Clif Family Foundation Grants

Overview

The Clif Family Foundation is an organization we started in 2006 to support small-to-midsize grassroots groups led by people whose vision and commitment we deeply admire. We have been proud to support hundreds of organizations that are working tirelessly to strengthen our food system, enhance equitable community health outcomes, and protect the places we play by being stewards of our environment and natural resources. Our desire has been to leave the world a better place for our children.  

Priorities

• Regenerative and Organic Farming: Accelerate the adoption of regenerative farming practices, including organic, climate-resilient, equitable, and agroecological approaches.  
• Food Production Workers’ Health and Safety: Amplify efforts to secure healthy, safe, just, and empowering working and living conditions for food production workers.  
• Healthy Food Access: Advance food systems’ changes that make healthy and sustainably produced food accessible, affordable, and culturally appropriate.  
• Inclusive Outdoors Access: Catalyze solutions that expand access to safe places to enable healthy physical activity and improve mental health.  
• Climate Justice: Expand community resilience efforts that prevent or mitigate climate change and accelerate climate justice.  
• Indoors and Outdoors Safe from Pollution: Promote preventative health approaches by identifying and eliminating toxics from our air, water, soil, and human-made materials. 

Clif Family Foundation currently offers two types of grants: Open Call and By Invitation Only.

Open Call Grants
These grants support general operating cost or specific projects and applicants must be registered as (or fiscally sponsored by) a 501(c)3 organization. 

Priority is given to applicants that:

• Advance our strategic priorities and align with our values
• Focus their work primarily in the United States and its organized incorporated territories 
• Demonstrate strong community ties 
• Have operating budgets under $3MM 
• Operate at the grassroots level to implement change at the local, state or national stage

By Invitation Only Grants:
Our By Invitation Only (BIO) grants support nonprofit organizations in the U.S. working on critical issues that are aligned with the Clif Family Foundation’s strategic priorities and values. 
There are two main programs for BIO grants: 

• Food Systems Transformation, focused on:
  Farmworker Justice, Health and Safety 
  Increased Access to Good Food (i.e., healthy and equitably/regeneratively produced food) for disadvantaged communities
  Organic and Regenerative Farming, emphasizing human/social and equity dimensions
• Climate Justice, focused on:
  A Resilient Built Environment: helping communities secure climate- ready structures—places that are safe, affordable, healthy and carbon positive
  Economic Justice: enabling solutions to come from, benefit, and create jobs in disadvantaged communities including community ownership of energy systems, and community-stewarded lands
  A More Powerful Climate Movement: helping grow from the bottom up a more effective movement that ensures this moment of unprecedented federal climate support reaches disadvantaged communities

The Foundation reviews applications twice a year;
Deadlines are March 1 and August 1.

Grant announcements occur approximately four months after the deadline. Typical grants range from $5,000 - $50,000 and last for one year.