Enhancing Opportunity in Indianapolis is a Lilly Endowment initiative designed to help individuals and families facing complex and varied challenges associated with poverty make progress toward lasting economic self-sufficiency.
Since 2020, Lilly Endowment has awarded grants totaling nearly $130 million to Indianapolis-based charitable organizations to help them generate new ideas or collaborations and enhance or expand existing promising efforts, including those that create good and promising jobs and help people attain those jobs.
Planning Grants
Proposals were initially accepted through a two-stage, competitive process. The Endowment received 220 concept papers requesting more than $835 million in funding. Of these, 36 organizations were invited to submit full proposals. To help finalists refine their ideas and prepare proposals, the Endowment offered planning grants of up to $50,000, and in 2020, planning grants totaling $1.26 million were awarded to 33 organizations.
Implementation Grants
Based on the strength of the applicant pool and needs in the community – which became even greater and more complex due to the COVID-19 pandemic – the Endowment’s board approved increased support beyond the $50 million originally allocated for this initiative. In 2021, 28 implementation grants totaling $93.6 million were awarded to support programs and strategies to help Marion County residents living in or near poverty improve their circumstances. Grants ranging from $180,000 to $8 million were awarded to human and social services organizations, churches, higher education institutions, hospital systems, and businesses, among others. Grants supported their work with a wide variety of community partners and local employers, including expenses for personnel, supplies and equipment, capital costs, and other related costs.
Supplemental Grants
Lingering effects of the pandemic and additional factors such as soaring housing costs and a sharp rise in inflation have exacerbated many of the challenges facing individuals who live in low-income households. Despite these remarkable complexities, the Endowment has been pleased overall with the progress made by grantees. Accordingly, in 2025, the Endowment awarded supplemental grants totaling $35 million to 27 organizations to help them continue to implement poverty alleviation and economic self-sufficiency programs in Indianapolis, enhance these programs in various ways, and make plans to sustain their programs into the future.
Although the Endowment acknowledges that the efforts funded through this initiative will not end poverty in Indianapolis, it does hope that they will help put thousands of Indianapolis residents on the path to self-sufficiency.
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