The Individual Support Fund — funded by Black Visions and administered by Headwaters via its Justice & Liberation Fund – is designed to support individual community members experiencing economic hardship.

• Reside in Minnesota  
• Identify as Black   
  • For this Fund, Black refers to people who are of African ancestry, whether you have lived inside Africa or not, and includes people who are Mixed and Transracial Adoptees  
• Be 18 years of age or older 
• Have a valid picture ID  
• Will submit two individuals, including contact information, who can vouch for the applicant. The verifiers must be residents of MN. 

We will accept the following forms of picture identification from applicants: 

• State-issued Driver's License or Photo ID Card   

• U.S. Permanent Resident Card or Employment Authorization Document with a Photo   

• Tribal Nation ID Card  

• Passport (US or Foreign issued)   

• US Military ID Card  

• Student ID   

• Veteran ID Card   

• If you are an Immigrant to the US, you may use a photo ID card or ID Document issued by your home nation  

• Expired Photo ID or Driver's License  

Funds will support individuals experiencing emergency financial hardship in meeting basic needs. Specifically, applicants may indicate that they cannot afford: 

• Food 
• Medical bills/needed medicine 
• To pay overdue basic necessities bills (utilities, gas, trash, etc.) 
• Housing/rent  
• Supports needed to access safety 

We ask applicants to provide the name, address, email address and phone number for each verifier.

NOTE: An applicant cannot be their own verifier.

Only one application should be submitted per person via the Headwaters Grant Portal. (Please note: you will need to create an account in order to apply.) 

Applications for the Individual Support Fund on April 6, 2026 and close on April 30, 2026.

Applicants will be notified of their status between May 6-20, 2026.  

Black Visions is offering in-person support sessions for those applying for the Justice & Liberation Individual Support Fund on the following dates: 

April 20 | 1:00–3:00 PM 
April 27 | 5:30–8:30 PM 

Some translation services will be available at the in-person support sessions. Please note: we will only be able to process applications that are in English. 

No. Once submitted, all applications are considered final. We cannot update the application for you or send it back to you to correct. With this in mind, please take care to ensure that all information is correct and complete before submitting your application.

Headwaters has divided grant award amounts into tiers. Applicants will have the option of choosing from the following tiers.  

• Tier 1 - $1,500 
• Tier 2 - $2,000 
• Tier 3 - $5,000

Because we anticipate receiving a high volume of applications AND in the interest of fairness, Headwaters will assign numbers to applications and randomly award grants based on a digital randomizer. Grants will be awarded proportionally based on number of applications per tier.  

We will contact verifiers after the drawing to ensure that grantees’ self-assertions are affirmed by another party.   

By submitting an application for the Individual Support Fund, you agree to let us store your application responses in our grantmaking database. We do this is in case we are audited. However, any identifying documents shared with us are deleted immediately after they are no longer needed. 

All application data is stored on a server in a secure data center. Our server provider is committed to supporting Headwaters’ control over the data from all our programs. They commit to not disclose data from their servers to government agencies unless compelled and will challenge unlawful requests.  

For questions about the grant, eligibility, or accessing the Grant Portal contact:  applygrant@headwatersfoundation.org.