Lilly Endowment's Serving Neighbors Initiative: Up to $5 Million Each for About 60 Organizations, but Congregations Can't Apply Directly

Lilly Endowment has opened its largest religion-and-community grant competition in years, and most of the people who will hear about it first are not eligible to apply.

The Serving Neighbors Through Congregational Collaborations Initiative, announced in late September 2026, expects to award grants of up to $5 million each to approximately 60 charitable organizations. If every award came in at the ceiling, that would be about $300 million. The money is meant to help Christian congregations and local charitable organizations (food banks, youth agencies, arts groups, neighborhood associations, parks organizations) design and run joint efforts to meet community needs.

The catch is in the eligibility section. The Endowment is not funding congregations or local nonprofits directly. It is funding the intermediaries that organize them: denominational agencies, church networks, faith-based service organizations, theological schools, church-related colleges and regional community development groups. The Request for Concept Papers says so plainly: "Individual congregations and local charitable organizations seeking resources for their own programs and services are not eligible to apply."

Concept papers are due January 19, 2027. All four virtual information sessions (November 2, 3 and two on November 10) filled before they happened, and the Endowment does not release recordings. An FAQ based on the sessions is expected on the initiative page in late November.

The Initiative in Brief

Funder: Lilly Endowment Inc., Indianapolis.

Total scale: Up to $5 million each to about 60 organizations. The Endowment has not published a total budget, so the roughly $300 million figure is a ceiling, not a commitment.

Stage 1, concept papers: Due January 19, 2027, uploaded as a single PDF through the Serving Neighbors Concept Paper Submission Form. Planning grants of up to $50,000 go to about 60 organizations, with notifications expected by the end of March 2027. Planning funds may be spent over up to one year.

Stage 2, implementation proposals: By invitation only, due July 19, 2027. Grants of up to $5 million, usable over up to four years. Awards are expected by the end of November 2027. Guidelines for this stage come only with a planning grant.

Eligible applicants: 501(c)(3) organizations with public charity status that know how to work with groups of congregations and/or local charitable organizations.

Excluded: Individual congregations and local nonprofits applying for their own programs, and any collaboration focused on affordable housing or other property-related challenges.

Questions: servingneighbors@lei.org.

Why Lilly Is Doing This

The Request for Concept Papers is unusually candid about the problem it is trying to fix, and the background section is the best guide to what reviewers want to read.

The Endowment says it has tracked "a significant uptick" in congregations starting or expanding ministries aimed at their neighbors. It cites two pieces of its own evidence. First, an evaluation of its Thriving Congregations Initiative, which has funded 248 organizations working with thousands of congregations, found that 80 percent of participating congregations said the program helped them build relationships with, and ministries for, people in their neighborhoods. Second, the Endowment-funded Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations study at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research found that most Christian congregations expanded outreach during COVID-19 and are still looking for ways to grow it.

The Endowment then names the friction that growth has created, from both sides:

• What community leaders say: congregations get excited about an idea and launch a new ministry without first learning what local agencies already do or how the underlying need actually works.
• What congregational leaders say: community organizations treat churches "merely as sources of volunteers and financial support," without understanding what volunteer-led ministries can and can't sustain, or how congregants' service fits into the rest of congregational life.

Serving Neighbors is designed to pay for the work in between: relationship-building, joint planning, and the patient convening that neither side usually budgets for. That is why the money flows to organizations that can broker and support those relationships across many sites, rather than to any single partnership.

Who Should Apply, and Who Should Find a Partner

Read the eligibility language carefully, because the initiative has two very different audiences.

Likely applicants. The RFP lists national and regional denominational agencies, faith-based service organizations, church associations and networks, theological schools, church-related colleges and universities, and national or regional community development organizations "knowledgeable about and comfortable working with churches." The common thread is reach. A strong applicant already has relationships with a group of congregations and can credibly convene them with local agencies.

The RFP's own examples show the range:

• A regional denominational agency organizing congregations to work with a region's largest food bank to improve church pantries.
• A seminary working with a cohort of congregations and a human service agency to support unhoused families in nearby shelters.
• An association of rural congregations working with a community development group on a parks cleanup.
• A national human services organization helping its local chapters partner with congregations on reentry support for formerly incarcerated people.

That last example matters. A national secular nonprofit with local affiliates can be the applicant, as long as it can show real knowledge of, and relationships with, Christian congregations.

Not applicants, but essential partners. If you lead a single congregation, a food pantry, a youth league, or a neighborhood association, you can't apply. You can still benefit. Your path in is to get named in someone else's concept paper, ideally as one of the up to three optional letters of support. Between now and mid-January, call your denominational office, regional judicatory, church network, local seminary, or a national affiliate you already belong to, and ask whether it plans to submit. Intermediaries need credible local partners to write a convincing five-page narrative, and the ones who line them up early will write better papers.

Faith scope. The initiative is explicitly about Christian congregations. Other faith-based organizations may participate in collaborations "when appropriate," but the program is organized around Christian congregations and the Endowment's religion grantmaking.

Tax status details. Many denominational bodies have no individual IRS determination letter because they are covered by a group exemption. The RFP anticipates this: attach evidence of coverage, such as the directory cover and the page listing your organization in the denomination's official directory. No grant is paid until tax status is confirmed, so sort this out now rather than in January.

What the Design Rewards

Four features of the RFP should shape how you write.

1. Size doesn't count for or against you. The Endowment says concept papers "will be evaluated on the quality and promise of the proposed programs, not on the projected amount of the proposed implementation grant." There is no minimum. A $750,000 program that a regional network can actually run is better than a $5 million program it can't staff. Applicants may also propose larger programs that combine Lilly money with other funders, but they must name those sources, and invited applicants will have to confirm them in Stage 2.

2. Process is the product. Reviewers want to see an "extended and intentional planning process" that brings congregational and agency leaders together before anyone designs a program. The RFP lists five things your program should do: identify interested congregations and help them study local needs; connect them with agencies already working on those needs; guide both sides through relationship-building around their missions and strengths; resource a collaboration they design together; and help them evaluate and, if it works, sustain it. A concept paper that arrives with the intervention already chosen undercuts the premise.

3. Local discretion over the issue. The Endowment encourages programs that give congregations and their partners "broad discretion" to choose the need. The illustrative list is wide: mental health, domestic violence, hunger, childcare, literacy and tutoring, summer camps, sports leagues, arts, parks, even a gun-violence reduction and buyback program. A credible concept paper describes how needs will be identified rather than fixing them in advance.

4. Housing is out. Affordable housing and other property-related work are excluded because, as the RFP says, they require capital and regulatory expertise "beyond the scope" of the initiative. Many congregations' most visible neighbor-serving work involves their buildings and land. Don't build a concept paper around it. If homelessness is the issue, frame the work as services and supports, as in the seminary example, not development.

The Concept Paper, Section by Section

The narrative can be no more than five single-spaced pages in 12-point type. It must cover:

• Organizational profile: mission, history, major programs, annual operating budget, and specifically your experience working with congregations and local charitable organizations. Show both. Many denominational bodies know churches well and know agencies poorly, and many community development groups have the reverse problem.
• Rationale: which communities you will serve, which existing relationships you'll build on, what you know about local needs, and, for faith-based applicants, how the concept fits your theological tradition.
• Concept: the convening process, likely activities, possible collaborators and expected outcomes, tied back to the initiative's aims.
• Funding level: estimated implementation cost, the amount you would request, why that level fits, other expected funders, and the capacities you have and would need to build.
• Planning grant activities: how you would spend up to $50,000 over up to a year, such as research, consultants, convenings and proposal preparation.

The single PDF must also include a one-page request letter signed by both the chief executive and the board chair, the Endowment's information form, a planning budget and budget narrative in the format of its budget guide, your current-year operating budget, your most recent audited financial statements (or reviewed statements from a CPA firm if you have no audit), the exempt-status form and your IRS letter. The board-chair signature is the item most likely to slip past a January holiday calendar. Get it scheduled now.

A Ten-Week Plan

From early November to January 19, an applicant has about ten weeks, with Thanksgiving and Christmas in the middle.

• November: Decide whether your organization is the right applicant or a partner. Inventory the congregations and agencies you can credibly convene. Watch for the FAQ late in the month, and email questions to servingneighbors@lei.org.
• Early December: Hold short listening conversations with a handful of congregational and agency leaders. Their language about needs and frustrations should show up in your rationale. Request up to three letters of support.
• Mid-December: Draft the five pages and the $50,000 planning budget. Confirm audit and tax documents, including group-exemption evidence if needed.
• January 1–15: Final edits, CEO and board-chair signatures, assemble the PDF in the required order.
• January 15–19: Submit early. January 19, 2027 is a Tuesday, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so staff may be out on the 18th. The RFP also gives no time of day for the deadline, so don't plan on submitting that evening.

How This Fits Lilly's Strategy

Serving Neighbors follows the pattern of the Endowment's large religion initiatives: a national, two-stage competition, planning grants before implementation money, and funding routed through organizations that can work with many congregations at once. Thriving Congregations, which the RFP cites, produced a national network of 248 grantee organizations, and many of them are natural Serving Neighbors applicants.

It also arrives when local service providers are under strain and individual giving is narrowing. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project's latest quarterly report found dollars up an estimated 6.6% year-to-date through Q2 2026 while the number of donors fell 1.6%, with retention at 26.4%. Congregations remain one of the few institutions that can reliably bring volunteers, space and small-dollar givers to local problems. Lilly is betting that better-organized partnerships between churches and agencies will get more out of that capacity than either side would alone.

For nonprofit leaders outside the faith sector, the lesson is practical. If you run a youth program, food pantry or arts organization and have been treating local churches as a volunteer pipeline, this initiative is a reason to rethink the relationship. An intermediary in your region is likely writing a concept paper this winter, and it needs partners who can describe a genuinely shared project.

Granted tracks Lilly Endowment and thousands of other foundations. You can search open foundation grants or look up a funder's giving history to find intermediaries active in your region.