Deadline: 27-May-21
The Sparkplug Foundation is seeking 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.
Thematic Areas
Sparkplug provides grants to start-up organizations and new projects of established non-profits in the following three areas:
- Education: Sparkplug funds projects to educate or support communities, including but not limited to school-age students, that move beyond traditional classroom instruction. In keeping with their justice-oriented framework, they fund education projects that engage excluded students in new ways, projects that restore knowledge that has been marginalized through racism or colonialism, and projects that rebuild community and collective problem-solving.
- Community Organizing: Sparkplug funds work by members of a community for their community — work that aims to create justice by making systemic change and/or shifting power. Or in other words, they fund projects that are created, run by, and meet the needs of people with shared lived experience who face the same types of oppression, discrimination, violence, or barriers, who live in the same area, or who have a shared vision and aspirations for the future.
- Music: Recognizing the critical importance of music in bringing communities together and building collective creativity, Sparkplug supports emerging musicians in developing new work, sharing existing work with a wider community through events or media, bringing together musicians to collaborate on creating or performing pieces, or facilitating new workshops that bring music to oppressed communities. Applicants for music grants will be asked to submit a sample of their music with their Letter of Intent form.
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 fund applications to 501c3 non-profits or individuals, communities or collectives that have a US-based 501c3 fiscal sponsor.
- They do fund materials and activities that make new ideas real and sustainable.
- They do fund early stage organizations and projects.
- They do fund small-to-medium organizations or ideas.
- They do fund one-year grants.
- They do fund projects in the US and Palestine/Israel.
- They do fund with an eye for community accountability and inclusion.
For more information, visit https://www.sparkplugfoundation.org/information/