Emergency Assistance fund

Emergency Assistance Funds — funded by Black Visions and administered by PFund – are designed to support individual community members experiencing emergency and economic hardship.

To be eligible for the Emergency Assistance Funds, applicants must meet the following requirements:

• Reside in the Twin Cities Metro Area (Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott, or Washington County, Minnesota)
• Be 18 years of age or older at the time of application
• Identify as Black. For the purposes of this fund, Black Visions defines Black as:
  • Any person of direct African-ancestry, whether you have lived inside Africa or not, and includes people who are Mixed and Transracial Adoptees; and:
    • Who also have internalized Blackness as a political consciousness; and
    • Who hold a commitment to the political project of liberation for African peoples, wherever they are on this planet, as well as liberation for all peoples experiencing oppression.
• Identify as LGBTQ+ or Allied
  • For the purposes of this fund, PFund defines “LGBTQ+” as including, but not limited to, people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, Two-Spirit, nonbinary, gender-expansive, or another sexual orientation or gender identity within the LGBTQ+ community. Allies are people who support individuals and communities with those identities.
• Have a valid picture ID – Please see the list below for accepted forms of identification.
• Two Individual Verifiers – The applicant must submit the contact information for two individuals who can vouch for the applicant’s eligibility for funds. The verifiers must be residents of MN.
• Disqualified Individuals – PFund Foundation staff and board members and their families are not eligible to apply.

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

If you are selected in the drawing to receive funds, and you do not have a valid ID that lists a Twin Cities address, applicants will be asked to provide the name, address, email address, phone number, and relationship to the applicant for each verifier. Verifiers must speak English and be residents of Minnesota. We can only process applications that are in English.

We will call to verify eligibility, including identity and residence in Minnesota. We will not ask verifiers any questions about citizenship status, banking information, or any other private information.

PFund will host a virtual info session that will be recorded and posted to our website. The registration link is listed below. If you have additional questions after reviewing the info session recording and FAQ, please reach out to: EAF@pfundfoundation.org or (612) 454-7152.

PFund has divided grant award amounts into tiers. The tier you select does not change the likelihood of your application being selected. Applicants will choose from the following tiers:

• $1,500
• $2,500
• $5,000

A total of $700,000 is available in the Emergency Assistance Fund, to be distributed in amounts of $1,500, $2,500, or $5,000. Depending on the requested amounts of the randomly selected applicants, a total of 150-450 grants will be awarded.

To be selected to receive a grant, applicants must meet all of the eligibility criteria stated above and must demonstrate a financial hardship. In determining financial hardship, PFund may consider an applicant’s household income, loss of employment, extraordinary expenses, housing instability, medical circumstances, access to other resources, and other relevant factors. PFund may require supporting documentation in determining an applicant’s need, but may waive this requirement if PFund determines collecting supporting documentation would create unreasonable hardship or delay emergency assistance.

Because we anticipate receiving a high volume of applications AND in the interest of fairness, PFund will randomly select applications to apply for emergency grants based on a digital randomizer.

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

After grantees have been selected, PFund will send you the full application form to collect additional information, including payment information. Grantees will choose either check payment or ACH transfer to a bank account. We will give all the candidates 10 calendar days to respond and complete the application form.

During this time, PFund will email and call by phone to confirm finalists’ place in the program. If we do not hear from someone within that timeframe, we disqualify them. To prevent disqualification, applicants should be sure to enter their correct email address and phone number.

By submitting an application for an emergency grant, you agree to let us store your application responses in our grantmaking database. We are required to save this information for successful applicants in case of an audit. 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 PFund’s 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.