Grants for Women of Color — August 2026

Four tiers, status-verified — filter the 103

Every one of the 103 programs below is sorted into a tier by how directly it is aimed at women of color, and stamped with the status we verified on August 23, 2026. Tier 1 names women of color in its eligibility rules. Tier 2 is a women-and-minority program — you are a named priority, not the only audience. Tier 3 is a general women’s program: open to you, not targeted at you. Tier 4 is minority or tribal capital that is not women-specific at all, mostly CDFI lending. Program names link to the GrantCompass page for that program, where the eligibility detail lives.

• Tier 1 — explicitly for women of color: 8 programs, 3 open now.
• Tier 2 — women + minority priority: 17 programs, 5 open now.
• Tier 3 — general women’s programs: 18 programs, 8 open now.
• Tier 4 — minority & tribal capital, not women-specific: 60 programs, 52 open now.

Tier 1: the 8 programs written specifically for women of color

• digitalundivided BREAKTHROUGH — Grant for Black & Latina Women Founders$5,000 per company · Black & Latina women founders · Open Cohort applications live — Northern California and Nashville (verified Aug 23, 2026) 6 intel fields — locked
• HerRise MicroGrant$1,000 per month · Women of color (51%+ Black, Latina, Asian, Indigenous or multiracial) · Open Rolling — 11:59pm ET on the last day of every month 6 intel fields — locked
• Hot Bread Kitchen — HBK Incubates Food Business ProgramIn-kind (free program) · Food entrepreneurs — focus on women of color & immigrant women · Open Rolling admissions, free 6 intel fields — locked
• Black Girl Ventures BGV Pitch Program$5,000 + audience crowdfund · Black & Brown women founders · Closed 2026 cohort closed May 15, 2026 6 intel fields — locked
• Tarte Shape Your Future Small Business Awards$10,000–$25,000 · Black women-owned businesses · Between Between intakes — next round not announced 7 intel fields — locked
• PepsiCo Juntos Crecemos Jefa-Owned Business Grant$10,000 (20 winners) · Latina-owned food & beverage businesses · Between Between intakes — next round not announced 6 intel fields — locked
• Fearless Fund Strivers Grant$20,000 (program enjoined) · Black women-owned businesses (program ended) · Ended Permanently closed by the September 2024 settlement — will not reopen 7 intel fields — locked
• SoGal Foundation Black Founder Startup Grant$5,000–$10,000 (historical) · Black women & nonbinary founders · Ended Grant page returns 404; no active SoGal grant programme 6 intel fields — locked

Closing in the next 90 days

5 programs on this page have a firm published deadline between today and November 21, 2026, sorted soonest first. Every other open program on this page is rolling, which means there is nothing to race.

Where the money for women of color actually is in 2026

Three distinct pools exist, and they behave differently. Corporate and brand microgrants — Sephora, Glossier, Tarte, Visa, PepsiCo — run once a year, award between $10,000 and $100,000, and attract tens of thousands of applicants. 21 of the 103 programs on this page sit in exactly this state right now: real, funded, and closed until their next annual window. Foundation microgrants — HerRise, Amber, Galaxy, Secretsos — award $1,000 to $2,500 on a monthly or quarterly cycle, which means a founder can enter them twelve or four times a year instead of once. Public and quasi-public capital — CDFIs, SSBCI-funded state programs, tribal loan funds — is by far the largest pool by dollars: 52 of these are lending today, and unlike the grants they do not close.

The 2023–2024 legal challenges reshaped the top of this market rather than the bottom. Large, explicitly race-conditioned grant programs became legally exposed; the Fearless Fund Strivers Grant closed permanently in a September 2024 settlement, and Black Ambition suspended its Prize Competition for 2026. Small foundation microgrants and CDFI lending were untouched. A founder optimising for expected dollars in 2026 should therefore work the repeatable small grants and the lenders, and treat the annual brand prizes as lottery tickets she buys once a year when the window opens.

The rolling monthlies: the only programs you can enter more than once a year

The HerRise MicroGrant issues $1,000 every month to a woman-of-color-owned small business; applications close at 11:59pm ET on the last day of each month and the winner is announced at HerSuiteSpot’s First Friday mixer. The Amber Grant, run by WomensNet, awards three $10,000 grants every month plus three $50,000 year-end grants drawn from the monthly winners, on the same last-day-of-month cadence. The Women Founders Grant awards $5,000 on a monthly cycle, with the current window closing August 31, 2026 and a $25 application fee. The Secretsos Small Business Grant awards $2,500 each quarter to owners who have been turned down for bank credit, closing on the last day of each quarter — next, September 30, 2026 — for a $15 fee. The Galaxy Grant awards $2,500 and is free to apply to, with a 30-second form and an October 31, 2026 cut-off.

Treat these as a calendar, not a task list. One evening a month spent refreshing the same three or four applications is a materially better use of time than hunting for new programs, because the population of programs written for women of color is small and slow-moving — 8 in a catalog of 665 US funding programs — while the number of chances to enter the rolling ones is unlimited. Star them in the GrantCompass database and the deadline reminder arrives without you tracking it.

Programs that paused, closed, or got sued — what actually changed

The Fearless Fund Strivers Grant is gone permanently. The $20,000 grant for Black women-owned businesses was suspended by a federal appeals panel in June 2024 and then terminated outright in a September 2024 settlement with the American Alliance for Equal Rights; the settlement bars the contest from operating and it will not reopen. The Fearless Fund itself continues as an investor. Black Ambition is not running its Prize Competition in 2026. Pharrell Williams’ organisation states on its own application page that it is “entering a new phase of impact in 2026” and will not accept new Prize applications, focusing instead on founders already in its portfolio. Comcast RISE has effectively wound down: comcastrise.com now redirects to Comcast’s Project UP page, and no 2026 application window has been published. The SoGal Black Founder Startup Grant has no live page. Eileen Fisher’s women-owned business grant and Stacy’s Rise Project are both dormant, with no verified cycle in recent years, despite appearing on dozens of “grants for women” listicles.

One more category deserves naming, because it wastes the most time: programs that fund organisations rather than founders. Mastercard Strive USA, the MBDA Capital Readiness Program, the MBDA Women’s Entrepreneurship Program and the Treasury’s Native American CDFI Assistance program all award money — to nonprofits, CDFIs and intermediaries who then serve small businesses. An individual business cannot apply to any of them for its own operations. They are marked on this page so you do not spend an afternoon finding that out.

The numbers behind “grants for women of color”

Of the 665 US funding programs GrantCompass tracks, 103 are usable by a woman of color, 43 are aimed at women in some form, and 8 name women of color explicitly. The tier distribution is the honest shape of this market, and it is not the shape the listicles imply.

• 3 of 8. Only three programs written specifically for women of color are open today. Every other “grant for Black women” you will be shown is either a general women’s grant, a minority program, or closed.
• $25,000 is the median award ceiling across the 36 tier 1–3 cash programs that publish a numeric maximum — not the six-figure numbers the brand prizes advertise.
• 62 of 103 programs have no deadline at all. The scarcity is in targeted programs, not in open ones.
• 60 of 103 are capital, not grants. If you need $50,000 or more, the honest route for a woman of color in 2026 is a CDFI, not a grant competition.

The questions founders actually type

Frequently asked questions