May 2008

In This Issue

• HUD FY 2008 SuperNOFA
• Private Foundation Funding
• Funding Tip

HUD Releases FY 2008 SuperNOFA

After several weeks of delay, the HUD SuperNOFA (Notice of Funds Available) for FY 2008 was published in the Federal Register on Monday, May 12. Updated information about the SuperNOFA and application materials are available on HUD’s Web site. The following is information about competitive funding streams that civil legal aid programs have taken advantage of in the past.

• Fair Housing Initiatives Programs (FHIP)
  Deadline: July 9, 2008
  Contact Person: Denise L. Brooks, (202) 402-7050 or Myron Newry, (202) 402-7095
  Federal Register, vol. 73, pg. 27118

  Approximately $22.8 million in FY 2008 funds are available under three initiatives: Private Enforcement, Education and Outreach and the Fair Housing Organization Initiatives. FHIP grantees provide assistance to individuals who believe they have been victims of housing discrimination. General information about FHIP can be found on HUD’s Web site.

  This year, HUD is offering funding under three FHIP initiatives to eligible organizations:

  1. Private Enforcement Initiative (PEI): $19 million is available to fund non-profit fair housing organizations to carry out testing and enforcement activities to prevent or eliminate discriminatory housing practices.
  2. Education and Outreach Initiative (EOI): $2.8 million is available to fund a broad range of educational activities that can be national, regional, local, or community-based in scope. Activities may include developing education materials, analyzing local impediments to housing choice, providing housing counseling and classes, convening meetings that bring together the housing industry with fair housing groups, developing technical materials on accessibility and mounting public information campaigns.
  3. Fair Housing Organizations Initiative (FHOI): $1 million is available for grants that may be used flexibly to support the basic operation and activities of new and existing non-profit fair housing organizations.

  Click here for the list of FY 2007 FHIP grantees.
  

• Housing Counseling Programs
  Deadline: July 9, 2008
  Contact Person: Betsy Cromwell, (202) 402-4465
  Federal Register, vol. 73, pg. 27136

  HUD funds housing counseling agencies throughout the country to give advice on buying a home, renting, mortgage delinquency and defaults, foreclosures, predatory lending, credit issues and reverse mortgages. Organizations that apply for grants must first be approved by HUD and are subject to biennial performance reviews to maintain their HUD-approved status. Click here for information on how to become a HUD-approved Housing Counseling Agency.

  In FY 2008, approximately $47 million is available for eligible applicants under the Housing Counseling Program, with approximately $43 million available for comprehensive counseling and approximately $4 million available for reverse mortgage counseling. Housing counseling funding will be distributed over four applicant categories, as follows:

  • Local Housing Counseling Agencies: $15,840,000
  • National and Regional Intermediaries: $26,000,000
  • State Housing Finance Agencies: $2,580,000
  • Multi-State Organizations: $2,580,000

  There is also approximately $3 million available to provide Housing Counseling Training, under a cooperative agreement with HUD, to offer training activities designed to improve and standardize the quality of counseling provided by housing counselors employed by participating agencies. HUD's goal is to fund one organization to deliver the full spectrum of activities eligible for funding under this grant, but should this not be possible, HUD may make multiple awards.

  Click here to find detailed descriptions of the Housing Counseling grants awarded for FY 2007.
  

• Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA)
  Deadline: July 18, 2008
  Contact Person: Benjamin Ayers, (202) 402-2201
  Federal Register, vol. 73, pg. 27262
  

  Approximately $8 million is available for FY 2008 for competitive grants (almost 90 percent of HOPWA funds are distributed through a formula grant process to states and cities). Funds for the renewal of expiring HOPWA competitive grants that have successfully undertaken permanent supportive housing projects will be distributed under a separate, simplified process, described in a separate notice from this NOFA. The funds remaining after those renewal awards are made will be made available to the applicants that are successful under this NOFA.

  Click here for detailed descriptions of the competitive HOPWA grants awarded for FY 2007. Although none of the projects directly receiving competitive grants have been civil legal aid programs, occasionally a program will provide supportive legal services as a sub-grantee.

  Find more information about HOPWA here.
  

• Rural Housing and Economic Development
  Deadline: May 30, 2008
  Contact People: Linda Streets, Monica Wallace, Nikki Bowser or James Hedrick at (202) 708-2290
  Federal Register, vol. 73, pg. 23052
  

  Because HUD is required by statute to award Rural Housing Economic Development grants by September 1, HUD published this NOFA on April 28, separately and in advance of its FY 2008 SuperNOFA. Approximately $17 million in FY 2008 funding is being made available through this NOFA. The maximum amount awarded will be $300,000.

  The purpose of the Rural Housing and Economic Development program is to provide support for innovative housing and economic development activities in rural areas. Possible uses of these grants include homeownership and financial counseling; financial assistance to homeowners; creating micro-enterprises and small business incubators; and establishing lines of credit or revolving loan pools.

  For more general information about the Rural Housing and Economic Development program, click here.

• Continuum of Care Homeless Assistance Programs
  

  HUD is transitioning the Continuum of Care (CoC) application from a paper process to an electronic process in FY 2008. Because of this, CoC was not be published as part of the FY 2008 SuperNOFA. Instead, the CoC NOFA will be published separately no earlier than July 1, 2008.

  For FY 2007, civil legal aid programs received approximately $4.3 million in funding under the Supportive Housing Program (SHP) of this grant. In addition to funding housing that has a supportive environment, SHP funds projects that include supportive services for homeless people not living in supportive housing, that helps them to move to permanent housing. More information about SHP can be found on HUD’s Web site.

• Foundation for Improvement of Justice
  Deadline: June 1, 2008
  http://www.justiceawards.com/index.html
  

  The Foundation for Improvement of Justice was founded for the purpose of improving local, state and federal systems of justice. The Foundation's Awards Program recognizes and rewards accomplishments in a number of distinct categories: simplification of the law, crime prevention, child protection, speeding the process, effecting restitution, crime victims' rights, alternate sentencing, reducing recidivism, lowering costs and other significant efforts.

  Up to 10 awards of $10,000 are presented to innovative programs that have demonstrated their effectiveness and can serve as models for others. Open to individuals, programs and organizations, a list of previous years' recipients can be found here.
  
  

• Western Union Foundation Funds Efforts to Help Empower Immigrant Families and Alleviate Poverty
  Deadline: September 1, 2008 (Letters of Inquiry)
  http://corporate.westernunion.com/wu_foundation.html
  

  The Western Union Foundation, the charitable organization of Western Union, supports philanthropic initiatives worldwide. Nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations working to serve migrant and immigrant populations are eligible to apply for funding.

  The foundation's three primary focus areas are as follows:

  1. Creating Pathways to Opportunity: Programs that allow individuals to have better access to educational opportunities and economic development programs.
  2. Supporting Cultural Inclusion: Programs that help individuals integrate into their new communities.
  3. Fostering Hope in the Developing World: Programs that provide basic human services to communities in developing countries.

  In previous years, grantees have included civil legal services programs such as Legal Services of Greater Miami and Texas Rio Grande Legal Services.

• Foreclosure Legal Assistance Recoverable Grants
  Deadline: Ongoing
  https://www.foreclosurelegalassistance.org/
  

  The Institute for Foreclosure Legal Assistance (IFLA), a project of the Center for Responsible Lending and managed by the National Association of Consumer Advocates, is pleased to announce that it is accepting proposals from private attorneys and non-profit legal entities to fund litigation costs associated with assisting borrowers in danger of losing their homes through foreclosure.

  The maximum recoverable grant amount is $50,000 per case, although larger grants may be considered under special circumstances. The cases must be related to preventing foreclosure, and the grants will be awarded for cases that either would not be brought, or would not explore significant lines of argument if supplementary funding were not available.

Funding Tip

A New Web Site for Grant Seekers

Bank of America has created a Web site that provides information about nearly 70 foundations for which it serves as trustee or grant-making agent. Profiles on the site detail each foundation’s mission and the causes it supports, application procedures and recent grants, as well as the bank employee to contact for questions about the fund.

Bank of America serves as trustee or grant-making agent for more than 2,000 foundations, which award more than $350 million annually. The bank plans to continue to add foundations to the site, and hopes to have information about more than 100 funds online by the end of the year.


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