I am so pleased to announce that I have partnered with the Legal Action Center (LAC) to launch a new resource designed to level the playing field for the community-led, grass-roots organizations doing the hardest, life-saving work, but who all too often lack the administrative capacity to regularly search for grant funding opportunities on their own.

Our “51-state collection of Opioid Settlement Community Grant Portals” project is a living resource that speaks to the availability of opioid settlement-funded grants in each state and the accessibility of those funds to community-based organizations. All of the state and local opioid settlement grant portals and request-for-proposal (RFP) announcements that I come across in my tracking are included below.

LAC and OST have jointly launched the map on Juneteenth 2024 to provide a snapshot in time of states’ and localities’ opioid settlement grant-making opportunities. But of course, states’ decision-making processes are subject to change. I will continue to independently track states’ opioid settlement community grant portals using the “Opioid Settlement Community Grant Tracker (v1.0)” spreadsheet below and would encourage all states and localities to email me with additional funding opportunities you’d like to see mentioned.

Please note: This Community Grants Tracker page will eventually host the Opioid Settlement Funding Opportunities section of my Settlement Spending page.

It depends.

See the map and table below for answers to questions like these:

1. Has my state has announced a public grant-making program funded by opioid settlements?

2. Are community organizations within my state eligible to apply for funding, and if so, from which share of funds?

3. Are there other sources of funding available in this state?

As of our launch date, Juneteenth 2024:

17 states have yet to announce opioid-settlement funded grants.

About a third of these 17 have suggested grant-making as an eventuality, but most of the 17 have yet to announce any plans to make their opioid settlement winnings accessible to community organizations via competitive application processes.

This list is maintained informally by Christine. For the all official links to states’ opioid settlement grant portals, see OST’s and LAC’s map and spreadsheet below.

This section hosts a selection of the state and local opioid settlement RFPs and input opportunities I came across in my weekly Google Alerts tracking.

Last updated September 10, 2024. See, e.g., West Virginia, Baltimore. If you see something I’ve missed, email Tips@OpioidSettlementTracker.com.

For legacy site visitors: This list used to live as the “Opioid Settlement-Funded Grants and Opportunities” section of my Settlement Spending page, which I created to feature the opportunities I used to track using my States’ Opioid Settlement Allocation Plans spreadsheet (archived at the end of April 2024).

This map summarizes my Community Grant Tracker spreadsheet.

The Legal Action Center maintains this map to visualize the superset of information in my Community Grant Tracker (below).

• Has my state announced a public grant-making program funded by opioid settlements? → map (righ) and tracker (below)

• Are community organizations within my state eligible to apply for funding, and if so, from which share? → tracker (below)

• Are other sources of funding available from the other shares in this state, e.g., the local share? → tracker (below)

This spreadsheet presents my superset of opioid settlement community grant tracking data.

See anything you’d like to add?

LAC and OST have jointly launched the above map on Juneteenth 2024 to provide a snapshot in time of states’ and localities’ opioid settlement grant-making opportunities. But of course, states’ decision-making processes are subject to change. I will continue to independently track states’ opioid settlement community grant portals using the “Opioid Settlement Community Grant Tracker (v1.0)” spreadsheet below and would encourage all states and localities to email me with additional funding opportunities you’d like to see mentioned.

• Has my state announced a public grant-making program funded by opioid settlements? → map (above) and tracker (below)

• Are community organizations within my state eligible to apply for funding, and if so, from which share? → tracker (below)

• Are other sources of funding available from the other shares in this state, e.g., the local share? → tracker (below)

A note about affiliations. The Legal Action Center (LAC) and the founder of this website, Christine Minhee, J.D., contracted for her to create the Opioid Settlement Community Grants Tracker spreadsheet, which LAC’s design team used to create its summary map.

Christine sought to answer three questions with this project:

1. Have each of the states announced a public grant-making program funded by opioid settlements? → answers available in both LAC’s map and OST’s spreadsheet

2. Are community organizations within those states eligible to apply for funding, and if so, from which share of funds? → answers available only in OST’s spreadsheet

3. Are other sources of funding available from the other shares in this state? → answers available only in OST’s spreadsheet

Sources for the above information. Christine has read every single Google Alert containing the word “opioid” and “settlement” since 2019 and has independently collected states’ and localities’ opioid-settlement funded grant-making opportunities since early 2024. Some of those findings were published in an informal capacity in the “Opioid Settlement Funding Opportunities” section of her State/Local Plans page, which Christine has moved over to this page as of June 19, 2024.

Christine used her research on states’ opioid settlement spending rules to identify each state’s intrastate allocation share. She then used her expenditure report tracker to determine whether states had been grant-making at all. She then relied on her years and years of opioid settlement spending tracking data to determine and fill any gaps.

Spreadsheet rules. Here are the categorization rules Christine used to color-code her Community Grant Tracker spreadsheet above, which powers the summary of data in the Legal Action Center’s Community Grant Portal map.

• HAS THIS STATE ESTABLISHED AN OPIOID SETTLEMENT GRANT-MAKING PROGRAM?

  • This question is answered for each of the states in both LAC’s Community Grant Portals map and the first color-coded column of my Community Grant Tracker spreadsheet.

  • YES. This means that this state has either (a) launched either a website (“portal”) that hosts opioid settlement-funded grant opportunities OR (b) has published and publicized at least one opioid settlement-funded request for proposal (“RFP”).

  • TBD. This means that the state has either (a) promised in writing to eventually establish an opioid settlement-funded grant-making program OR (b) launched a website to eventually host future opioid settlement-funded grant opportunities.

  • NO. This means that this state’s binding opioid settlement plans (contracts and legislation) either (a) neglect to address opioid settlement-funded grant-making entirely OR (b) refer to grant-making as a “may” (optional power) versus a “must” (requirement) of its opioid settlement spending scheme.

• HAVE COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS BEEN ELIGIBLE TO APPLY?

  • This question is answered for each of the states in the second color-coded column of my Community Grant Tracker spreadsheet.

  • YES. This means that the state’s opioid-settlement funded portals and RFPs contain explicit language describing non-profit organizations’ ability to apply for at least one of the state’s publicized opioid-settlement funded grant opportunities.

  • TBD. This means that the state has either (a) anticipated the participation of non-profit organizations in its grant-making scheme in writing OR (b) has yet to launch its promised grant-making program, let alone announce details as to eligible recipients.

  • NO. This means that the state has gone out of its way to grant its opioid settlements to entities other than non-profit organizations OR (b) has yet to engage in opioid settlement-funded grant-making at all.

• FROM WHAT SIZE SHARE? 

  • This question is answered for each of the states in percentage (%) number column of my Community Grant Tracker spreadsheet.

  • The percentage (%) numbers in this column describe what percentage share of funds in the state’s intrastate allocation scheme is doing the grant-making.

• ARE OTHER SHARES DISTRIBUTED AS GRANTS?

  • This question is answered for each of the states in the third color-coded column of my Community Grant Tracker spreadsheet.

  • YES. This means that there is evidence of the state’s other intrastate shares being doled out as grants. For instance, if 50% is listed under “FROM WHAT SIZE SHARE,” this column would describe and link to grant-making opportunities made possible by that “other” 50% of settlement funds within the state.

  • TBD. This means that there is nothing prohibiting the state’s other intrastate shares from being doled out as grants, but no such evidence that they will be.

  • NO. Only in one state, Virginia, are localities explicitly discouraged from distributing their collective 30% share as grants.