Frequently Asked Questions - General Grant-Related Questions

The Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City services Kansas City, MO and Cass, Lafayette and Jackson counties in Missouri as well as Allen, Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas.

The Foundation funds three major areas: Safety Net Health Care; Healthy Lifestyles; and Mental Health.

Limits to the amount an applicant organization may request can vary per grant cycle. Please refer to the grant cycle's RFP, or call HCF to inquire at 816.241.7006.

Please consider the following when determining how much to request for your program:

  • HCF prefers that applicants do not request more than 50% of their organization’s annual budget
  • HCF prefers that applicants do not request more than 75% of a total project cost

Templates can be found on the HCF Website under ‘Grant Information, then ‘Online Applications' .

FDG attachments can be found on the left side of the page; ADG attachments can be found on the right side of the page.

If your organization does not have certain required documents in an electronic file (for example – IRS 990 form) and does not have the capacity to scan the document in order to upload it, simply upload a Word document that states that your organization cannot send these documents electronically and you may send them via U.S. mail, or you may deliver them personally to our offices instead.

Each organization that will receive a portion of the grant funds must provide a Letter of Commitment on the organization’s official letterhead. Letters of Support are not required but may be used to strengthen a proposal.

Letter of Commitment: The letter must state the organization’s commitment to the project, indicate the specific role it will fulfill, and state its share of the grant proceeds. Note: In-kind resources also require a Letter of Commitment (e.g. the value — salary and benefit expense — of staff time contributed to the project, the value of office space, equipment or training that is donated, or the value of volunteer time or other forms of direct or indirect support such as the cost of utilities and supplies.

Letter of Support: Letters of Support should be from entities that would be affected by the program for which you are requesting funding. There is no limit on the number of Letters of Support an applicant may submit, but more than 8 is cumbersome.

Your organization's Diversity Statement may be included as an appendix and it will not count in the 12-page limit; however, you are still required to explain specifically how your organization's mission, governance, staffing and operations reflect a commitment to diversity under the section entitled "Diversity" in your narrative proposal - particularly in relation to the project/program for which you are requesting funding. NOTE - attaching your Diversity Policy does not fulfill the requirement of the diversity section.

Grant reviewers are very interested in knowing how your mission, governance, staffing and operations reflect a commitment to diversity. Do the demographics of your staff members working on this project reflect the demographics of the clients you are serving or who you hope to serve? And, If your staff or Board is not very diverse in terms of ethnicity and gender, you could use this section to explain why and to indicate how your organization plans to improve upon that in the future if necessary.

Many applicants also attach their organization's Diversity Policy as an appendix to their application to help address this section. Please note that, while your diversity policy will not be included in the page count of your application, it should not be submitted in place of this section, but in addition to it.

For HCF purposes, a fiscal agent or fiscal sponsor is an organization that receives, disburses and accounts for grant funds on behalf of another organization. Fiscal agents assume the accounting and financial reporting responsibility for grant funds. As such, they receive grant payments on behalf of, and disburse funds to the grantee, and they record and document grant-related transactions according to appropriate accounting principles.

A fiscal agent must be a nonprofit organization, must be designated as one of the types shown above, and must have annual financial audits.

If the Health Care Foundation awards a grant to an organization that meets either condition below, the applicant organization must receive its grant funding through a fiscal agent/sponsor:

  • if the grantee organization has applied for a 501(c)(1), 501(c)(3), 501(c)(6) or 501(c)(9) designation, but has not yet officially received that designation from the IRS.
  • If the grantee organization’s financial statements are not audited.

The Health Care Foundation has an agreement with Support Kansas City, Inc. (SKC), a nonprofit outsourcing firm, to provide fiscal agent services for HCF grantees. The Foundation covers the cost of the services and refers applicants to SKC once they have a pending grant award. SKC reviews the applicants’ financial record-keeping procedures to determine whether the firm can expect timely, accurate and appropriate information about grant expenditures from the grantee.

Also, applicants can pursue other sources for these services. Sometimes an affiliate organization of the applicant can serve as a fiscal agent. Occasionally small, grass roots organizations find a fiscal sponsor among the larger partner organizations that they work with. Also, the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation provides fee-based fiscal agent services.

No. Gov’t Orgs need only to submit the following:

  • Online Application portion
  • Proposal Narrative
  • Budget
  • Budget Narrative
  • Any Letters of Commitment/Support
  • Enabling Statute
  • Authorized Budget
  • List of elected/appointed officials (diversity information is encouraged, but not required)

This is the law passed to specify the name, purposes, functions, and powers of a governmental administrative agency. Most organizations have this document in their archives; however, it can be found on the Secretary of State website.

The Foundation will pay for up to 8 hours with a grantwriting consultant for eligible applicants. Please contact Andres Dominguez at 816.241.7006 or via email at with inquiries.

For Gov’t Orgs/Cities/Schools/Hospitals/Universities: Our organization’s operating budget is an extremely large file. Do you want us to submit all of it, or just the portion that relates to our program?

The portion of the operating budget that pertains to your department is sufficient.