Change-Maker Grant for Homeless Program

Trinity Haven, Indiana’s first transitional housing sanctuary for LGBTQ teenagers, has received a Change-Maker grant of $100,000 from Impact 100 Greater Indianapolis. A charitable women’s giving circle, Impact 100 targets arts and culture, education, environment, family, and health and wellness, according to Terry Mumford, volunteer president.

“Our grant pool this year was $215,000,” Mumford said. From that pool Impact 100 approved two $100,000 grants to Change-Makers of 2018 (Trinity Haven and Brookside Community Development Corporation) and $5,000 grants to Change-Maker finalists: Kennedy King Memorial Initiative, Earth Charter Indiana, and NeuroHope. “Each of the five grantees was recommended to the membership by one of our grant review committees, which we refer to as our Focus Area Committees [FACs],” she added.

According to Mumford, FACs operate independently and seek to identify qualified projects that are innovative and address an urgent need. She said the requesting nonprofit organization must prove capacity to implement the grant and provide a realistic budget. “What each of our FACs look at is project cost and the plans for funding it. We are really looking at innovative, impactful programs and want to see that the funding picture makes sense,” she said.

Trinity Haven, located in Midtown, benefited from the fact that Christian Theological Seminary’s Faith & Action program had also provided a grant.

Faith & Action Grants Confront Poverty

“The CTS money was part of the story of Trinity Haven and part of the answer to the question we ask about funding the budget,” Mumford noted, adding, “LGBTQ teen homelessness is a growing problem, and based on the information we were provided, it’s unaddressed.”

“The Trinity Haven Project will be a unique program,” she continued. “It’s establishing a model that could hopefully be expanded or replicated by others.”