Final Notice for Social Innovation Fund Available

The Corporation for National and Community service recently issued final guidelines for accessing the Social Innovation Fund (SIF). The official SIF Notice of Funds Availability can be accessed here.

 Three key changes from the draft guidelines released in January should be noted:

• The Corporation reduced the minimum grant award to intermediaries from $5 million to $1 million, responding to concerns about the required matching for the higher amount.
• The notice eliminates a preference for pre-identified subgrantees in the intermediary’s application for funds. Intermediaries can apply with “pre-selected” subgrantees, but these subgrantees be selected through a competitive grant process and comply with the other relevant criteria in the notice.
• The notice provides two scenarios in which an entity would not qualify as an intermediary. A national nonprofit organization that grants only to local affiliates that then carry out the central work of the national organization would be ineligible as a grantmaking institution because grantmaking is only collateral to the national organization’s mission and the grants are exclusively made to the affiliates. However, if the local affiliate is also a grantmaking entity and the principal work of the local affiliate is to make grants to a broad range of nonprofits, thereby having a “diverse portfolio,” two or more local affiliates could form a partnership that would be eligible as intermediary 

 For more information on the Social innovation Fund, please click here.