A congregation researching "grants for refugee ministry" usually expects to find a program it can apply to directly. It generally can't — and understanding why up front saves months of chasing an application path that isn't open to a single local church. The federal dollars behind U.S. refugee resettlement flow almost entirely through a small number of national voluntary agencies, several of which are explicitly faith-based, and local congregations participate as partners of those agencies rather than as independent grantees.
Refugee resettlement in the U.S. runs through a two-tier structure: a handful of national voluntary agencies hold cooperative agreements with the federal government, and those agencies operate through local affiliate offices — sometimes their own staff, sometimes contracted community organizations — in cities around the country. Congregations typically connect at the local affiliate level, not the national one.
| Funding Stream | Administered By | What It Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Reception and Placement (R&P) | State Department Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, via national agencies | Initial housing setup and orientation, roughly the first 90 days |
| Matching Grant Program | HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement, via national agencies | Longer self-sufficiency support as an alternative to public cash assistance |
| Refugee Support Services | ORR, via state refugee coordinators and subgrantees | Employment services, ESL, and other integration support after initial placement |
The Matching Grant Program is built as a public-private partnership: the national agency raises cash and in-kind community contributions and combines them with ORR funding to help eligible refugee families reach economic self-sufficiency, generally within about 120 to 180 days of program eligibility, instead of relying on ongoing public cash assistance. The "matching" in the name refers to that combination of federal funds and community-raised resources, not a grant a congregation applies for on its own.
Congregations most often contribute to this model by supplying the in-kind side of the match — furnished apartments, donated household goods, volunteer job-search mentors, transportation — coordinated through the local affiliate office running the program in their area.
Our free eligibility review helps identify realistic funding paths for your congregation's specific outreach programs.
Check Your Grant Eligibility →R&P is the front end of resettlement — the funding that covers a refugee family's arrival, initial housing, and orientation to their new community, generally over roughly the first 90 days. It's administered by the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, again through the same set of national voluntary agencies. A local affiliate office running an active R&P caseload is often the most concrete entry point for a congregation that wants a hands-on role in a specific family's first weeks in the community.
Most congregations doing refugee and immigrant ministry work aren't grantees at all — they're co-sponsors and volunteer partners of an agency that already holds the funding. That's not a lesser role; it's the model the national agencies are largely built around. Practical, common contributions include:
Some of these roles come with small reimbursements from the local affiliate's own subgrant budget, but the funding relationship in almost every case runs through the affiliate office, not directly from ORR or the State Department to the congregation.
Congregations running broader community programs that serve immigrant families — not specifically newly arrived refugees — have funding options that don't require resettlement-agency affiliation. If your church's outreach serves a documented low- or moderate-income population, our community development grants for churches guide covers how CDBG public-service funding can support programs like ESL classes or a community resource center. Private and denominational foundations with community-integration or immigrant-services priorities are also worth researching independently of the federal resettlement system — see our government grants for churches guide for how these funding streams fit alongside other federal programs. If your congregation runs citizenship or naturalization-prep classes specifically, see our citizenship and ESL ministry grants guide for the USCIS program built around that pairing. And because trafficking survivors are sometimes part of an immigrant ministry's caseload, our anti-trafficking ministry grants guide covers that adjacent, separately funded category.
If your congregation doesn't already have a relationship with a local resettlement affiliate office, spending time trying to apply directly to ORR or the State Department is very unlikely to produce results — those programs simply aren't structured to award funds to individual churches. A more productive first step is contacting the nearest affiliate office of one of the national agencies to ask what local partnership and co-sponsorship opportunities are currently open, rather than researching a grant application that isn't available to you.
See our grants for small churches guide for other community-outreach funding paths that don't require large-scale infrastructure, or contact us to talk through where your congregation's outreach programs might fit.