Frequently Asked Questions

Thrive Grant is open to adults (18+) in the United States who are seeking access to personal growth or healing programs — including coaching, trauma-informed retreats, somatic therapies, or other evidence-adjacent modalities — but face financial barriers.

We do not require a formal diagnosis. We do not require a referral. You do not need to prove you've tried conventional therapy first.

Full eligibility criteria are available in the application.

The application is short — designed to take 15–20 minutes. You'll answer questions about your situation, what kind of program you're seeking, and what transformation looks like for you.

After submitting:

• Applications are reviewed by our team within 2 weeks
• Eligible applicants are presented anonymously to the community for voting
• Grant recipients are selected based on community votes and staff review
• Selected recipients are matched with a vetted provider

Learn more on the How It Works page.

Your application is kept strictly confidential. If your application proceeds to community voting, it is presented anonymously — no name, no identifying information.

We collect only what is necessary to evaluate your application and match you with a provider. We do not sell your data. We do not share your information with third parties without your explicit consent.

See our full Privacy Policy for details.

If selected, you'll be connected with a vetted provider who offers the type of program you applied for. The grant covers the cost of the program directly — funds go to the provider, not to you personally.

You'll also be asked to participate in our outcomes measurement process: completing validated surveys (PHQ-9, GAD-7, and others) before, during, and after the program. Participation is voluntary but encouraged — it's how we prove this works.

Your outcomes data is anonymized and published in aggregate. You will never be identified by name in any published results.

Learn more about our methodology.

No. Applying is completely free. There are no application fees, no membership fees, and no hidden costs.

We are committed to transparency about this. If tax deductibility is important to you, please check back or contact us to ask about current status before donating.

The majority of donations go directly to grant funding — paying vetted providers for the programs that selected applicants receive. A small portion covers operational costs: platform infrastructure, outcomes measurement, and administration.

We are working toward publishing a full annual financial report. In the meantime, contact us if you have specific questions about fund allocation.

We use three accountability mechanisms:

• Publicly published outcomes data — grants go to programs that produce measurable results, tracked using the same validated instruments used in academic research
• Community voting — grant recipients are selected by a community vote, not solely by staff discretion
• Open Invitation — we have formally invited major mental health institutions to review our methodology and engage publicly. See our Open Invitation page.

Recurring donation options are coming soon. At this time, we accept one-time donations. Visit the donate page to contribute.

Thrive Grant was founded by Dewey Gaedcke and Matt Ball — two people who experienced firsthand what it meant to need access to healing programs that the traditional mental health system couldn't provide.

The foundation is based in Austin, Texas, and operates as a nonprofit. Learn more on our Our Story page and in our press kit.

Several angles have attracted media interest:

• A nonprofit that measures and publishes outcomes for non-traditional mental health programs — using the same validated instruments academia uses
• Community voting as a mechanism for grant selection — citizens deciding who gets a life-changing grant
• A formal, public invitation to the psychiatric establishment to engage with the data
• A founder story rooted in personal transformation, not institutional background

See our suggested story angles in the press kit.

We respond to media inquiries within 48 hours. Use our press contact form or email us at contact@thrivegrant.com.

Our full press kit — including logos, founder headshots, mission statement, and story angles — is available at press/kit.

No — and that's by design. Thrive Grant is a funding foundation, not a therapy practice.

We do not provide therapy, counseling, or clinical treatment of any kind. We fund access to vetted providers — coaches, retreat facilitators, somatic practitioners, and other professionals — who operate under their own licensing and credentials.

We do not advise on clinical matters. Content on this site is for informational purposes only. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making healthcare decisions.

We take safety seriously. All providers in our network are vetted for credentials, reputation, and alignment with ethical practice standards.

If you are in crisis or have active suicidal ideation, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988) rather than applying for a grant. Our programs are not crisis intervention services.

For full details on how we approach participant safety, see our Safety page.

We don't ask you to take our word for it. Here's what we're building instead:

• Validated instruments — we use PHQ-9, GAD-7, PCL-5, and other tools the academic mental health community considers rigorous
• Third-party evaluation — outcomes are collected by independent evaluators, not our own staff
• Public data — results are published at outcomes/current as they accumulate
• Open Invitation — we have formally invited the APA, NIMH, VA, and others to review our methodology publicly. See open-invitation.

If the data doesn't hold up, we'll say so. That's the whole point.

This is not a replacement for traditional therapy. We are not anti-psychiatry, anti-medication, or anti-therapy.

What we're doing is different: we're funding access to programs that exist outside traditional clinical settings — coaching, somatic work, trauma-informed retreats — and measuring their outcomes publicly using the same tools researchers use for traditional therapy.

We believe these programs can produce real, measurable transformation for many people. We're building the evidence base to prove it. The goal isn't to replace anything. It's to demonstrate that transformation works — visibly, measurably, publicly.