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Our Grants Programs

Our grants are awarded annually for general operational support as well as for specific projects.

Operational Support

These grants support daily operating costs. Applications are reviewed three times a year; the deadlines are February 1, June 1, and October 1. Grants awarded during one cycle will be announced at the beginning of the following cycle.

Helpful Guidelines Below
INTERESTED? START THE APPLICATION PROCESS MODULE_2

The Guidelines

Priority is given to applicants that:

Address two or more of our funding priorities at the same time:
  • Strengthen our food system
  • Enhance equitable community health outcomes
  • Safeguard our environment and natural resources
Demonstrate strong community ties.

Operate within viable and clearly defined plans for positive change.

Areas not funded
  • Capital construction
  • Deficit funding
  • Endowments
  • For national organizations with local chapters, we may choose to fund either the national chapter or a local chapter.
  • Individuals
  • Local and/or state government agencies
  • Media projects (such as films, books, radio) – including distribution costs for these programs
  • Religious groups
  • Sponsorship of seminar, media, or fundraising events (e.g. Fun Runs)

By Invitation Only

Our By Invitation grants help nonprofit organizations make investments that result in a qualitative leap in their operations, their reach and their impacts by entering new issue areas, moving from the local and regional levels to the national level, and/or dramatically deepening and broadening their services. These grants provide stability over multiple years and are typically more than $50,000 a year. Nonprofits may not self-nominate or solicit our interest in consideration of these grants. The Foundation initiates all invitations.

Overview

Expansion Grants are awarded by invitation only and support:
  • New geographic reach (e.g., from local to statewide or statewide to regional)
  • Major engagement in new issue areas
  • Deepening of existing or delivery of new services that enhance scope of impact
Expansion Grants are designed to encourage innovation, more risk-taking, and blazing of new territory that:
  • Strengthens the food system
  • Enhance equitable community health outcomes
  • Safeguards the environment

Grantee Highlight

Post-Landfill Action Network (PLAN)

Empowering the Next Generation of Change-makers

PLAN educates students about the waste crisis, and equips them with skills and resources to implement solutions in their campus communities. The foundation’s $240,000 grant supports the New Hampshire-based group’s nationwide expansion of its campus-based zero-waste network, and zero-waste consulting services.

In 2011, students at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) launched the group’s pilot program, Trash 2 Treasure (T2T). They collected furniture and other essentials that UNH students discarded when they moved out in the spring, stored those items for the summer, and re-sold them at affordable prices during a giant yard-sale over move-in weekend the following fall. T2T became the first student-led, self-sustaining program of its kind in the country.

Among the UNH students was Alex Freid who, two years later, founded PLAN—to provide materials, analysis and training to support student leaders and university administrators interested in launching similar programs on other campuses, and to sustain student-led, zero waste projects.
 
With the help of Clif Family Foundation’s three-year Expansion Grant, PLAN projects that it will double its number of campus networks, increase full-time staff by 60%, and grow earned income by over 50%.

Visit PLAN
By Invitation Only grants are also offered in Canada MODULE_2

Fellowships for People and the Planet

We introduced fellowships because what we care about most – food, heath, and the environment – was getting the short end of public research funding. We fund grad students to grow knowledge now and to meet future challenges. Our fellowship programs address at least two of our three core concerns – and they also help to move the needle on one of our primary goals: to advance a healthier, more-equitable, and sustainable food system. 

These grants are by invitation only and we are not able to accept self nominations.


 
 
 

Grantee Highlight

Seed Matters – Organic Seeds

“Seed Matters fellowship funding enables us to bring in top level graduate students that are interested in being part of a community. We also are bringing genetic diversity back to a crop where it has been lost, which is crucial for adaptation in a changing environment. Farmers in our community work directly with Seed Matters fellows to carry out research on their farms, which gives them a fresh perspective and inspires them to be better stewards of their land.” - Professor Steve Jones, head of The Bread Lab at Washington State University

Publicly funded research to develop seeds specifically for organic farms has lagged behind for decades, which makes life harder for organic farmers and slows the growth of organic ag. Since 2013, the foundation has invested $1.5 million to fund 18 grad student fellowships in organic plant breeding. Seed Matters grad students have plowed new paths in seven states, from North Carolina to Texas and Georgia to Washington, bringing new energy to public seed research and education. Seed Matters has also delivered dozens of new seed varieties to farmers looking to grow food organically, and, at the same time, fight climate change (organic ag keeps more carbon in the soil where it belongs, not the air).

"When I think about the power and importance of organic seed, to me it is the beginning force which ultimately results in variation in our food system leading to variation on the plate that nourishes us. Biodiversity on the plate is a key component of cultivating both the health of individuals along with the health of the planet." - Merri Metcalfe,  Washington State University Seed Matters Fellow

“This timely fellowship allowed a graduate student to focus on two of the highest ranked grower needs in our region. Lauren Jane Brzozowski, our Seed Matters Fellow, discovered principles behind cultivar choice and genetics, which she is deploying to benefit growers by reducing insect damage to organic squash. She also bred the first pickling cucumber with true resistance to the downy mildew pandemic. Seed Matters support was essential for research into grower needs and science, and translating that into solutions.” - Professor Michael Mazourek, Cornell University

Our newest fellowships are focusing on interconnections among the foundation’s priority areas: food, health and the environment. The foundation will support three fellowships for doctoral and post-doctoral candidates working on pioneering research at Dr. Seth Holmes’ Critical Studies in Food, Health & Environment Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. Unlike a lot of current research that focuses on one narrow part of the food system in a single-disciplinary silo, Professor Holmes and his team study the complex, interconnected food system chain from interdisciplinary perspectives (such as social justice, economics, immigration, health and environmental sustainability). Stay tuned for more about the cutting-edge research that will be conducted by these inspiring young fellows.