In April 2024, the Better Food Policy Fund will announce awards of $30,000 each for unrestricted use for 10 US-based groups working to effect better food policy through civic collaboration.  The Fund intends to provide these same 10 grantees with a second round of $30,000 in unrestricted funding in April 2025.

This program is not a typical grant process.  It is non-competitive; grantees will be identified through a nomination process and a qualified lottery. 

Timeline

By January 20, 2024 – Application form available
January 22, 2024 – Information Session Recording – Slidedeck
January 30, 2024 – Information Session Recording – Slidedeck
March 5, 2024 – Applications due by 5:00 PM Pacific
By March 8, 2024 – Finalists contacted to schedule storytelling sessions
By April 15, 2024 – Awards announced

Eligible groups are food policy councils in the US working to effect better food policy through civic collaboration. Their work could include, but is not limited to actions, such as:

• Increasing levels of inclusive and equitable stakeholder engagement in public processes
• Engaging systems thinking when tackling complex food system challenges
• Facilitating collaboration with and across local government agencies and departments
• Developing or revising local policies and plans

Food policy councils take many shapes and forms.  They may not include the words “policy” or “council” in their name. Eligible groups, whom we consider to be food policy councils, meet all of the following criteria:

• Councils, networks, coalitions, or other groups working across boundaries at the tribal, municipal, county, state, regional, or intertribal level
• Fostering an enabling environment for practices, procedures, ordinances, laws, etc. of governing institutions which strengthen community-based food systems
• Joining together community and government
• Can be structured as community groups, government-embedded entities, higher education-embedded entities, non-profit organizations, etc.

Community groups without fiscal agents/sponsors, individuals, and for-profit/commercial organizations are not eligible for this opportunity.

The rubric which the IAC will use to evaluate eligibility and fit includes these Grant Eligibility Criteria and FPC Success Factors.

There are two pathways by which candidates enter the application process. Regardless of the path entered, candidates will then be evaluated using the same selection process and eligibility and alignment rubric.

Path 1: Up to 5 candidates will be identified through a trust-based process involving nominations from individual members of the Fund’s Independent Advisory Committee.

Path 2: At least 5 candidates will be selected randomly from an applicant pool. The application form will be available by January 20 and completed applications are due March 5.

Groups are drawn at random from the application pool and evaluated using criteria with two different goals in mind.

Goal 1: Ensure inclusion in the grantee cohort would enhance the overall diversity of the grantee cohort.

Goal 2: Ensure eligibility and alignment by checking applicant’s written responses against the Grant Eligibility Criteria and FPC Success Factors.

The first 10 applicants that pass the diversity, eligibility, and alignment checks will be invited to participate in a finalist storytelling session.  These sessions, held March 8-19, will enable the IAC to verify the applications and provide us a chance to get to know our finalists better.

Assuming there are no issues surfaced during the storytelling sessions, the 10 finalists will be announced as our inaugural grantees by mid-April.

The application is a Google Form that asks for the following information.  Our hope is that you won’t need to spend more than an hour or so to pull this information together.  The links below show the specific information requested in each section of the application form.

• Contact Information
• Fiscal Information, including Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement upload
• Council Characteristics (aka Dimensions of Diversity)
• Written Reponses Upload
• Agreements

Having trouble submitting your application? Try these steps.

Food Policy Council Contact Information

• Email address
• Council name
• Council mailing address
• Council website (optional)
• Council primary contact name
• Council primary contact phone

Fiscal Information

• Council EIN
  -OR-
  
• Fiscal sponsor agreement (upload a copy)
• Fiscal sponsor EIN
• Fiscal sponsor organization name
• Fiscal sponsor contact name
• Fiscal sponsor mailing address
• Fiscal sponsor phone
• Fiscal sponsor email

Dimensions of Diversity

Council demographics will be used for two purposes: to ensure a diverse cohort and to promote equity by ensuring councils that are BIPOC-affiliated, rural, or financially insecure are included.    

• What percent of your FPC leadership team is Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC)? (Don’t Know is an option)
• What percent of your FPC membership is Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC)? (Don’t Know is an option)
• Briefly describe the racial/ethnic diversity of the community your council serves (1-2 sentences).
• What is the density of the place that your food policy council serves?  (urban/rural/etc.)
• How financially secure is your food policy council? (secure/adequate/insecure)
• At what stage would you say your food policy council is developmentally? (start-up/growth/etc.)
• At what scale is your food policy council primarily focused? (city/county/state/etc.)
• In what state(s) or territory is your food policy council operating?
• How is your food policy council currently organized? (grassroots/non-profit/etc.)
• Where do your food policy efforts focus?  (access/justice/production, etc.)

Written Responses Upload

Please upload your responses to the written response questions formatted as a single 2-page document or PDF, less than 100MB.   Include your group’s name in the filename.  Refer to the written response guidance for more information.

Agreements

The following questions are intended to help us plan while we are also reviewing applications, so we can move more quickly.  Your responses to these questions will not be taken into consideration when determining your eligibility or fit with the fund.

• Storytelling session – If selected as a finalist, we would like to have 4-6 members of your food policy council to participate in a facilitated virtual storytelling session sometime between March 8-19, 2024.
• If selected as a grantee, we would like to have 3-5 members of your food policy council participate in an initial virtual cohort convening sometime within the first few months after receiving the award.
• If selected as a grantee, we would like for your council to complete a self-assessment at the beginning and end of the grant cycle.

Individual grantee results will be available only to each individual grantee for their internal purposes. The Fund will only use results in aggregate across all grantees.

These results would be used to:

• Support grantees in identifying and addressing areas for council growth
• Promote peer learning across the grantee cohort and food policy council stakeholders
• Demonstrate impact of the Fund across the cohort

The assessment will likely use this Food Policy Council Self-Assessment Tool and the Fund will provide the survey instrument for your council to disseminate and complete.

If you aren’t funded, we’d like to ensure your written responses don’t go to waste.  We’ve identified two ways we can use your stories to further the work of food policy councils.  These are completely optional and your response will not limit your eligibility.

• We give permission for our application information to be studied by the Fund for the purposes of better supporting food policy councils.
• We give permission for accomplishments described in our application to be shared publicly in the spirit of celebration and learning with food policy council stakeholders or potential fund donors.

Written Response Instructions & Questions

Please limit your written responses to the following questions to 2 pages total. Save the pages as a single file in a Google Document, DOC, DOCX, ODT, or PDF format.  It should be no more than 100 MB.  The filename should include your council’s name.

We would like more than your elevator pitch, but less than a novel. 😂  Feel free to use lists rather than paragraphs when it suits you.  You may include images, diagrams, or links to pre-existing materials; these will not count toward the page limit.

1. Can you share some examples of how your food policy council meets the four Grant Eligibility Criteria?
2. Think about these six FPC Success Factors. Are there any of these success factors which your food policy council is trying to better integrate into how the council works? How is your council doing this?
3. Choose one of these questions to answer.  (If you can’t decide, you can answer both, as long as you stay in the overall limit of 2 pages total for all written responses):
   1. Tell us about a shared vision your food policy council has for the community. How did this vision come about? How can your council’s strengths contribute to turning this vision into reality? If your food council were to share these thoughts in a group storytelling session, who would it choose (4-6 people) to tell the story? What roles do these individuals play in your council and in the food system?
   2. Tell us about a time when your food policy council felt a great sense of teamwork and achievement. How did your council’s strengths play a role in this success? If your food council were to share this experience in a group storytelling session, who would it choose (4-6 people) to tell the story? What roles do these individuals play in your council and in the food system?

Written Response Guidance

If your council’s demographics enhance the diversity of our grantee cohort, we will review your written responses to determine: a) whether you meet our Grant Eligibility Criteria and b) how your council aligns with FPC Success Factors.

If we see eligibility and alignment, your group will become a finalist and we will arrange a group storytelling session to verify your application.

We believe that every food policy council is worthy of funding.  We aren’t comparing your responses with those from other councils.  We won’t be ranking you.  We just want to know more about who you are and how you work so we can verify your group is doing the kind of work we’re trying to support.

Grant Eligibility Criteria: 

1. The group is engaged in civic collaboration in the US.  This means based in the US, working in US communities, with active engagement of those who are affected by policies and those who set them.
2. The group is pushing food policy forward or laying the groundwork to do so.  This means the group has an intentional focus implementing one or more of the following types of activities:
   • Collecting information and studying the issue to know legal implications and options.
   • Forming alliances with groups supporting the change.
   • Raising public awareness about the issue.
   • Building relationships with key decision-makers.
   • Drafting clear and effective policy ideas.
   • Involving affected community members in the process.
   • Convincing leaders to support change.
   • Training and skill development for effective action.
   • Trying out smaller versions of proposed policy changes to show benefits.
3. The group prioritizes and engages in COLLABORATION on a regular basis
4. The group recognizes the COMPLEXITY involved in food systems change and acts accordingly. 

FPC Success Factors

With the help of stakeholders like you, we have learned that successful food policy councils:

1. Are ACCOUNTABLE to those closest to the issues being addressed.
2. Use EQUITY tools in strategic decision-making.
3. Establish inclusive GOVERNANCE structures to support their work.  
4. Leverage EMPATHY to cultivate trust and strong relationships. 
5. Possess a deep KNOWLEDGE of the issues being addressed and their implications. 
6. Have effective LEADERSHIP for the given context.

Ultimately, we view grantees as being accountable to the stakeholder group on the Fund’s email list, which includes both donors to the fund and food policy councils who are interested in the Fund. The intent is to make reporting to the stakeholder group easy and celebratory, balancing the need for accountability and a desire to move the field forward with a strong desire to not create barriers or impositions for grantees. Therefore, we will work with grantees to find a balance that works best. We are trying to build relationships between grantees and other councils to help strengthen the network and work of FPCs.