OVERVIEW: The Joyce Foundation is an influential regional funder in the Great Lakes area with grantmaking across a broad range of organizations and programs related to arts and culture, civics and democracy, education and economic mobility, the environment, gun violence prevention and justice reform, and journalism. While its grantmaking prioritizes the Great Lakes region, Joyce supports national initiatives as well.
IP TAKE: The Joyce Foundation has long supported issues areas that many other foundations only recently began to fund, including gun violence prevention, criminal justice reform, and protecting elections and democracy. Across these and other areas, Joyce is unique in its focus on policy and advocacy at both the national and local levels, in line with the foundation’s belief that “promising, evidence-informed policy solutions” are key to solving difficult societal problems. Joyce recently increased its commitment to impact investing, and frequently participates in collaborative funds and pooled giving.
Joyce is unusually transparent for a private foundation, with one of the strongest public grants databases in philanthropy and a straightforward, staff-driven application process. Its easy-to-navigate website includes a thorough grants database and detailed information about its open application process, which starts with a letter of inquiry followed by a full proposal. Competitive proposals generally pair strong policy expertise with meaningful partnerships among advocacy organizations, researchers, and community groups.
This is an excellent foundation to cultivate over time. In a recent interview with Inside Philanthropy, former Joyce Foundation president Ellen Alberding emphasized Joyce’s commitment to streamlining the grant application process, making it more accessible to smaller nonprofits. “I believe it’s incredibly important to have an open door to the folks who are trying to navigate the foundation world,” she said. Don’t hesitate to contact this funder before submitting an application.
PROFILE: Beatrice Joyce Kean founded the Joyce Foundation in 1948 as “a vehicle for her personal charitable giving to hospitals, universities, and the Community Fund (now United Way).” When she passed in 1972, she left most of her estate to the foundation, which now seeks to advance “racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region.” While it prioritizes grants for the Great Lakes region, specifically Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin, Joyce does support projects in other states and nationally.
In 2025, the foundation pledged $250 million toward a fairer and more equitable future for young people in the Great Lakes region. It continues to organize its grantmaking through six program areas—Culture, Democracy, Education & Economic Mobility, Environment, Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform, and Journalism—guided by strategic priorities centered on racial equity, economic mobility, and the next generation.
Grants made through each of these programs must adhere to one or more of the foundation’s three strategic themes: Investing in the Next Generation (defined as those born after 1997), Promoting Racial Equity, and Improving Economic Mobility.
Grants for Arts and Culture
The Joyce Foundation’s Culture grants prioritize the greater Chicago area and promote “the development, growth, and visibility of artists of color and arts organizations of color to advance racial equity and inspire creativity.”
- The foundation’s grants for Creative Organizations mainly go to small- to medium-sized organizations and focus on building organizational stability and resiliency through general operating support, leadership development, and the expansion of digital initiatives.
Grants for Creative Individuals, meanwhile, extend to artists and groups in the broader Great Lakes region and aim to “support the artistic growth, creative accomplishments and professional development for artists of color to raise visibility of their work.” This sub-initiative also supports arts journalism. Recent arts grantees include the Art on the MART Foundation, the Chicago Latino Theatre Alliance, Indianapolis’s Harrison Center for the Arts, and Chicago’s Elastic Arts Foundation.
The foundation also funds the Joyce Awards, which provide “direct, catalytic support to Great Lakes-based artists and culture bearers whose visionary creative practices meaningfully impact and advance racial equity in their communities.” The award consists of a $100,000 unrestricted grant to the artist and a $40,000 grant to an organization selected by the artist “to help realize, expand, or deepen the impact of their work in the region.”
- This program accepts peer and self-nominations from artists in from artists in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin, but alternates years among the states.
- See the program page for the latest guidelines and instructions. Past nomination due dates have fallen in early May.
Grants for Democracy and Civic Engagement
The Joyce Foundation’s Democracy program works to promote equitable democracy across the Great Lakes region and nationally. Its current areas of grantmaking are Voting Rights and Elections, Census Data Accuracy and Fair Representation. The goal of the voting rights grantmaking program is to ensure that systems in the Great Lakes region are “rooted in fairness, equitable access and accuracy,” with grants supporting voting rights, voting access, and the removal of voting barriers rooted in systemic injustice.
Census grants support research and policy development addressing improvements to census methodology and accuracy, and grants stemming from the Fair Representation subprogram promote fair redistricting and the reform of “laws or policies that undermine voters’ ability to determine who represents them.”
Recent grants from the foundation’s democracy program have supported the voting rights and election administration coalition of Ohio Voice, the Michigan League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, and the American Civil Liberties Union Fund of Michigan.
Grants for Early Childhood and K-12 Education, College Readiness and Economic Opportunity
The Joyce Foundation’s Education & Economic Mobility program seeks to eliminate “income and race disparities in college and career success through equitable access to high-quality education and jobs.” The program’s current sub-initiatives are Effective Educators, College and Career Readiness, and Post-secondary Success.
Through the Effective Educators program, the foundation funds efforts to develop, hire, and retain high-quality teachers and administrators from diverse backgrounds for the Great Lakes region’s racially and ethnically diverse communities.
The College and Career Readiness subprogram mainly supports the development of policies “that ensure students of color and students in marginalized communities in the Great Lakes region graduate high school prepared to succeed in college and careers.”
The goal of Post-Secondary Success grantmaking, similarly, supports policy development that will lead to improved access and college outcomes for low-income students and students of color.
Grantees of the Education and Economic Mobility initiative include Educators for Excellence, the Institute for Higher Education Policy, the Latino Policy Forum, Michigan State University, and the Partnership for College Completion.
Grants for the Environment, Climate Change, and Freshwater Conservation
The Joyce Foundation’s Environment program works to address the “long-term environmental challenges facing the next generation in the Great Lakes region.”
The foundation’s strategy in this field is two-pronged. A subprogram for Climate Solutions supports efforts to “put Great Lakes states on a path to achieve just, equitable, carbon-free electric power systems by 2040.” A significant portion of grantmaking from this subprogram supports policy development toward clean and renewable energy commitments and decarbonization throughout the Great Lakes region.
A separate subprogram, Great Lakes and Drinking Water, supports initiatives to improve the water infrastructure of the Great Lakes region, with a strong focus on the reduction of disparities in communities of color.
Environmental grants have recently supported organizations including the Environmental Defense Fund, Clean Wisconsin, the Black Environmental Leaders Association, and the Alliance for the Great Lakes.
Grants for Gun Violence Prevention and Criminal Justice Reform
The foundation conducts its crime and violence prevention grants through its Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform program. This program broadly seeks to reduce gun violence and supports “research, education, and policy solutions to limit availability of firearms to those at risk of violence.”
Grants for Gun Violence Prevention work to advance “federal, state, and local policies and practices that reduce easy accessibility of guns to those at risk of violence,” as well as promoting education on the dangers of gun violence and ownership, and funding legal efforts to “defend evidence-based gun policies and challenge extreme gun rights policies and practices.”
Grants for Justice System Reform seek to “redefine the standard responses to gun crime of aggressive policing, arrests, and incarceration of young adults who commit non-violent gun offenses.” It supports efforts to rebuild trust and a healthy relationship between police and communities and develop alternatives to arrest and incarceration for non-violent crimes.
Grants for Violence Intervention seeks to break the cycle of violence that often leads victims to become perpetrators. It promotes a number of evidence-based strategies, including “focused deterrence, cognitive behavioral therapy, hospital-based intervention, and street outreach.” A past Joyce Foundation grantee in this space is States United to Prevent Gun Violence, which received an award for its network of gun violence prevention organizations in 31 states.
Notably, Joyce Foundation was an early supporter of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy, and is a major supporter of the Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities, a funding collaborative that seeks to “battle the public health challenge that is gun violence.”
Grants for Journalism
The Joyce Foundation’s newest funding area, Journalism, supports high-quality journalistic projects for the Great Lakes area, prioritizing reporting on issues that relate to the foundation’s other areas of grantmaking.
- A portion of this grantmaking is also earmarked for the education and development of early career journalists specializing in coverage of public affairs and journalists of color.
- Early grants from this program have gone to the Institute for Nonprofit News, National Public Radio, the MinnPost, and Chalkbeat.
Important Grant Details:
Joyce Foundation grants tend to range from $50,000 to $400,000. According to its most recent tax filing, it made about $52 million in grants. A searchable grants database is provided on the foundation’s website.
- Geography: Funding is mainly limited to Great Lakes-area organizations or national organizations working in the region or on relevant policy solutions. This funder supports a broad range of large-, medium- and small-sized organizations in its areas of interest.
- Best Fit Organizations: Innovative policy and advocacy outfits with strong alignment to the foundation’s goals and priorities. This funder appreciates thoughtful and collaborative work.
- Less Likely Fits: Organizations seeking primarily direct-service funding without a policy, systems-change, or field-building component. The Joyce Foundation will not fund lobbying, capital campaigns, endowment campaigns, direct services, commercial ventures, religious activities, or scholarships.
Application: The Joyce Foundation accepts letters of inquiry (LOI) from organizations operating in the Great Lakes Region throughout the year, but recommends that applicants submit LOIs at least six to eight weeks before proposal deadlines. Deadlines fall in early April, August and December. LOIs will be reviewed by program staff and select applicants will be invited to submit a full proposal. The application process generally takes four to six months from LOI to funding.
The Joyce Awards have a separate application process, with LOI and full proposal deadlines generally falling in September and October, respectively.
- Grantseekers may reach out to info@joycefdn.org for further inquiries, or to applications@joycefdn.org for specific questions about the application process.
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