Elevance Health Foundation's Maternal/Infant Health RFP Closes July 31 — Inside the $150M Bet on Closing Birth-Outcome Disparities

The United States remains an outlier among wealthy nations on maternal and infant health, and the gap between demographic groups is where the crisis concentrates. Elevance Health Foundation — the philanthropic arm of one of the country's largest health insurers — has organized its giving squarely around that gap, and its Maternal/Infant Health RFP closes July 31, 2026. For nonprofits working anywhere along the pregnancy continuum, this is one of the more strategically legible corporate health funders operating right now: it says what it wants, funds in the range it advertises, and grades on outcomes it names in advance.

The RFP sits inside a larger structure worth understanding before you write a word. In early 2025, coinciding with its 25th anniversary, the Foundation announced a five-year, $150 million commitment (2025–2029) to community health, organized around four focus areas: behavioral health and substance use, maternal and infant health, food as medicine, and community resiliency. Maternal/infant health is not a one-off RFP — it is a standing pillar of a nine-figure strategy, which means a well-executed grant here is a relationship, not a transaction.

What the last cycle actually funded

Foundation language can be vague; award data is not. In its most recent maternal/infant cycle, Elevance Health Foundation awarded 29 new grants totaling more than $6.5 million — an average in the low-to-mid six figures per grant. The funding spanned the full arc the Foundation cares about: preconception care, pregnancy, delivery, postpartum, and infant health through 12 months. That breadth is deliberate. The Foundation frames maternal health as a continuum "from preconception health and family planning to supporting mothers and infants 12 months postpartum," including physical, behavioral, and social needs.

The practical read for applicants: you do not need to serve the entire continuum, but you do need to place your program precisely on it and explain how your slice connects to outcomes the Foundation tracks. A postpartum mental-health program and a preconception-nutrition program are both fundable — but each has to name the disparity it moves.

The three goals every proposal is graded against

The Foundation is unusually explicit about what a winning program does. Its stated maternal/infant goals are:

1. Reducing disparities in pre-term birth rates
2. Reducing severe maternal morbidity disparities
3. Improving maternal/infant health outcomes

Notice that two of the three are framed as disparity reduction, not aggregate improvement. This is the single most important thing to internalize. A program that improves outcomes for an already-well-served population is a weaker fit than one that narrows the gap for an under-resourced, historically marginalized, or high-risk group. The Foundation's own framing prioritizes programs that "target disparities, address social needs, and remove barriers to care." If your logic model measures only average outcomes and not the gap between groups, you are answering a question the Foundation didn't ask.

Eligibility and the fine print that screens applicants out

The mechanics matter as much as the mission, and several requirements quietly disqualify otherwise-strong applicants:

• 501(c)(3) status under IRS sections 170(b)(1)(A)(vi), 509(a)(2), or functionally integrated 509(a)(3). Fiscal sponsorship and certain supporting-organization structures need careful checking.
• Geographic scope: national programs that demonstrate scalability, or local interventions in one of ten priority states — California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia. These track Elevance's health-plan footprint. A local program outside these states is a poor fit unless it is explicitly designed to scale nationally.
• Indirect-cost cap: no more than roughly 15% of requested funds for general operating and indirect costs. Budgets that load overhead will read as misaligned.
• Grant duration: typically one to three years, structured in 12-month increments.
• Measurable outcomes, accountability, and a sustainability plan are not optional — they are the spine of a competitive application.

That last point deserves emphasis. This is a funder that comes from the insurance world, where outcomes are measured obsessively. Vague aspirations lose to programs with a clear metric, a baseline, a target, and a credible evaluation method. If you cannot state today what number you will move and how you will measure it, you are not ready to submit.

What separates a fundable proposal from a strong one

Across the Foundation's grantmaking, the same competitive strengths recur, and they map directly onto what a maternal/infant reviewer will reward:

Equity-centered targeting. Name the population and the disparity. "Reducing severe maternal morbidity among Black birthing people in three Georgia counties" is a fundable sentence. "Improving maternal health in our community" is not.

Clinical-plus-social integration. The Foundation repeatedly signals that it values programs combining clinical care with social-determinant interventions — transportation, housing, nutrition, doula support, behavioral health — because maternal outcomes are driven as much by conditions outside the clinic as inside it. A medical-only or a social-only program is weaker than one that bridges both.

Rigorous, data-driven evaluation. Come with a measurement framework, not a promise to build one. Baselines, targets, a data source, and an analysis plan.

Scalability and sustainability. Because this RFP is a slice of a $150M multi-year strategy, the Foundation is looking for models that can grow and outlast the grant. Show the path to sustaining or expanding the work after the funding period — earned revenue, health-system adoption, Medicaid alignment, or additional funders lined up.

The four-step application, and why the webinar isn't optional

The Foundation lays out a clear process: review the focus-area overview, download the RFP document, watch the grantseeker webinar, and complete the application through the online portal. Skipping the webinar is a common and costly mistake. Funders use these sessions to telegraph priorities, clarify ambiguous eligibility, and — often — flag what disqualified applicants in prior rounds. For a competitive RFP closing July 31, an hour of webinar is the cheapest edge available.

How to move before July 31

With the deadline weeks out, the sequence matters:

1. Confirm fit in one pass. Are you a qualifying 501(c)(3)? Are you in a priority state or genuinely national-and-scalable? Does your program reduce a disparity, not just an average? Three no's are a stop sign.
2. Anchor on one of the three goals. Pick the disparity you move and build the entire narrative around it.
3. Build the measurement framework first, then the program narrative. Baseline, target, method. Everything else supports it.
4. Right-size the budget to the ~15% indirect cap and the low-to-mid-six-figure historical award range. A $2M ask against a cycle that averaged well under $250K per grant signals unfamiliarity.
5. Watch the webinar and mine it for signals about what the reviewers actually weight this cycle.

Elevance Health Foundation is not the largest health funder in the country, but it is one of the clearest. It tells you the disparities it wants closed, the states it prioritizes, the overhead it will pay, and the outcomes it will measure. For maternal and infant health organizations that can meet it on those terms, July 31 is a real, repeatable door into a $150 million strategy — not a one-time grant, but the start of a multi-year funder relationship for the programs that deliver.

Granted helps nonprofits find and win foundation grants across health, equity, and human services. Research funders and benchmark competitive proposals at grantedai.com.