April 29, 2020

Dear Prospective 2020 SABA Foundation Grantees,


Thank you so much for your interest in a SABA Foundation Grant.  As you may know, due to the COVID-19 crisis and in acknowledgement of the difficulties faced by nonprofit organizations nationwide, last week SABA Foundation announced that it would be providing Emergency COVID-19 Grants in addition to our regular Annual Grants.  However, this has caused some confusion among those of you who have applied for our Annual Grant during the regular Annual Grant process with applications due tomorrow.  Our intent and purpose is to reach as many organizations as possible during this crisis who are positively changing and impacting the lives of South Asians and South Asian Americans in the areas of domestic violence, immigration rights, hate crimes and discrimination and community access to justice.

To that end and in furtherance of transparency, we have decided to implement the following guidelines and process in our grant review:

  1. Organizations that applied for the Annual Grant will automatically be considered for an Emergency COVID-19 Grant, unless the organization does not want to be so considered (please email me if that is the case and we will remove your org’s name from the Emergency COVID-19 Grant review process).

  2. If an organization has applied for an Annual Grant, if they want, they can email us answers (grants@sabalegalfdn.org) to the 4 additional questions that were asked in the Emergency COVID-19 Grant:

    1. Please describe how COVID-19 (commonly known as coronavirus) affected your organization?

    2. How has COVID-19 affected the South Asian community in which you are working?

    3. If you were provided emergency funding, on what projects or needs would this money be used?

    4. Please provide any additional detail that would help the Foundation in making a decision about providing emergency funding for your organization?

  3. During our review process, first, we will select our Annual Grant recipients and based on how much we have raised in our Call to Action, we will announce our Emergency COVID-19 Grant recipients thereafter.  We have no end in sight for fundraising for the Emergency COVID-19 Grant and these applications will be continued to be reviewed on a rolling basis after tomorrow’s Annual Grant deadline. So if you have other projects or needs that have come to light since this crisis began, please submit another application or email me so your organization can be further considered.


We hope that the above clarifies our process and answers questions you may have regarding the distinction between these two grants and the corresponding review process.  Please feel free to reach out to me should you have further questions.  Thank you for all that you are doing to positively affect the South Asian community in North America during this difficult time.

In solidarity,
Sucharita Varanasi
President-Elect, SABA Foundation
Grants Committee