Deadline: 08-May-23
The Sparkplug Foundation is accepting applications for its Grant Program to encourage Black, Indigenous, People of Color, people with disabilities, women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, queer and other queer-identifying communities, organizations or organizers to apply.
The Sparkplug Foundation is a family foundation, funded and administered in the US. They are guided by community voices, and prioritize grassroots organizing and innovation as the key for creating change.
Areas of Funding
- Education
- Community Organizing
- Music.
Funding Information
- They consider grant applications for amounts from $1,000 to $20,000. Most grants are in the $10,000 to $15,000 range.
Eligibility Criteria
- They do fund early stage organizations and projects. They offer grants to innovative and important work that has not yet established broad sources of support. For Sparkplug, what matters is that the project comes from and supports an engaged community.
- They do fund small-to-medium organizations or ideas. They most often fund projects with small budgets, and that are less likely to receive corporate, institutional, or government funding.
- They do fund 501c non-profits or individuals, communities or collectives that have a US-based 501c fiscal sponsor.
- They do fund materials and activities that make new ideas real and sustainable. This can include support for a new organization’s growth like outreach materials, short-term staff to get your project underway, and short-term general operating support for new organizations only.
- They do fund one-year grants. Since they focus on start-up projects and organizations, they accept applications for up to one year.
- They do fund with an eye for community accountability and inclusion. They recognize that power imbalances in the world impact how work happens in any organization. Inclusion means that the organization deliberately structures itself to be guided by, and to support, people on the downside of power imbalances.
- They do fund projects in the US and Palestine/Israel. Their funding in Palestine/Israel, given current conditions of colonial apartheid, is limited to projects that involve Palestinian communities, operate with Palestinian leadership (and may also include non-Palestinian leadership), and work for justice.
Ineligible
- Businesses or any organization or individual without a fiscal sponsor
- General operating expenses
- Lobbying or election campaigns
- Technology equipment
- Budget replacement for classes or programs within the formal education system that have been cut
- Service projects
- Budget replacement for music programs
- Multi-year requests
- Projects or organizations in Palestine/Israel that do not have either a US-based 501c fiscal sponsor or Israeli documentation of NGO status
- Religious projects, projects run by religious organizations, or any project that involves religious practice
- Visual arts projects, films, medical research or relief, dance, animal rescue, athletic programs, tuition grants, or scholarships
- University-based projects
- Any projects or organizations with budgets larger than $1 million
- Technology equipment.
For more information, visit Sparkplug Foundation.