Spring 2026
TCI NEWS
2026 FUNDING OPPORTUNITY
STRENGTHENING FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES
TCI believes strongly in constantly evolving our work to better meet the needs of our nonprofit partners. We are maintaining what works and also making needed adaptations that make sense. This issue of TCI News will introduce these approaches to our flagship 2026 Strengthening Families and Communities funding.
Focused and Multi-Year Support
Consistent with our expressed funding plan, TCI successfully transitioned all our funding in 2025 to focus on the social drivers of health. Our funding agenda revolves around project support to help advance: 1) pre-pregnancy and healthy births; and 2) advancing parenting resiliency. We’re also continuing with two-year funding support in our Strengthening Families and Communities grant program. In 2025, our average grant towards our $150,000 per awardee maximum was $137,100.
Abbreviated Application Approach in 2026
We will have a single grant deadline in 2026 for all four TCI states — Illinois, Oklahoma, Iowa and Colorado. We will also start utilizing a two-step application process. The initial step will be a pre-application, which will be a succinct, brief request. The pre-application will be reviewed and then some subset of that application group will be invited to a second, finalist application step.
Though it will ultimately be dependent on the overall applicant field, we anticipate inviting approximately 10 percent of the initial applicant pool to the finalist application stage. We’re making this move to streamline the first step and share funding status with our applicants more quickly. Only the finalist applicants will spend time completing a full application.
Pre-applications are due to TCI by September 3, 2026. Learn more about applying in our Request for Proposals on TCI’s website. If you have questions or would like to talk about application ideas, please contact us at mmcgarvey@telligenci.org or 515-554-2908, or schedule a meeting with our team.
NEW 2025 GRANTS AWARDED
STRENGTHENING FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES
Telligen Community Initiative (TCI) has awarded more than $1.2 million in Strengthening Families and Communities grants over two-year project periods to nonprofit organizations in Colorado and Iowa, including $687,452 to six nonprofits in Colorado and $599,645 to four nonprofits in Iowa.
Since 2014, TCI has funded a total of more than $22.2 million in 470 community-based projects in Iowa, Illinois, Oklahoma and Colorado. Grant projects will improve maternal and child health, expand culturally responsive care, strengthen family stability and reduce barriers to essential services. The 2025 Strengthening Families and Communities grant awards may be found on TCI’s website. We're proud to be a small part of supporting these nonprofits:
COLORADO GRANTEES
(six grants totaling $687,452)
Project Angel Heart $150,000 | Denver
Provide home-delivered, medically tailored meals to individuals experiencing high-risk pregnancies and their dependent children. Grant funding will support the delivery of 63,000 meals to more than 700 individuals and their families.
Community Roots Midwife Collective (CRMC) $100,000 | Longmont
Expand culturally congruent midwifery care for underserved families, increasing access to safe, dignified birth experiences and improving maternal and infant health outcomes. Funding will provide sliding-scale prenatal, birth and newborn care that integrates Indigenous ceremony, traditional healing and trauma-informed, gender inclusive services.
Jeffco Action Center, Inc. $150,000 | Lakewood
Expand family-focused services by collaborating with partnering organizations to purchase/transform a former elementary school into a one-stop hub offering integrated health, wellness and enrichment services. The grant will enhance access and efficiency of family supports – advancing optimal health and wellbeing for families, children and youth.
YouthZone $57,452 | Glenwood Springs
Expand the Parent Support Program in four counties using the evidence-based Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT) model to strengthen parenting skills and reduce Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). A bilingual facilitator will lead group and individual sessions and coordinate a parent support network aligned with youth interventions to increase family stability in underserved rural communities.
NorthWest Colorado Center for Independence $80,000 | Steamboat Springs
Expand services for deaf and hard of hearing youth in rural northwestern Colorado. Support these individuals in navigating complex systems, building life skills, and accessing services and resources needed to reach education, social, vocational and other life skills as they transition to adulthood and independent living.
Servicios de La Raza $150,000 | Denver
Reduce hypertensive disorders of pregnancy among Latina women by training Spanish-speaking Promotoras (community health workers). The grant will support screenings for 150 pregnant women, home monitoring for 50 high-risk participants and development of a scalable model.
IOWA GRANTEES
(four grants totaling $599,645)
Family Planning Council of Iowa $149,730 | West Des Moines
Purchase and stock six public health vending machines in low-resource communities across Iowa offering free,24/7 access to condoms, emergency contraception, period products, Opilland Narcan. Building on a 2025 collaborative project with Polk County Public Health, which distributed 1,700 items per month, the grant will expand this model to reduce gaps in healthcare access.
The Birthwork Foundation (Iowa Black Doula Collective) $149,915 | Davenport
Grow a culturally congruent doula network to provide accessible, community-based care for Black, Indigenous and People of Color across Iowa. The project will strengthen IBDC’s core operations, outreach, capacity-building, infrastructure and continuing education to improve maternal health outcomes.
Project Iowa $150,000 | Des Moines
Support a trauma-informed Rooted Job Coach that will deliver holistic training and individual coaching at The House of Mercy and The Village housing complex. The project will reduce barriers to employment and education— improving health, stability and longterm opportunities for women, children and families in Central Iowa.
Urbandale Food Pantry $150,000 | Urbandale
Expand organizational capacity to provide food and wrap-around services by strengthening coordination, outreach and partner integration to better connect families with community resources. Funding will support staff, systems and program delivery that promote long-term family stability and well-being.
2026 CAPACITY BUILDING FUNDING
BUILDING NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS
TCI is again deploying our Capacity Investment funding in 2026. This was initially offered in 2025 as an intentional effort to support investments in ways that will make a nonprofit organization more prepared and emboldened to implement its mission. This funding opportunity is designed to change things about the inner workings of an organization that will structurally impact the work of your organization, such as those sitting at your governance table, the way you utilize data for strategy and planning, and developing more equitable approaches to your default way of achieving impact.
In 2026, applications for this funding opportunity will again be offered by invitation only to a small group of Iowa and Oklahoma organizations — 2025 grant finalists that did not receive grant funding. The available funding will support 30 capacity building projects, distributed approximately equally across our four TCI states in 2025-26. We will use learnings from this experience to determine the most optimal way to deploy this funding in 2027 and beyond. TCI is excited to use applicant input on funding needs to better support organizations going forward. We will share lessons learned and ways this may materialize more broadly in our immediate future as we work to be a stronger funding collaborator. We welcome your input on how this nonprofit organizational effectiveness funding approach could be most impactful in the long term. For summaries of our current Capacity Investment grantees, please visit our website.
