How La Crosse Area Community Foundation reviews and decides on grants

September 24, 2025

By Lauren Journot, Impact Director

If you’ve ever applied for a grant, you know the anticipation that comes after hitting “submit.” What happens next? At the La Crosse Area Community Foundation, we want you to know how the process works — not just because transparency matters, but because it helps you prepare stronger applications and helps our community understand how donor dollars are put to work.

Step 1: Submitting a grant application

It all starts in our online grants portal, where applicants complete an eligibility quiz. To ensure funding is going where it’s most needed, applicants first answer a short eligibility quiz. Most applicants are 501(c)(3) public charities, local government bodies such as schools or municipalities, or charitable projects applying with a fiscal sponsor.

The key requirement? Your project must benefit people here in La Crosse County. And if you’ve received a grant before, you’ll need to have your follow-up requirements completed before applying again.

Some applications are quick — a micro-grant may only take about half an hour to complete. Others, like capacity-building grants, ask for more detail and planning. Big or small, every application is a chance to strengthen our community.

Step 2: Staff review and evaluation

Once applications come in, our staff takes the first look. We’re checking to make sure everything is complete, that eligibility requirements are met, and that the proposal lines up with the Foundation’s priorities.

We pay close attention to things like:

• Whether the project description is clear.
• Whether the budget makes sense.
• How well the project meets a community need.
• Due diligence to ensure we’re granting according to our foundation’s guidelines.

Depending on the grant type, we use different rubrics or tools — for example, capacity-building grants come with an organizational self-assessment to help gauge leadership, governance, and sustainability to understand if the grant type is an appropriate fit.

Step 3: Community-based grants committee review

Next, applications move to our grants committee. This group is made up of LACF board members and at-large community members who bring different perspectives and experiences to the table.

They evaluate each application against a rubric, and the impact department provides an analysis of where each application fell in the scoring process. Depending on how many applications come in that quarter, we take 15-25 of the top-scoring applications, compare them against the dollars available, weigh the potential community impact, and balance urgent needs with long-term benefits.

When a committee member has a tie to an organization, they don’t participate in the evaluation or decision-making for that applicant. That way, decisions remain fair.

We always receive more requests than we can fund, which makes this part of the process thoughtful and, at times, difficult.

Step 4: Final decision by the board of directors

The committee makes recommendations, but our board of directors makes the final call. The board reviews the committee’s recommendations, confirms the allocations, and votes on the awards. This step is an important safeguard, making sure we’re handling donor dollars with the responsibility and care they deserve.

Step 5: Grant awards and reporting

When funding is awarded, nonprofits get to put their ideas into action. But we don’t stop there. Every grant comes with a reporting step so we can all learn what worked, what was achieved, and what impact was made.

Reports are scaled to the size of the grant — smaller awards might need just a brief update, while larger ones call for more detailed results. Staying current on reports also keeps organizations eligible for future opportunities.

This cycle — apply, review, award, report — is how we make sure every grant dollar makes a difference in our community.

Committed to thoughtfulness and integrity

Our grantmaking process is about transparency, with clear criteria and reporting expectations. It’s about equity, with committee members stepping aside if they have a conflict and a group of reviewers who represent the community’s diversity shaping the conversation. It’s about accountability, with both staff and our board involved in oversight. And above all, it’s about community impact — prioritizing projects that improve life here in the greater La Crosse area.