COMMUNITY INVESTMENT PROCESS
Strengthening Nonprofits. Funding What Works.
Building a Thriving West Michigan.
At Heart of West Michigan United Way, we know strong communities are built on strong local organizations. Through our Community Investment Process, we provide multi-year funding to nonprofit partners working across our core impact areas: Financial Security, Healthy Community, and Youth Opportunity.
But this isn’t just a grant cycle. It’s a long-term partnership built on shared outcomes, accountability, and deep local knowledge.
The Community Investment Process allows us to:
Align funding with local needs and lived experiences
Foster collaboration instead of competition
Invest in results, not just activities
Support organizations that reflect and serve the diversity of our region
How it works
Every three years, Heart of West Michigan United Way opens a competitive grant process open to nonprofits across Allegan, Kent, and Ottawa counties. Our approach is designed to be transparent, community-driven, and rooted in partnership.
Applications Open: We issue requests for proposals aligned with our core impact areas: Financial Security, Healthy Community, and Youth Opportunity.
Community Review Teams Lead the Way: Funding decisions are guided by local volunteers, experts, and community members who evaluate applications based on impact, equity, and alignment with community needs.
Multi-Year Funding is Awarded: Chosen programs receive three-year investments to ensure stability, long-term planning, and measurable progress.
Support Beyond the Grant: We offer grantees capacity-building, networking, and collaboration opportunities, because impact grows when we grow together.
We’re not just funding programs. We’re investing in change.
Our funding philosophy is simple: people closest to the problem often hold the best solutions. That’s why we focus our investments on community-rooted efforts that both meet urgent needs and address the systems that create them.
We prioritize programs that:
Reach households living below the ALICE threshold
Reflect and serve communities historically excluded from opportunity
Are grounded in data and driven by lived experience
Collaborate across organizations and sectors
Are transformative solutions
Transformative solutions are more than effective programs, they’re catalysts for deeper change.
They are efforts that:
Address both symptoms and root causes of poverty
Strengthen systems, not just individual outcomes
Break down barriers—whether that’s access, cost, stigma, or policy
Elevate community voice and co-create change alongside those most impacted
Last beyond the grant term, because they build momentum and capacity
Whether it’s a youth mentorship program that also trains parent leaders, or a food access effort tied to job pathways and community health, transformative solutions don’t just respond. They reimagine