Innovation in Effective Compassion Home > Transforming Government > Expanding Partnerships > Mini-Grant Model

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Another tool promoted by the FBCI to fund small faith-based and community-based nonprofit organizations is the mini-grant. These grants comprise manageable but meaningful award amounts based on the management capabilities of many small organizations.  Typically, many government grants are far larger than small nonprofit organizations can effectively manage. An organization with a few employees, a few dedicated volunteers, and a shoestring budget would likely be overwhelmed by a sudden influx of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Often, an organization like this can accomplish more with a $25,000 grant than large bureaucracies could accomplish with ten times that amount.  

In addition to being more manageable for smaller organizations, effective mini-grant programs also contain substantive technical support for grantees. This assistance is designed to help first-time grantees meet all government performance standards, data reporting, and other requirements. It also has the end result of honing organizational programs and operations in ways that increase the capacity of these organizations to provide quality services to their communities after the grant has ended.

For example, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has pioneered a mini-grant program to partner small nonprofits with local government “One Stop Career Centers” to serve high-need individuals. DOL realized early on that small faith-based and community-based organizations are often uniquely equipped to provide the highly personalized training and support that these individuals need to succeed in employment. However, the size of a typical DOL grant—worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars—was unmanageable for many small organizations. Thus, DOL pioneered its Grassroots Grants program in 2002.

Through these grassroots grants, DOL has funded local organizations across the country that are uniquely able to help high-need individuals find and keep good jobs. The initial grants were capped at $25,000 and limited to organizations with five or fewer employees. Over time, DOL realized that the administrative burden of these grants to DOL sometimes outweighed their measurable benefits. Accordingly, DOL increased the grant size to $50,000–$75,000, extended the service period from 12 to 18 months, and allowed organizations with more than five employees to apply. Those refinements have helped achieve a balance between the complexity of managing the grants and the drive to reach as deep into the community as possible. 

Since 2002, DOL's Grassroots Grants have awarded nearly $11 million to 247 urban, suburban, and rural nonprofits. In 2008, one year into the 18-month grant cycle, the 97 active grantees had already collectively leveraged nearly 115,000 volunteer hours and helped place more than 8,679 of the hardest-to-serve clients in jobs and 3,445 in post-secondary education or training.