Innovia Foundation awards $1.3 million to North Idaho nonprofits

Innovia Foundation has awarded $1,307,505 to 125 organizations across Eastern Washington and North Idaho, putting new operating money into the nonprofits that many Kootenai County residents rely on for basic help. The grants run from June 1, 2026, through May 31, 2027, and the foundation set the annual theme as Building Stability and Belonging.

The Community Grants Program covers a 20-county region that includes Kootenai County, North Idaho and Spokane, Washington, and Innovia says it has addressed needs in Kootenai County since 1974. Its FY26 guidelines direct funding toward health and wellbeing, education and youth development, economic opportunity, quality of life, and arts and culture, with health and wellbeing including food, shelter, access to health care and mental health support. The education category includes quality childcare and early childhood education, a set of services that matter in a county where family budgets and waitlists can make child care a bottleneck for work and school.

For Kootenai County, that means the money is aimed at practical, near-term services rather than one-time gestures. Programs in childcare assistance, job training, health care navigation and after-school support stand to gain staff time, supplies, direct aid and room to stretch capacity. In a fast-growing county, those are the kinds of nonprofit services that can determine whether a parent can keep a job, whether a family can find help paying for essentials, or whether a student has a place to go after school.

Innovia opened the FY26 grant round on September 9, 2025, opened applications on December 1, 2025, set an early-bird deadline of January 9, 2026 and a final deadline of February 6, 2026. The foundation announced the awards on May 25, 2026, and final reports will be due June 12, 2027. The scale of this year’s round also grew from 2025, when Innovia awarded $1,250,414 to 113 organizations.

The size of the increase is modest on paper, but the local effect comes through in the day-to-day work of smaller nonprofits that often operate closest to the need. For families in Kootenai County, the grants can mean more childcare slots, more help navigating the health system, more youth programming after school and a little more breathing room for agencies that keep the safety net from fraying.