Grantmaking

Annual Grant Application Process

The Maddox Fund is currently re-evaluating our grantmaking strategies.  Please check back later in 2025 for more information on our next Request for Proposals in 2026.  Please contact Maddox Staff for more information on our out-of-cycle Responsive Grants.

Responsive Grants

Responsive Grants are generally $10-15,000 and  can be requested throughout the year.  The first step for these grants is contacting a Maddox Staff member.  These grants will be reviewed on a monthly basis or quicker when rapid response is needed.  For 2025, our responsive grant priorities are immigrant and refugee youth, LGTBQ+ youth, environmental work, and advocacy.

Participatory Grants

The Maddox Fund is committed to sharing power with the community.  In 2023, we had two participatory grant processes — a second cohort of HBCU students and a LGBTQ+ student-led cohort.  In 2024, we hosted a group of environmental justice advocates from the community to make grants to environmental organizations. Each of these groups will be distributing up to $100,000 to local nonprofits.  Please follow the Maddox Fund on social media for announcements about participatory grantmaking opportunities.

Youth

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Natural Environment

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Types of Grants

Advocacy

These grants will support youth-led movement/power building and policy change advocacy that advances our focus areas.  Strategies may include direct actions, organizing training, youth-led movements, and narrative change work.

Direct Services

These grants will support program delivery in our two focus areas.

Capacity & Care

These grants will support capacity building for organizations as well as staff development and leadership care for organizations working in our focus areas.  These grants might include strategic planning, leadership transitions, staff respite/healing, and celebration of organizational milestones.

Where We Fund

The Dan and Margaret Maddox Fund serves 41 counties of Middle Tennessee listed below. Programs must operate within this geographic area.

Bedford, Cannon, Cheatham, Clay, Coffee, Davidson, Dekalb, Dickson, Fentress, Franklin, Giles, Grundy, Hickman, Houston, Humphreys, Lawrence, Lincoln, Macon, Marion, Marshall, Maury, Montgomery, Moore, Overton, Perry, Pickett, Putnam, Robertson, Rutherford, Sequatche, Smith, Jackson, Stewart, Sumner, Trousdale, Van Buren, Warren, Wayne, White, and Williamson

Eligibility

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Partnership Priorities

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100 Taylor Street, A-20
Nashville, TN 37208
(615) 385-1006

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About Maddox

For Applicants

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©2025 Maddox Fund. All Rights Reserved.

Jen Bailey is the Executive Director of the Dan and Margaret Maddox Fund, bringing her deep experience in community-based leadership, philanthropy, and movement-building to the organization.

Jen is the Founder of Faith Matters Network, a national Womanist-led organization accompanying spiritually-grounded leaders on their journey to heal themselves and their communities. Since its inception, Faith Matters Network has served over 25,000 leaders through its programs and initiatives. She is Co-Founder of The People’s Supper, a global initiative that has hosted over 2,000 gatherings in 135 communities to foster conversation and collective healing across lines of difference.

Committed to advancing social change through philanthropy and nonprofit leadership, Jen serves on the boards of the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, the Fetzer Institute, and The Healing Trust, where she is the Board Chair.

An Ashoka Fellow, New Pluralist Field Builder, Aspen Ideas Scholar, On Being Fellow, and Truman Scholar, Jen holds degrees from Tufts University and Vanderbilt University Divinity School, where she was awarded the Wilbur F. Tillett Prize for accomplishments in the study of theology. Her work has been featured by On Being with Krista Tippett, CBS This Morning, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and more. She is also the author of To My Beloveds: Letters on Faith, Race, Loss, and Radical Hope (Chalice Press, 2021).

email Jen: [email protected]