A congregation in Cook County reads the funding parameters of a Chicago trust and finds encouragement. The trust supports religious organizations. It is a 501(c)(3). It primarily serves residents of Chicago and Cook County. Every sentence about who may apply describes it exactly.
It submits a request for its Sunday school program and is turned down on eligibility, not on merit.
The sentence that decided it was not about the applicant at all. Per the record, the Elizabeth Morse Genius Charitable Trust “will support religious or sectarian organizations but will not fund programs that proselytize or are sectarian in purpose.” The organization is eligible. The program is not.
This is a distinct shape of eligibility rule and it is easy to miss, because every published list of eligible applicant types will tell you that you belong on it. The test is applied one level down, to the activity the money would buy, and specifically to who that activity is for. New Mexico Arts, the state arts agency, states the same idea in the opposite direction for a different applicant type: programs “must be marketed and accessible to the general public in addition to students, faculty, and staff,” and “the public component must be the primary focus of the proposed project.”
Read enough of these and the family resolves. Four current records carry some version of the rule, and they do not share a test — they share a shape.
The Short Answer
Some programs test the funded activity rather than the applicant. A church, school or university may be fully eligible while a project serving only its own members, pupils or students is not. The rule varies: some funders test the project’s purpose, others its access, its primary focus, or its principal beneficiary.
Chicago Tests Purpose, Not Attendance
The Morse Genius record is the cleanest version because it draws the line inside the applicant’s own work rather than around it.
Per the record, the Trust makes grants only to 501(c)(3) organizations described in Sections 170(c)(2), 509(a), 2055(a) and 2522(a) of the Internal Revenue Code, that primarily serve residents of Chicago and Cook County, Illinois. Religious and sectarian organizations are explicitly inside that boundary. What falls outside is a category of program: anything that proselytizes or is “sectarian in purpose.”
The operative word is purpose. Not attendance, not venue, not who runs it. A food pantry in a church basement, staffed by congregants, is not sectarian in purpose. A confirmation class is, wherever it meets and whoever shows up. The test runs on intent, which means the evidence a reviewer needs is a purpose statement — a description of what the program is for that survives reading by someone outside the tradition.
The record lists other exclusions worth noting at the same time, because they are category exclusions of the same kind: no individuals, no endowments, no capital campaigns, no political activity, no private foundations, and no purchase of tickets or tables at fundraising events. The record states no award range and no deadline, and the process begins with a Letter of Inquiry rather than an application — so treat both figures as see listing and read the Trust’s parameters before writing anything.
Eastern Connecticut Tests Access
The Community Foundation of Eastern Connecticut reaches a similar place by a different route. Per the record, religious organizations may apply “if the funded activities are non-discriminatory, non-sectarian, and benefit the broader community.”
Three conditions, and the first one is not about doctrine. Non-discriminatory is a question about the door: who can walk in, and whether anyone is turned away. A reviewer assessing that does not need a theology; they need a policy and an enrollment practice. An after-school program that admits any child in the town satisfies it. One that admits only children of members does not, however secular its curriculum.
The same record applies the identical logic to geography, which is what makes the design visible. Eligibility extends to organizations based outside Eastern Connecticut “if the funded work takes place in CFECT’s community towns.” The organization’s address is not the test. The work’s address is. Once you see a funder doing that with place, the religious clause stops looking like a special case and starts looking like a house rule: we fund activity, and we test the activity.
The award figures are worth stating because they vary by focus area rather than by applicant. Per the record: Advocacy $5,000–$30,000; Animal Welfare $5,000–$35,000; Arts & Culture $5,000–$30,000; Basic Needs $5,000–$30,000; Children & Youth $5,000–$30,000; Environmental $10,000–$50,000; Women & Girls up to $20,000. Capacity-building grants run up to $20,000 and typically $5,000–$10,000. Multi-year funding of up to three years is available through Community Impact Grants. No specific deadline is listed, and the record says prospective applicants are encouraged to contact program staff before applying — which, on a program whose eligibility turns on how an activity is described, is less a courtesy than a necessary step.
New Mexico Tests Primacy
New Mexico Arts funds colleges and universities, local and county governments, and Indian tribal government entities that serve as a primary arts presenter or key provider of arts services in their local community. Per the record the award is a fixed $10,000 — the record lists the same figure as both minimum and maximum, so there is no sizing decision to make.
The eligibility sentence is the one to read twice: programs must be “marketed and accessible to the general public in addition to students, faculty, and staff,” and “the public component must be the primary focus of the proposed project.”
Primary focus is a different test again, and a harder one to satisfy by gesture. Access alone is not enough — a university series that technically sells tickets to the public but exists for enrolled students fails a primacy test while passing an access test. Primacy is measurable, which means it is arguable in a budget and a schedule: how many performances are public, how the marketing spend is allocated, whose attendance the program is designed around. A university applying here is not being asked to open a door. It is being asked to build the program around the people outside it.
That distinction matters for anyone scanning a funder directory and sorting by eligible applicant type. “Colleges and universities” appears on both this program and on programs with no such clause. The applicant-type filter cannot see the difference.
England Asks Who the Project Is Mainly For
National Lottery Awards for All England runs the same mechanism on schools. Per the record the programme funds projects from £300 to £20,000, and the list of eligible applicants includes constituted voluntary and community organisations, clubs, registered charities, CIOs, not-for-profit companies, CICs, statutory bodies, community benefit societies — and “schools (benefiting surrounding communities).”
Four words in parentheses, carrying the whole rule. The test here is the principal beneficiary: not whether the public may attend, not whether the public component is primary in budget terms, but who the project is mainly for. A school hall refurbishment used by local groups in the evenings reads differently than the same refurbishment used only in timetabled lessons. The physical work can be identical. The eligible version is the one whose main beneficiary is outside the school gate.
The record lists no deadline, which makes this a rolling programme rather than a dated one, and reports the listing as recurring with four listings observed. A school reading it has time — and the useful use of that time is not drafting. It is deciding which of its projects has a genuine community beneficiary and documenting that, which is a conversation with neighbours rather than a writing task.
The Same Fact, Inverted
One current record runs the logic backwards, and it is worth holding next to the others because it shows the rule is about a funder’s purpose rather than about fairness.
Per the record, the BDCU Collective Impact Community Grant Program requires that applicants “be BDCU Members and active Community Bank BDCU customers.” Membership is not a disqualifier here. It is the qualification. The program also requires a minimum of 40% co-funding, with BDCU providing up to 60% of project costs, lists awards up to $10,000, and carries a deadline of October 31, 2026 per the record. Impact must land inside named local government areas — Goulburn Mulwaree, Wingecarribee, Wollondilly, Yass Valley and Upper Lachlan — in New South Wales. The record says the program was established in 2021 to replace the BDCU My Community Program and has distributed over $150,000 since inception.
So the same fact about your organization — that it has members, and that the work serves them — is fatal on one record and mandatory on another. That is the reason these clauses cannot be learned as a general principle about grants. They encode who the funder is answerable to. A community bank answers to its members. A charitable trust answers to a charitable purpose. Each writes the eligibility of your project accordingly.
Sort by the Verb, Not the Topic
Here is the part no individual listing can tell you, and the reason to treat these four as one family.
They look like one rule and they are four tests, distinguishable from the listing text alone by the verb each uses. The verb tells you what evidence to produce:
- Purpose — Chicago’s “proselytize or sectarian in purpose.” Evidence: a statement of what the program is for, written to be read by someone outside your community.
- Access — Eastern Connecticut’s “non-discriminatory, non-sectarian.” Evidence: an admissions or enrollment policy, and the practice behind it.
- Primacy — New Mexico’s “the public component must be the primary focus.” Evidence: a budget and a schedule where the public share is the larger one.
- Principal beneficiary — England’s “benefiting surrounding communities.” Evidence: who actually uses the thing, demonstrated with partners and headcounts.
Then the question that decides whether to spend the week: is the member-facing element separable from the project, or is it the project?
If it is separable, this is the one eligibility rule you can usually design your way past. A congregation cannot change its founding date or its county, but it can propose the food pantry rather than the confirmation class. A university can build the public series as the main event. These are real projects, not framing exercises — which is the honest caveat, because redesigning to qualify means running a different program than the one you wanted funded. That is a decision, not a technique.
If it is not separable — if the activity’s whole purpose is formation, instruction of your own members, or worship — no budget presentation fixes it, and the time is better spent on a funder whose purpose includes yours. Our knowledge base covers the reporting that follows once a public-benefit condition is written into an award, because a project that qualified on beneficiary mix will be asked to evidence that mix afterwards.
Questions Worth Asking
I run a faith-based nonprofit. Am I simply ineligible for most funding? Nothing in these records suggests that. Two of the four explicitly welcome religious organizations and then restrict a program category. The practical question is never whether your organization qualifies — it is which of your programs does, and that is usually a shorter list than your full portfolio rather than an empty one.
Does opening a program to the public satisfy these clauses? It satisfies an access test. It does not necessarily satisfy a primacy test, and New Mexico’s record is explicit that the public component must be the primary focus. Read the verb before redesigning around the wrong one.
Can a school apply for something its own pupils use? On the England record, eligibility for schools is qualified by “benefiting surrounding communities.” A project whose main beneficiary is the pupil body reads against that. Shared use by community groups is the ordinary way schools satisfy it, and it has to be real rather than asserted.
Who decides whether my program is sectarian in purpose? The funder, reading your description. That is why the description is the deliverable on these programs. If you cannot tell which side of the line a program falls on, the records for both Chicago and Eastern Connecticut point to the same move — ask the funder before you write, not after.
Where do I find programs that fund my member-facing work? Look for funders whose own purpose names your community, including membership-based funders like the credit union record above. Our funding profiles and youth programming funding pages are starting points for sorting by what a funder exists to do rather than by topic keyword.
The Bottom Line
Eligibility sections are written as lists of organizations, so that is how they get read — and on a large share of programs the decisive sentence is one level down, applied to the activity and specifically to who it is for.
Find that sentence and read its verb. Purpose, access, primacy, principal beneficiary: four different tests, four different kinds of evidence, and one question that follows from all of them. Is the part of this project that serves only your own people separable from the rest? If it is, you have a design decision. If it is not, you have the wrong funder — and that is worth knowing in an afternoon rather than after a rejection.
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Every figure above was verified against the program record on October 24, 2026. Award ranges, deadlines and eligibility language change; confirm each against the funder’s own listing before you rely on it. OpenGrants does not guarantee funding outcomes; results vary by organization and opportunity.