Foundations that give money to individuals
If you have been searching for a foundation that gives out money to people who need help with bills, there is one thing worth knowing before anything else. Most foundations do not give money to individuals at all. They give it to organizations — the food banks, shelters, and agencies that then help you.
Knowing that saves you a lot of wasted applications. It also protects you, because scammers invent fake foundations aimed at exactly this search. The good part is that real exceptions exist. Certain kinds of foundations do take applications straight from individuals and families.
This page goes through those exceptions: foundations that help with utility bills, medical costs, housing payments, school costs, and hardships tied to certain jobs. It also covers how to find the ones in your own area and how to check that a foundation is real before you share any personal information.
What a foundation is, in plain terms
A foundation is a nonprofit that holds a pool of donated money and gives it out. The money can come from a company, a wealthy family, utility customers rounding up their bills, or thousands of small donors. Federal rules shape how each type can spend it, and under those rules most foundations are only set up to fund other organizations.
So when you see a big bank or a famous company with the word foundation in its name, that foundation is almost always giving to charities and community groups rather than to individual people. If what you need is an organization that helps directly, the NHPB guide to charities that help with bills covers those. The rest of this page sticks to foundations that individuals can actually apply to.
Utility and electric co-op foundations
These are the most common foundation grants a regular household ever receives. Utility customers and the companies themselves donate into a hardship fund, and the fund pays a one-time grant straight onto the account of a customer who has fallen behind.
Dollar Energy Fund is one of the largest. It works with gas, electric, and water companies in many states, and an approved grant goes directly to your utility account, usually in the amount needed to stop a shutoff or turn service back on. You apply through your utility company or one of its partner agencies, and the Dollar Energy Fund page on this site explains who qualifies and how the application works.
Operation Round Up runs through electric cooperatives, mostly in rural areas. Co-op members let the company round their monthly bill up to the next dollar, and those extra cents go into a local trust that gives small grants for things like a utility bill, a housing cost, or an emergency expense. If your electricity comes from a co-op, ask whether it participates. The NHPB guide to Operation Round Up covers how the grants work.
Most large gas and electric companies also run a fund of their own under a similar setup, paid for by customer donations and company matches. The guide to utility companies and bill forgiveness programs goes through what the major providers offer.
Foundations that pay medical bills
Medical costs are the area where the most foundations give money directly to individuals.
The HealthWell Foundation pays co-pays, premiums, and other treatment costs for people with certain conditions, and its disease funds open and close through the year as donations come in. The NHPB guide to the HealthWell Foundation explains how to check whether your condition currently has an open fund.
CancerCare gives grants to people in treatment for cancer, covering some living costs and treatment-related costs in addition to its free counseling. Details are in the guide to CancerCare assistance page on this site.
The Patient Advocate Foundation runs a co-pay relief program and also gives you a free case manager who works on medical bills and insurance problems with you over the phone. The NHPB guide to the Patient Advocate Foundation covers both.
The Living Beyond Breast Cancer Fund at https://www.lbbc.org/about-us/what-we-do/lbbc-fund gives a one-time grant toward basic living costs for people in active treatment for breast cancer — rent, a mortgage payment, utility bills, a car payment. The money goes straight to the biller rather than to you, and applications are only open during short windows a few times a year, with the dates posted on that page.
There are also smaller foundations organized around single diseases, and their funds open and close constantly. If you or a family member is being treated for something specific, ask the hospital's social worker or financial counselor which disease funds are taking applications right now. Keeping track of those funds is part of their job.
Housing hardship foundations
A small number of foundations pay rent or mortgage costs for selected families, and Gradient Gives Back is the main national one that is often taking applications from the public. It chooses a limited number of families facing a hardship they did not cause, such as a medical crisis or a job loss, and pays up to a year of their rent or mortgage payments. You can apply for your own household or nominate someone else on the Gradient Gives Back website at https://gradientgivesback.com/how-it-works, and applying costs nothing.
Be realistic about the odds. The foundation picks only a small number of families, and selection depends partly on whether it has an active partner in your area. Send in the application, then keep working on other options rather than waiting on an answer. For help that reaches far more people, the NHPB page on hardship grants from the government, charities and non-profits covers programs with broader funding.
Hardship funds tied to your job
Some foundation money is set aside for people in a specific line of work.
The Grocery Worker's Appreciation Fund at https://www.unitedway.org/grocery-workers-appreciation-fund, run by United Way Worldwide, may give a one-time cash card to people currently employed at a grocery store, including the grocery departments inside larger retail stores. The application is free and online. The money available is capped each month, and when a month's funding runs out you can apply again the next month.
Separately, many large employers run a hardship fund for their own workers, paid for in part by coworker donations, that gives grants after a fire, a death in the family, a medical emergency, or another sudden setback. These funds rarely advertise. Ask your human resources office, or look in your employee handbook for the words hardship fund, relief fund, or employee assistance fund.
Community foundations
Almost every part of the country is covered by a community foundation, which is a nonprofit that holds charitable money given by local families and businesses and spends it in that area. Most of what community foundations give goes to local agencies, but they are still worth a call, for two reasons.
First, community foundations run a large share of the local scholarships in this country. Second, some of them manage funds that individuals can apply to directly — emergency assistance funds, disaster funds after a flood or a fire, or funds a donor set up for one specific kind of need. Whether yours has anything like that depends on what local donors have created over the years. So the question to ask is simple: do you manage any funds that individuals can apply to, and if not, which local organizations do you fund that could help someone in my situation.
You can find the community foundation for your area through the Community Foundation Locator at https://cof.org/page/community-foundation-locator from the Council on Foundations, which lists them by state.
Foundations that help with school costs
Paying for school is one area where foundations openly fund individuals, mostly through scholarships. Corporate foundations, community foundations, and single-purpose scholarship foundations all may give money for a four year college, community college, or a trade program. A high school counselor and the community foundation covering your county are the two best starting points, because local scholarships draw far fewer applicants than the famous national ones. The NHPB guide to college scholarships and grants goes deeper on where to look and how to apply.
Finding foundation grants on your own
There is a way to search nearly every foundation in the country, and it is free. Candid, the nonprofit that tracks foundations and their tax filings, makes its full directory available at no cost through partner libraries and nonprofit centers. Find one through Candid's map of partner locations at https://candid.org/resources/candid-near-you/, then ask the librarian to help you search for foundations that make grants to individuals in your county. Librarians at these locations handle this request all the time, so do not feel odd asking.
You can also dial 211 from any phone. The person who answers keeps lists of local assistance funds, including small foundation programs that never show up in an internet search.
How to tell a real foundation from a scam
People searching for grant money are a favorite target for scams, so check every foundation you find against a few rules.
A real foundation never charges you to apply. There is no application fee, no processing fee, no tax paid upfront, and no request for gift cards to release your money. Anyone asking you for money so they can give you money is running a scam.
A real foundation also does not find you first. A message on social media or by text saying you were selected for a grant you never applied for is fake, even when it uses the name of a real foundation or a real employee.
Before you share personal information, look the organization up in the IRS database of tax-exempt organizations at https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/tax-exempt-organization-search. Registered nonprofits appear there under their legal name. If the name is missing, or the person contacting you gets vague when you ask for the legal name, stop. The NHPB guide to avoiding financial assistance scams covers the other warning signs.
Every foundation on this page sets its own rules, opens and closes programs based on donations, and can change how it operates at any time. Check the foundation's own website or call before you apply, and never pay anyone to help you get a grant.
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