Local Data for Equitable Communities – Mar 18

Posted by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on February 25, 2025

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation issues Local Data for Equitable Communities call for proposals

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has issued a Local Data for Equitable Communities call for proposals.

This call for proposals invites nonprofit organizations in the United States to apply for a grant to collect, analyze, and use data to address inequities in the physical, economic, and social conditions of a place. Improving these conditions is key to achieving health equity where health is no longer a privilege, but a right. Structural racism is one of the leading barriers that result in inequities in conditions within and across communities. The Urban Institute, as the national coordinating center for this program, is collaborating with RWJF on program design, grantee support, and communications.

Local data can be valuable tools to make progress on building places that offer everyone the chance to be as healthy as possible. Community organizations and residents can use data to understand challenges, set priorities, advocate for what is important to them, and hold others accountable for promised changes. Applicants must focus their projects on local geographies, such as neighborhoods, cities, counties, metropolitan areas, or tribal areas.

The goals of the grant program are: inform public policy and improve the physical, social, and economic conditions of places; build local capacity to use data for action; strengthen the use of equitable data practices; and document successful practices for more communities to learn from and adapt.

The foundation expects to award up to 30 grants of $50,000 each, with a period of performance of nine months.

To be eligible, applicants must be nonprofit organizations that are tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) or section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code and are not private foundations or non-functionally integrated Type III supporting organizations. Universities, whether public or private, are ineligible to apply, but are eligible to partner with an applicant that is a section 501(c)(3) or section 501(c)(4) organization. Organizations that are fiscally sponsored by an eligible tax-exempt 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) organization are also eligible. Applicant organizations must be based in the United States or its territories.

For complete program guidelines and application instructions, see the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website.

Deadline: March 18, 2025 at 12 noon PT