Round 4 Grant Application Review Underway: Transparency, Record Demand, and What Comes Next

On Aug. 12, we officially closed the application window for Round 4 of our Community Grant Program. 

First, I want to say thank you to every organization and the people behind them who put in the hard work to submit an application. Writing a grant application takes real time, energy, and heart. We see that work, and we don’t take it for granted. 

Now that the application period is closed, our team has shifted into high gear. I want to lift the curtain on what’s happening behind the scenes, discuss how our review process actually works, and share an important update on our upcoming schedule. 

To give our team and reviewers the time needed to thoroughly evaluate every proposal, we are moving our next regularly scheduled Commission meeting from Sept. 28 to Oct. 19. 

This decision was not made lightly. However, given the record-breaking volume of applications this round, our team is tasked with submitting and processing approximately 400 individual scores. Pushing the meeting back by three weeks ensures the Application Review Team (ART) and Commission staff can perform a comprehensive, diligent review and assemble a thoughtful list of funding recommendations for the full Commission to consider. We owe it to our applicants, our Commission members, and the public to do complete justice to every single submission. 

When we ran the final numbers for Round 4, the demand blew us away. We received 133 applications, with over $40 million in funding requested. 

This is our largest request to date, and I believe it reflects our team’s dedicated push to spread the word across Delaware. But it also highlights the stark reality of the crisis we face and the vast need across our communities. 

Here is how those 133 requests break down across our three funding tiers: 

To evaluate over 130 proposals fairly, we rely on our ART members — a dedicated team of roughly 30 respected professionals from across New Castle, Kent, and Sussex counties. They bring diverse backgrounds in behavioral health, recovery, corrections, education, and lived experience. Every member is required to participate in a training session to evaluate and score applications objectively using our standardized rubric. 

Because our protocol requires each application to be independently reviewed and scored by at least three ART members, our reviewers are turning around nearly 400 total evaluations. 

Here is an updated look at the overall flow of the grant review process: 

I want to be completely candid with you. Our total allocated budget for Round 4 is $12,250,000. 

With over $40 million requested, we can only fund about 30% of the total dollars requested. That means there will be far more decline letters than approval letters this cycle. 

If your organization receives a decline notice, please hear me on this: It does not necessarily mean your application was bad or that your work isn’t vital. It simply means that we reached the absolute limit of our current funding envelope. 

We view every applicant as a critical partner in this statewide effort. If you aren’t funded in Round 4, I strongly encourage you to keep sharpening your proposals and stay engaged with us. Look out for future opportunities through our Local Government Grant Program and keep an eye on the horizon for our upcoming Opioid Impact Fee Fund Program, launching in 2027. 

We are committed to making these decisions with the utmost integrity, transparency, and care. Thank you for walking this road with us, for your patience as we complete this review process, and for everything you do for Delaware. 

Stay tuned — we look forward to sharing the final award announcements following our Oct. 19 meeting.