Our Grantmaking

In 15 years, the Women's Giving Circle of Harford County has awarded 192 grants totaling $705,957.97 to  64 nonprofit organizations serving women, children, and families in Harford County!

Click the links below to learn more about our grantees and their projects supported by Women's Giving Circle awards:

2025 Grantees  2024 Grantees  2023 Grantees  2022 Grantees 

2021 Grantees      2020 Grantees      2019 Grantees      

2011 - 2018 Grantees 

2025 Grant Guidelines and Application

The Women’s Giving Circle of Harford County (WGC) grant program assists a wide range of nonprofit organizations’ programs/projects/activities directly benefitting women, children, and/or families in Harford County.

The purpose of the program is to provide a one-year grant of up to $5,000 each to nonprofit organizations to complete a specific program/project/activity that provides services in Harford County, Maryland. Grant funds may be used for direct costs related to a specific program/project/activity, such as but not limited to, personnel responsible for implementing a project, equipment, materials, supplies, that are necessary for the program/project/activity and administration of the specific program/project/activity (not the organization as a whole).

WGC shall fund defined activities proposed by an organization, and not its general operating expenses (including, but not limited to salaries, rent, etc.). Successful applications are those for which an organization has proposed to DO something specific with the requested funds. If the proposed program/project/activity needs staff to support that specific goal, personnel costs may be considered in the context of the application. However, if the request is to support the salary of a staff person to do the routine work of the organization and/or assists the organization in meeting its payroll and/or other general administrative expenses, those requests would not qualify, and would score poorly.

Examples:

Nonprofit X currently offers GED classes, but there is a months’ long waiting list. X proposes to staff a new cohort of classes and submits an application asking for funding for training workbooks, snacks for sessions, and to cover the per hour cost of a staff person to teach the new cohort. The staff person is currently paid by the hour for teaching existing classes, but there is no funding in X’s budget to cover the additional hours needed to staff a new cohort. In this example, the proposed salary costs support a specific activity and may generally be considered.

Nonprofit Y lost grant funding from another source and is seeking new sources of revenue. Y applies for a WGC grant for salary in order to backfill the deficit in its administrative budget. No particular activity is proposed beyond the routine work of the nonprofit. Because the salary request does not support a specific activity, the application will not receive a favorable review since the request is for the administrative support of the organization. 

When completing the application, the organization shall ensure that its responses to the required questions clearly correlate to the specific program/project/activity it proposes.

The 2025 application deadline has passed.  Check back in January 2026.  

Grantee Reporting

Grantees are reminded that a report of activities and expenditures for the project/program must be submitted to the Grant Committee at wgcharfordcogrants@gmail.com at the conclusion of the project, but no later than the due date for a subsequent WGC grant application. Grant applications submitted by grantees who are not in compliance with this reporting requirement will not be considered for funding. Please use the link below for information regarding the reporting requirement and the report template. Please send questions regarding the report requirement to wgcharfordcogrants@gmail.com.