Community Grants

Indianapolis Grants

New grants provide needed help for local nonprofits

We created the community grants portfolio to honor what local organizations were doing, without holding them to the scale requirements reflected in our larger strategic projects. This reflects our determination to show local support in addition to the national efforts that make up the bulk of our work.

Learn about our Indianapolis Grants

A worker in a food pantry warehouse with a big smile on her face packages canned food into cardboard boxes.

RecycleForce

RecycleForce helps ex-offenders repurpose their lives

Fred Strader used to be a panhandler, manning his Downtown corner each day. Now he’s cleaning up Indianapolis neighborhoods with Recycleforce.

RecycleForce helps ex-offenders repurpose their lives through work

Workers in hard hats and COVID masks having a discussion in a work environment.

A man in a dirty fluorescent green shirt, plexi eye protection, and a yellow helmet with an attached work light is prying the plastic side off a video switcher with a long flat-head screwdriver.

Community Grants

Lumina is honored to support the following organizations serving the Central Indiana community.

Worker on school bus hands box down to another worker on the ground from the back door of the bus.

Gleaners Food Bank

Shaken by a worldwide pandemic, a hurdle the local food bank had never faced in its four decades of service, Gleaners started searching for ways to ensure that our most vulnerable residents – children – would still be fed. Read more: Gleaners provides family meal boxes for IPS students and families

Nancy Gavin in blue shirt on back porch looking down at her mobile device, presumably doing mentoring work remotely. Green bushes fill out the background.

Call & Learn Hotline

The fourth-grade boy and Nancy Gavin had made a connection through fractions. Next came finding the areas and perimeters of different figures. Gavin started talking the boy through his e-learning math assignment. “What would you do now?” she asked him. “And now what?” Read more: Retired teachers answer the call to aid homework hotline

Mike Slocum of Indiana INTERNnet smiling at desk in an office high rise. A tablet, charter, and gay pride flag can be seen in his work environment.

Indiana INTERNnet

Zavion Herron landed an internship at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Civic Innovation while a student at Riley High School in South Bend. He loved the cause. He loved the work. But he loved the opportunity even more. Read more: Indiana INTERNnet: Plugging the ‘brain drain’

Four older gentlemen in suits.

Indiana Bar Foundation

Indiana’s civic health is suffering. The state ranked 41st in voting in the 2016 presidential election and was 37th in voter registration during the 2018 midterm elections, with just 65.3 percent of Hoosiers signed up to cast their votes. Read more: Task force aims to increase Hoosiers’ level of civic education

Dennis Bland, smiling in a long sleeved shirt and tie, leaning against a classroom desk.

College Prep Institute

Whenever Morgan Awe got discouraged or stuck as she navigated her college journey, she had three “amazing women” she could call. They would lend an ear, give advice, and help her work through any obstacles she faced on her path to higher education. College Prep Institute’s mentors open doors to bright futures

United Way

As the coronavirus pandemic hit, the response by United Way of Central Indiana was rapid. It knew it needed to provide relief for the homeless, for children, and for health care workers. And that was just the beginning. United Way’s COVID-19 relief fund: a rapid and robust response