Frequently Asked Questions
- Best application advice.
- Can an international organization apply?
- Can an organization apply that doesn’t have a 501(c)(3) designation, but has a parent organization that is? Can a fiscal agent/fiduciary be used?
- Do you fund operating expenses?
- Do you fund smaller programs that are run through large organizations, such as YMCAs or Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs?
- Do you fund State or Federal sponsored programs?
- Do you have a required minimum number of youth in a program?
- Do you provide grants to organizations in any state?
- Does the program have to directly work with youth?
- Does the Ruddie Memorial Youth Foundation have an established policy on the percentage of indirect costs it will pay?
- I noticed you have a 1 million dollar budget cap. Is that specific to overall operating budget or project budget?
- What age range do you consider "youth"?
- What are considered "allowable costs"?
- What do we mean by innovative?
- What is considered a small to medium-sized organization?
- What are the main weaknesses of applications that aren’t funded?
- What is our probability of winning?
- Our grant cycle
Show how your program is innovative. We are looking for programs that are quite "out of the box" thinking from small/medium organizations. Many foundations like traditional programs with proven results but we want to help find that "new" way to reach youth. The way that is hard to get funded because it's unproven and unusual - that's what we want to fund.
No, only organizations with IRS non-profit status based in the Greater Metropolitan Areas of Boston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, San Francisco and Washington, DC are eligible. Click here to find out if you qualify.
As a federal tax matter, if done properly, a gift through a fiscal sponsor or fiscal agent is considered a grant to that 501(c)(3) intermediary rather than a grant to the ultimate recipient. If done incorrectly, however, the IRS may disregard the intermediary and treat the grant as having been made directly to the non-charity. Being tricky, this would be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Some operating expenses such as salary for a program implementor but not electricity or rent, etc.
Large nonprofits have to make a particularly strong case on how the program or service for which they wish to receive a grant is innovative and why its existing funders have not funded it.
You will need to explain why the money isn’t available from the sponsoring government.
No.
No, only to the Greater Metropolitan Areas Boston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.
What we care about is that grantee programs change the lives of youth, if there is a way this can happen without “directly working” with youth, that would still be considered.
No. For example, we would consider paying a salary line item if that staff person is directly working on the innovative program.
Overall operating budget. On rare occasions, RMYF offers grants to large nonprofit organization. However, large nonprofits have to make a particularly strong case on how the program or service is innovative and why its existing funders have not funded it fully.
RMYF considers youth to be 0-25 years old.
Program staff fees, costs directly assigned to the program (photocopies, telephone calls, and such), etc. This excludes capital expenditures such as computers.
Per RMYF’s definition, innovative programs use strategies or services for helping youth reach their full potential that are promising yet new, uncommon, untested or otherwise unconventional. In other words, innovative programs aim to effect meaningful change in youth through methods outside of current common practices. If the service you are proposing in an Innovation Grant application exists in numerous locations, it likely does not meet this definition of innovation. It should be noted that RMYF Board members may not have expertise in your program's focus area. Thus, it is important to explain fully and with backup data, if possible, what makes your program innovative and on what basis the innovative component is promising.
We give preference to organizations with an annual budget up to $1 million. We have identified the “undiscovered by the funding community” as the niche we prefer to serve, especially given that one of our objectives is to help effective programs increase their sustainability.
RMYF seeks to identify innovative practices that are effective at helping youth reach their full potential. The vast majority of grant applicants who are not funded do not make a compelling case that the programming or services they offer youth are innovative. Learn what we mean by innovative.
Often we receive up to 200 applications and out of those we choose, on average, 6 grantees.
18. Our grant cycle:
- Spring: Pre-Application submission
- Early Summer: Invitations sent to chosen Pre-Applicants to fill out full grant application
- Mid Summer: Full application due
- Fall: grants announced
- January: money awarded
- June: interim report due
- June (one year later): final report due