Deadline: 10-Mar-23
The Food and Farm Communications Fund (FFCF) through its Core Grants Program supports the community organizations, strategists and media makers working to uplift frontline stories, build power, and embolden transformative food and farm systems change.
Since 2012, they’ve invested over $4 million into grassroots organizations and media efforts to shift food and farm narratives. In 2023, they expect to award a total of $700,000 to continue resourcing transformative change.
Priorities
FFCF will prioritize projects that are grounded in:
- Cultural Organizing
- Protecting and expressing culture is an act of resistance to the pressure of erasure. Rather than community organizing from a place of deficit, they strive to lift-up a counter narrative rooted in community cultural wealth and capacity and support work that centers cultural organizing.
- Inclusive Economic Models & Community Controlled Systems
- FFCF supports community-led processes where communities identify and initiate their own solutions to economic, social and environmental issues within food and agriculture to build healthy, economically viable communities. They believe that by supporting community-controlled systems – where people have control and stewardship over their narrative, systems, capital, and spaces – people will come before profit.
- Reclaiming Democracy
- FFCF supports the work of organizations reclaiming democratic control of their food and agricultural systems so that those systems are shaped and determined by the people who comprise them, not corporate interests. They support efforts to build political leadership, strengthen civic engagement, mobilize for policy advocacy, and organize for community-controlled economies.
- Reindigenized Food & Agricultural Systems
- FFCF strives to lift up the work of organizations that are reindigenizing and democratizing food and agricultural systems, which means they support natural, sustainable and regenerative systems and communities that have been historically marginalized to ensure they are no longer on the margins of opportunities and resources. They support food and agricultural practices that are environmentally sustainable, regenerative, and rooted in indigenous practices that battle climate change and ensure dignified and fair working conditions and wages.
Funding Information
- Core Grants are expected to range from $20,000 to $50,000 over a one-year term. The Fund is able to make a very limited number of two-year commitments for projects requiring a longer timeframe of support.
- Two-year requests are capped at a total of $75,000 over two years. Grant amounts are contingent on demonstrated need, alignment with the Fund’s purpose and criteria, as well as the Fund’s giving capacity in any given year.
Eligible Projects
The Core Grants Program supports strategic communications efforts including, but not limited to:
- Base building communications projects that increase connectivity and grow collective power
- Integrated communications planning
- Communications-based professional development for staff/leadership/ members
- Implementing or upgrading communications tools
- Development of content or creative media initiatives including videos, zines, websites, etc.
- Sourcing short-term communications staffing support or outside consulting
- Narrative development, message framing, and integration
- Campaigns, events, or experiences that use communications to foster engagement around food and farm issues
- Multicultural, racial equity, and justice-based communications strategies
Eligibility Criteria
Applicants should meet the following criteria:
- Be a U.S. based grassroots organization or network with 501(c)(3) status or with a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor or a tribal government
- Have an average annual revenue of less than $3 million (if current revenue is over $3 million, an average organizational revenue over the last three years that is under $3 million will qualify)
- Initiatives directly affect change within food and agricultural systems (e.g. land sovereignty, food security, inclusive economy, water and soil stewardship, climate justice, labor organizing, sustainable/regenerative/reindigenized food systems)
- Clearly demonstrate an organizational analysis of structural and institutional racism in the food and farm system, as well as a clear understanding and strategy as to how the organization works to advance racial equity and justice
- Clearly demonstrate a commitment to integrating the leadership of constituents within the organization’s staffing, advising, and governance structures
- Be collaborative in approach and practice.
Ineligible
- The following are ineligible for Core Grants funding:
- Organizations that do not have 501(c)(3) status or do not have a fiscal sponsor with 501(c)(3) status;
- Organizations who received a multi-year Core Grant award in 2022 (organizations who received a 1-year award in 2022 are eligible to apply)
- Individuals or scholarship programs;
- Businesses or business associations;
- Schools, Colleges, or Universities;
- State agencies or government programs;
- The Food and Farm Communications Fund does not support the following activities: academic research projects; endowment campaigns; discretionary or emergency requests; or litigation or legal expenses.
For more information, visit Food and Farm Communications Fund.