Our Letter of Inquiry submission period is now closed.

The 2024 – 2025 grant cycle will open on July 22, 2024. Any updates to the application process will be posted on this page.

The following is a description of our grants. Please read this before requesting support.
Please note: Limit On the Number of Letters of Inquiry (LOIs) We Accept: We will only be accepting a set number of Letters of Inquiry this cycle, approximately 50. Once the submission period opens, please do not delay submitting your Letter of Inquiry in order to ensure that your LOI will be reviewed. During the last two grant cycles, we reached our limit in two days. We suggest that you review the Letter of Inquiry questions and compose your responses before the submission period opens. Current Grantees: We will accept requests up to the submission deadline for additional funding from all the projects we funded in the last grant cycle that are eligible for additional grants. We normally can only offer support for up to three years for each program we fund. This limit is by project, not organization. Current grantees will not be subject to the limit on the number of Letters of Inquiry we accept. Sponsored Proposals: Proposals sponsored by a Tomberg Family Philanthropies Board Member also will not be subject to the limit on the number of Letters of Inquiry we accept.
The Tomberg Family Philanthropies only makes grants to 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations based in the United States and certain government entities or public institutions in the United States such as public schools and universities. We fund projects worldwide that are run by these organizations.
Our grants normally range from $5,000 to $20,000.
Due to the limited size and number of our grants, we normally are not able to support ongoing operations of existing programs. We look for funding opportunities such as pilot programs, demonstration projects, support of new programs, capacity building or evaluations that allow us to make a larger difference with limited funds than would be possible otherwise.
We normally can only offer support for up to three years for each program we fund.
In most cases, we initially will make grants to support individual projects only. We generally will not make grants to fund the operational expenses of non-profit organizations. After the first year, if continued funding is approved, a portion of the grants may be designated for capacity building efforts.
We do not make grants to religious organizations or to fund projects run by religious organizations.
In our 2021 – 2022 funding cycle before we changed our process, we were able to fund approximately 4% of the organizations that submitted Letters of Inquiry to us. In our 2022 – 2023 cycle, we were able to fund approximately 15% of them and in our 2023 – 2024 cycle we were able to fund approximately 17%.