Emergency Grants are intended for sudden, unanticipated and unavoidable challenges that, if not addressed immediately, could threaten an organization's stability and/or ability to achieve its mission.
Eligible Requests
Specifically, the following types of requests are eligible for consideration:
Emergencies due to
- Natural disaster (fire, flood, earthquake, landslide, etc.)
- Theft or damage to equipment required to operate core programs
- Accident or unexpected occurrence that causes facilities to be inaccessible or programs unable to be operated until resolved.
Compelling reasons to shorten and simplify the review process must exist. If you're not sure if your proposal idea would qualify, you can ask us about it.
Example of an Emergency Grant request that MMT funded:
A truck crashed into the leased building housing a community service organization, damaging the building, disrupting operations and displacing most staff members. Emergency Grant funds from MMT helped the organization relocate so it could resume operations as quickly as possible.
Ineligible Requests
MMT's Emergency Grants are not intended to address an organization's failure to comply with legal requirements or problems that can be attributed to organizational neglect; failure to plan for likely contingencies, such as the breakdown of aging equipment; or to replace a gradual loss of organizational funding. In addition, the Emergency Grant program cannot be used solely to expedite the standard processing time for a Responsive or Grassroots Grants application.
Examples of projects that have been determined NOT to qualify for an emergency grant:
- Replacing or repairing aging equipment (which should have been addressed earlier through a maintenance budget)
- Replacing a gradual loss of funding/declining donation income or
lost government funding
- Providing interim funding while waiting for government reimbursement
- Starting up new programs
- Addressing problems resulting from an organization's failure to adequately plan or exercise duty of care. For example:
- waiting until a lease expires before trying to locate alternate space
- relying on a small number of donors for support without having developed a diversified plan to sustain programs if that support is withdrawn
- failing to pay taxes
- running operating deficits over multiple years
- not anticipating construction contingency costs.
Note regarding emergency food requests: MMT is currently responding to the need for emergency food by providing resources to the Oregon Food Bank Network rather than through grants to individual pantries or regional food banks. However, those organizations may still be eligible to apply for projects other than food purchase (e.g., equipment, volunteer recruitment, etc.) through Grassroots or Responsive Grants programs as appropriate.
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