The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation awards most grants through calls for proposals (CFPs) issued for national programs. A national program consists of a cluster of grantees and other interested parties who work together to create impact in one of the Foundation's program areas. Local Funding Partnerships is housed under the umbrella of RWJF’s Vulnerable Populations—a portfolio of grantmaking programs that identifies new approaches for improved health by recognizing the critical relationship between our health and where and how we live, work, learn and play. Vulnerable Populations programs seek to improve health where it happens.

Typically RWJF national programs are administered by a small group of staff members who work at a separate location, not at the Foundation headquarters. National program offices are located across the U.S. As it happens, the Local Funding Partnerships office is not far from RWJF. We are also in Princeton, NJ, but we make our home at the Health Research & Educational Trust of New Jersey. Our offices are located on the campus of the New Jersey Hospital Association.

National program offices usually manage the grantmaking process for RWJF awards to multiple project sites that are working toward a similar goal, although individual objectives of the sites may vary. The grantees usually interact directly with the national program office whose staff members serve as the liaison with RWJF.

National program offices:

• Manage the competitve selection process—generally involving a national advisory committee that recommends sites for funding.
• Monitor site performance.
• Provide technical assistance to sites.
• Provide field-building support work.
• Provide coordination services to sites to achieve specific purposes.

Currently, RWJF supports more than 80 national programs.

.The Local Funding Partnerships national program office was established in 1987 and administered its first grants in 1988. It is one of the longest running national programs of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.