The Elevation Grant Program aims to:
- Address the numerous root causes of violent crime,
- Increase resident-led solutions, discovering new innovative efforts,
- Invest in infrastructure development for grassroots organizations, ensuring that hope, abundance, peace, resilience, and safety are expressed and elevated.
Geographic Location
Marion County
Timeline
ROUND 6:
July 7, 2025: Nine month progress report due
Sept. 30, 2025: Grant cycle period ends
Oct. 31, 2025: Final grant reports due
Application Prep for 2025 Elevation Grant Program
Click below for details on how to prepare for the 2025 Elevation Grant Program, which opens Sept. 22.
Interest Areas
Thriving Neighborhoods
Empowered Youth/Young Adult
Restoration and Resilience
Justice-Involved Supports
Intervention
Priority Population
Individuals meeting the criteria below:
- Individuals most at-risk of violent victimization or perpetration of violent acts (previously shot/known gun activity, close friend/family member shot in last 12 months), referring to pro-social & supported grassroots and community-based organizations.
- Individuals with multiple interactions with the criminal legal system and unemployed, underemployed, and/or without a high school diploma or HSE/GED.
Definitions
To ensure alignment with the mission and vision of the Elevation Grant Program, we want to provide clear definitions around violent crime. This shared understanding helps us collectively focus on addressing and reducing the types of violence that most impact our communities.
Crime Prevention is defined as any effort that seeks to reduce initial or chronic interaction with criminal and/or juvenile legal systems and increase the safety of Indianapolis residents and their neighborhoods by reducing risk factors (factors that increase the likelihood of engaging with the juvenile or criminal legal system) or increasing protective factors (factors that decrease the impact of risk factors).
Violent Crime is defined as any crime carried out in a violent manner, including but not limited to violent acts carried out with a gun.
Elevation Grant Program Focus Areas
Thriving Neighborhoods
Place-based efforts are designed to support neighborhoods that promote safety, strengthen social networks among residents and reduce or prevent crime in a specific geographical area as defined by a neighborhood and/or community and led by engaged residents and community leaders. Organizations applying for support in this area must be able to measure how efforts have increased residents’ safety and awareness in a particular area through resident surveys, increased crime reporting, or using crime statistics. These efforts may include:
- a focus on sustained efforts to engage residents and community over time to increase social bonds and decrease crime within specific neighborhoods, zip codes, or other geographical areas (i.e., crime watch, block parties, bystander safety workshops and trainings, resource fairs, anti-violence messaging campaigns, etc.)
- a focus on building community partnerships with public systems (law enforcement, court systems, prosecutor’s office, and corrections) within a specific geographical area to help reduce criminal activity by assisting with solving crimes, increasing crime reporting, or providing information to help prevent the occurrence of a crime (i.e., reentry resource fairs for families & community, driver’s license reinstatement fairs, engage in truth and reconciliation process to increase public trust, etc.)
- a focus on improving physical assets and spaces within a neighborhood that has the potential of improving resident safety and/or deterring criminal behavior and/or activity. (i.e., physical design and beautification to promote a sense of ownership and decrease stigmatization of an undesirable area).
Empowered Youth and Young Adults
Programs focus their efforts on providing supportive services (such as employment, education, mentoring, recreation, and family support services) to youth and young adults who face unique challenges and may have a higher likelihood of community disengagement without the proper intervention strategies. Organizations applying in this area should be able to demonstrate the impact of services and the ability to improve current conditions of program participants. A formal mentorship component should include regular meetings (at least three to four times a month) of sufficient duration (six to twelve months). Priorities for organizations that provide services to both youth and the parent/guardians.
This effort may include a focus to increase protective factors and develop resiliency skills of specifically targeted youth and adult populations, including education, employment, and housing services:
- Youth (12-16) including those in foster care, struggling academically, suspended or expelled from school multiple times, truant, or known to be affiliated with gang activity.
- Opportunity Youth (16-24) also known as disengaged youth, are out of school, not enlisted, and not working, often resulting from systematic barriers to jobs and education.
- Young Adults (24-35) who face unique social-economic or social-emotional challenges, e.g., chronic unemployment, suffering from a substance use disorder, and/or trauma.
Restoration and Resilience
Providing appropriate community-based social-emotional development opportunities, mental health support, conflict resolution skills for youth and young adults. Programs and/or services that promote healing centers, trauma response services, therapeutic models, and reduce the use of drugs and/or alcohol. (i.e., recovery café, mediation centers, yoga, cognitive-behavioral therapy, art therapy & artistic expression programming).
Justice-Involved Supports
Programs focus their efforts on providing supportive services to residents currently interacting with the criminal legal system. These services support productive citizenship, financial self-sufficiency and reduce recidivism. Organizations applying in this area should be able to demonstrate how efforts influence an individual’s ability to gain skills, obtain work, secure housing, and prevent interaction with the local criminal legal system after being convicted of a crime.
These efforts may include:
- a focus on providing support services to youth to prevent interaction with the juvenile legal system, the adult criminal legal systems, or gangs
- a focus on providing support services to adults who were or are currently involved in the criminal legal system to become economically self-sufficient, reintegrate into the local community and reduce recidivism
Intervention
Programs/efforts that implement integrated 24/7 crisis response services and supports for the priority population, ages 18-35. The response services could include housing, food, accredited childcare, mental health supports, and other crisis help after 6 pm or on the weekends. Immediate support for sheltering fathers with children in times of crisis is an area of need. For intimate partner violence, The Elevation Grant Program will consider strategies that engage and service perpetrators/actors of violence in order to get to the root causes/prevent issues in the future and/or intervene with current abuse.
Gun Violence Reduction Strategy
Need more info?
Questions should be directed to Director of Special Programs Josette Robinson