepreneurs building early-stage ventures.

Eligibility

You must have U.S. 501(c)3 nonprofit status, or have a fiscal partner through whom we can designate the funds.You must have a mission focusing on job creation or job readiness.You must have a budget of $250,000/year or less for Seed Grants.Why do you mainly give to global causes rather than U.S.?We know that there are problems that need attention here at home, and we support and applaud those who are trying to tackle those problems. However, the budget for SFF grant making is very small. Our small grant can go so much further in affecting change in developing countries than it can within the U.S.Additionally, the problems that we focus on are much smaller in scale in the U.S. than they are in the developing world. So while we do give to some organizations here at home, we feel we are being more effective by focusing our time and money on international grantmaking.