(APPLETON, WI) — October 7, 2025 — The Basic Needs Giving Partnership recently announced its 2025 multi-year grant awards, with $2.63 million awarded to nine organizations across Northeast Wisconsin. These three-year grants support current and emerging collaborative projects working toward long-lasting, equitable solutions to deep-seated community challenges in the areas of early care education, housing access, mental health, and substance use.

Grants are focused on efforts that are addressing the root causes of poverty in rural, urban, and suburban communities across the ten-county region. Funding is generated by the annual U.S. Venture Open, the nation’s single largest one-day charitable event dedicated to ending poverty. The 2025 event raised $5.2 million for the Basic Needs Giving Partnership and 100% of every dollar donated goes to end poverty. In the 40-year history of the U.S. Venture Open, $62 million has been granted to regional nonprofits.

“These grants represent more than funding — they’re a commitment to shared learning and community-driven solutions,” said Adam O’Doherty, executive director of the Basic Needs Giving Partnership. “We’re proud to support organizations that are tackling complex challenges with creativity, compassion, and collaboration.

“For four decades, our commitment to ending poverty is stronger than ever,” said Greg Vandenberg, director of giving and community engagement for U.S. Venture. “These multi-year grants show what’s possible when we work together, invest boldly, and stay focused on long-term change.”

A grantmaking match of $600,000 from the J. J. Keller Foundation, $200,000 from Oshkosh Corporation, ThedaCare and the Thrivent Foundation help lead this effort.

Recipients of the Basic Needs Giving Partnership 2025 Multi-Year Grants are:
2025 Basic Needs Giving Partnership Multi-Year Grants
$2,630,000 in new multi-year grant commitments

ADVOCAP $300,000 ($100,000 for 3 years)
ADVOCAP’s Childcare Incubator project focuses on improving the delivery of and access to early care and education in Winnebago, Fond du Lac, and Green Lake Counties, working to shift the childcare system toward a more sustainable model of delivery. The incubator removes financial and logistical barriers for low-income individuals to start licensed childcare businesses, expanding both workforce participation and childcare access.

Casa ALBA Melanie: $300,000 ($100,000 for 3 years)
Casa ALBA Melanie aims to create long-term, systemic change by addressing the need for language access to services in the areas of early care/education and mental health. Without equitable language access, members of our Latino community continue to experience exclusion from essential resources, perpetuating cycles of hardship and inequality. Through collaborative partnerships with the broader Brown County community, they will co-develop new policies and practices to ensure language isn’t a barrier to service. Additionally, they will engage our community to understand gaps in linguistically appropriate mental health services, strengthen partnerships needed to affect change, and establish actionable community-level priorities toward a future where every resident, regardless of language, can thrive.

CASA of the Fox Cities: $225,000 ($75,000 for 3 years)
CASA of the Fox Cities is leading a collaborative initiative to transform how children in foster care are supported in Outagamie County. By embedding the HOPE (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences) framework across courts, schools, and child-serving organizations, the project will reframe child welfare model to one rooted in healing, resilience, and belonging. This effort will strengthen partnerships, center youth and families with lived experience, and ensure every child in care has the tools and opportunity to thrive.

COMSA (Community Services Agency): $300,000 ($100,000 for 3 years)
COMSA aims to increase access to affordable housing for refugees and immigrants in Brown County by working together with local nonprofits, agencies, and people with lived experience. This project will build community support, work with decision-makers, and advocate for changes to local policies, ordinances, and regulations that will make housing more accessible and address discriminatory barriers. In addition, the initiative will address the cultural and systemic barriers to accessing mental health support within immigrant and refugee communities by shifting mindsets, addressing barriers to care, and working with providers to offer services in a culturally affirming way.

CORE Treatment Services: $300,000 ($100,000 for 3 years)
CORE Treatment Services aims to co-develop and pilot residential treatment services where mothers can bring their children, combining trauma-informed substance use care for women alongside educational and behavioral health support for children. By collaborating with community partners and centering First Nations families, the program ensures culturally responsive healing that strengthens individuals, preserves families, and builds healthier communities.

Fox Cities Habitat for Humanity: $300,000 ($300,000 total for 3 years)
Transforming Housing Access in the Fox Cities is a multiyear systems change initiative led by the Fox Cities Habitat for Humanity. This project aims to tackle the root barriers to affordable homeownership like land access, zoning, and long-term affordability, while deepening community partnerships, resident engagement, and policy advocacy to ensure that equity is embedded in how housing decisions are made.

NeighborWorks Green Bay: $300,000 ($100,000 for 3 years)
NeighborWorks Green Bay is launching the Green Bay Housing Partnership, a Community Land Trust (CLT) to create permanently affordable homeownership opportunities in Green Bay and eventually across northeast Wisconsin. This project will expand awareness of the CLT model, engage residents in shaping its direction, and build the infrastructure needed to steward CLT homes and center community voice in long-term housing solutions.

The Building for Kids: $300,000 ($100,000 for 3 years)
Leveraging the singular opportunity provided by child-directed, play-based learning, the Building for Kids will work to address the root causes of challenges with outcomes for kids, educators, and families in the regulated childcare system. Through partnerships with local early care and education providers and state-level policymakers, our project will develop, pilot, and evaluate a model that better unlocks the power of child-directed, play-based learning in childcare settings. Learnings will be used to inform regulations and standard practices to affect system change to improve outcomes in the early care and education system throughout Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Partnership for Housing Development: $300,000 ($100,000 for 3 years)
Wisconsin Partnership for Housing Development aims to improve the ability of those at the lowest income levels to be able to access safe, quality, and affordable housing by developing new tools, new resources, strengthening partnerships, and working with decision-makers. The project will equip the broader public to understand the changing nature of homelessness in Winnebago County, in Wisconsin, and across the country. To address the root causes of homelessness, this project will seek to create new housing units by accessing funding and leveraging resources, and the project will work in partnership with existing landlords and property owners to address the barriers in helping house those facing the greatest need.

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About the Basic Needs Giving Partnership
The Basic Needs Giving Partnership envisions thriving, equitable communities across Northeast Wisconsin. Investments are made for local and regional solutions that address the root causes of poverty in alignment with shared values of trust and collaboration, curiosity and learning, and equity with a systems-based approach. Through grantmaking, organizations are funded across a 10-county footprint in ways that not only meet current needs in our communities, but also actively work to disrupt the policies, practices, and systems that hold poverty in place. Addressing complex social problems requires reimagining how we work together.

In addition to grantmaking, we also co-create networks that can collectively solve problems, take action, and learn from each other. By working together and centering community voices, solutions are built that work for everyone. Learn more on the Basic Needs Giving Partnership website. Learn more on the Basic Needs Giving Partnership website.

U.S. Venture Open
The U.S. Venture Open is the nation’s single largest one-day charitable event dedicated to ending poverty. Funds from the event support the Basic Needs Giving Partnership with a vision to build thriving, equitable communities across Northeast Wisconsin through regional collaborative grants and advocacy. The U.S. Venture Open started in 1986 with 100 golfers and has grown to more than 2,000 attendees representing hundreds of partners who golf at regional courses to raise money for programs that help end poverty. Follow the event on Facebook, Twitter, or visit the U.S. Venture Open website.

About U.S. Venture, Inc.
For over 70 years, U.S. Venture, Inc. has been recognized as an innovative leader in the distribution of renewable and traditional energy products, lubricants, tires, parts, and using data-driven insights to manage energy and information in the global movement of goods. U.S. Venture delivers creative, sustainable solutions that give their customers a competitive edge, and enable the company to support the communities in which they live, work, and play. Through the values lived by their family of brands, U.S. Energy®, U.S. AutoForce, Breakthrough®, U.S. Lubricants, and IGEN®, U.S. Venture seeks new ways to drive business success while being steadfast in its commitment to making the world a better place.

Contact Information:
Dawn Ruchala
Senior Manager, Community Engagement
[email protected]
920-243-2529

Adam O’Doherty
Executive Director, Basic Needs Giving Partnership
[email protected]
920-372-2303