We know that Holyoke and New Bedford communities have many important needs and priorities outside of these areas. Given limited funds, the MFF board has identified a limited set of priorities for our Massachusetts grantmaking. They are the focus of this RFP. In addition, MFF will convene our grantees with the goal of supporting peer learning and collaboration (driven by grantee interests). Collaborative work can be harder with fewer overlapping focus areas.

Our primary focus areas are the cities of Holyoke and New Bedford. We know that program participants and communities are not always reflective of political borders, so MFF grants may end up supporting work that also benefits surrounding communities. However, we will be evaluating proposals based on their advancement of Community Solutions, Civic Engagement, and Coalition work in Holyoke and New Bedford, so one of these cities must be the focus of your proposal. 

Yes, as long as the primary focus and majority of the work for which you are receiving funding is in New Bedford and Holyoke.  For example, you might have a successful initiative in Springfield that you would like to expand to Holyoke - MFF would likely pay for the expansion work. 

MFF values both, depending on the context and goals of the work. For example, if you are applying for a Community Solutions grant with the goal of changing a specific policy, your work may be deep/high touch. If you are applying for a Civic Engagement grant with a goal of encouraging many people to come to a series of City Council hearings, then the number of participants may be more important. There is a question in our application which asks you to clearly state your goal(s) and why they are important, so you will have the chance to share your own thoughts about the importance of “depth” and “breadth” in your own work.

An organization can be part of a successful Coalition application, and also receive a Civic Engagement OR a Community Solutions grant.  However, it is unlikely that an organization would receive BOTH a Community Solutions AND a Civic Engagement grant.

General operating grants are not assigned to a particular project or program, which means that organizations can choose how they spend the funds. For example, staffing, consultants, training, technical assistance, stipends, professional development, travel and food are all possible expenses. 

MFF plans to fund proposals at the level requested, or not at all, based on proposal competitiveness and available budget. The grant size and term you request should make sense given your proposal scope, goals/impact, and other available resources. There is a question in Part B of our application that asks you to share your reasons for requesting a particular grant size and term.

We know that some Community Solutions work, as we have defined it, may involve Civic Engagement, and vice versa.  Our intent in offering two different types of grants is to distinguish between work that is focused on systems change to advance one or more community priorities, such as affordable, climate resilient housing or improved local transportation, versus work that is organized around a particular civic engagement goal, such as participation in the 2030 Census or increased voting.

Yes. We understand that these structures may be less developed in newer coalitions, but we are looking to fund a group of organizations who are already in agreement about how to work together productively.

We greatly value the knowledge, lived experiences, and perspectives of community members.  We also know that people are busy and we want to avoid taking up people’s valuable time by asking them for information that can be found in other places. 

As a result, our grant development process began in early 2025 with a review of existing written reports, public meeting summaries/videos, news articles, and other government/non-profit sources containing community feedback/needs assessments.  

Building upon this background information, we organized in-person conversations with 12-15 local nonprofit / community leaders, city staff, and foundation colleagues in each city to deepen our understanding of local context.  We included organizations with deep connections to residents, and in most cases, where staff themselves are local residents.

In advance of releasing this RFP, we decided it was most important to prioritize connections with non-profits.  We hosted a 2.5 hour Grantmaking Roundtable in each city with 25 - 35 non-profit staff members.  A key goal of these Roundtables was to directly inform our grantmaking by getting feedback on the kinds of grants, format of applications, criteria, grant amounts etc. as well as capacity and training needs within the non-profit community. We received extremely insightful feedback from non-profit participants, which is reflected in this final RFP.  

Given that our goal was to gather feedback about an RFP that is directed at the non-profit community, we did not host roundtables for residents. We did not want to engage residents about issues broadly when what we can offer in the short term is a grantmaking program for nonprofits focused on systems change around on a discrete set of issues.  

We look forward to meaningful opportunities to engage with residents in the future, such as through grantee events.

MFF hosted roundtables for non-profit staff in Holyoke and New Bedford in June 2025. The insights and preferences shared were shaped this RFP in several key ways, including:

1. We are now offering a range of grant sizes, instead of set grant amounts. We heard that small grants are transformative for small organizations, while larger grants are essential to meaningfully move work in many cases. 

2. We increased the size of grants we will award to coalitions.

3. We heard a strong request for MFF to offer general operating grants to organizations that are doing work aligned with MFF’s approach/priorities. Our “Community Solutions” category of grant is the direct result of this feedback.

4. We received a number of suggestions for specific grant categories which led us to create descriptions of our grant types that are as open as possible to a variety of different approaches to systems change related to MFF priority areas.

Content/format for these convenings will be driven by grantee needs/interests, and will be developed starting in 2026.

In general, MFF hopes to foster collaboration, connection, and learning among grantees, funders, local government, and the broader non-profit community.  We know that stronger networks can help reduce redundancies, align for greater impact, and yield new insights. We have also heard from local nonprofits that they value purposeful, well-facilitated convenings organized by funders because it is hard to carve out time to self-organize these events. 

Depending on grantee interests, this could also be an opportunity to respond to nonprofit organizational/operational capacity needs (e.g., budget scenario planning, fundraising, evaluation, professional development). In this area, we will look to align our efforts with other local foundations who are also committed to nonprofit capacity building.

If approved for a multi-year grant, your second (and any subsequent) funding disbursement(s) will be contingent upon satisfactory review of an short, annual interim report. Interim reports will be submitted via our online grants system. We will be interested in understanding your progress, learnings/reflections, and what factors are leading to or hindering your effectiveness. To share this information, you will have the option of answering a short series of questions, submitting a recently written report (e.g., for another funder), or sharing an annual report that covers these topics.  Apart from a written requirement, we will also conduct site visits at least once a year, and can schedule as-needed check-ins. We will also ask for a final report.

MFF is pleased to fund ongoing work and/or new work in our areas of interest as long as the activities fall into one of our grant categories and align with our priorities. 

No, not at all.  Proposals should address one or more of these priorities.  MFF is focused on how well these proposals meet the criteria rather than how many priorities are addressed.  There are no “extra points” for addressing more than one priority.

Yes. MFF is giving general operating grants because we know that it is easier for organizations to manage gen ops grants rather than to account line by line for funding.  We also expect that many of our grantees will be small, and this decreases the administrative burden. An exception could be for very large organizations (e.g., universities, governmental entities) with many disparate streams of work. In these cases MFF might choose to provide project-based support. We will discuss this with applicants during the site visit process if this is relevant.

Funding is available to support work that aligns with MFF’s priorities. If your entire organization is focused on MFF’s priorities and meets the criteria of this RFP, then you should apply for the category of funding that best fits your mission.  For example, if your organization is fully focused on civic engagement, then you should likely apply for a Civic Engagement grant.  If your entire mission is to do community-driven work in areas related to climate or health equity etc., then you might apply for a Community Solutions grant. However, we expect that most organizations will do a variety of work that is not all tied to MFF priorities/systems change. We are still offering general operating grants in most cases (see above). 

Yes.  As long as the work is taking place in and focused on New Bedford or Holyoke and the Coalition has an effective presence in the city, this is fine. 

Yes, there is space in our application to upload optional supplemental materials. We suggest linking to websites, files or folders/albums containing photos, media and other important information rather than creating a large file that may not fit in the allotted space.  You can upload a document with links in our online system.

MFF views our priorities through a justice and equity lens. Lack of access to safe, affordable, and climate-resilient housing is well-documented and MFF is looking to support initiatives that seek to solve this inequity through community driven solutions, civic engagement and coalition building.  This work could take many forms or come at solutions from a variety of angles. 

A clear and credible connection to systems change is one of the criteria by which your proposal will be evaluated (see list of criteria in the RFP on page 5).  We know that many things are theoretically connected to systems change, but the most competitive proposals will describe how the proposed work and goals will ultimately lead to and engage in systems change (e.g., a change in a policy, practice, power dynamic, set of assumptions guiding decisions, etc.).  Desired system change does not need to be realized immediately (in the grant term), but it should ideally be possible in the near or mid term.