Seed Grant

Grants of up to $30,000 to New York City nonprofit organizations for activities that address the nutrition and emergency food needs of low-income residents, including those arising from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. Funding is intended to support a range of projects, including services related to outreach and benefits access, wellness programs, organizational enhancements, or nutrition education.

For the 2022 Seed Grant program year, non-profit organizations are invited to submit projects that provide organizations with the ability to develop or improve upon innovative ways of confronting emergency food and/or nutrition needs of low-income individuals. 

Funders will prioritize Seed Grant projects that focus on community healthy food access challenges exacerbated during the Covid-19 coronavirus public health and financial crisis and/or address existing ongoing, persistent need(s) within the emergency food network will be prioritized. Projects contributing to that increased expand the capacity for emergency food programs (EFPs) to respond to increased service levels AND demonstrate ability to be replicable, sustainable, and relevant beyond the current crisis are preferred. Projects should meet one or more of the following criteria:

• Increase or enhance emergency food resources or create a diversified resource base through community partnerships
• Increase organizational capacity and effectiveness to provide emergency food services and access to healthy foods.
• Link emergency food providers and their guests to services that could reduce dependence on emergency food.

Examples of eligible projects include, but are not limited to:

• Linking EFPs to resources that increase the number of volunteers serving the emergency food network now due to increased number of visitors, such as projects that increase providers capability to form partnerships and linkages to support consistent connections to volunteers.
• i.e., willing neighborhood groups, emerging crowd source volunteer connection platforms, community and faith-based organizations, and other volunteer services etc.
• i.e., Mobilizing a call center to manage requests for home delivery requests by a volunteer workforce of drivers' delivery groceries in their neighborhood.
• Increasing emergency food resources in less-traditional distribution models.
• i.e., Starting or expanding an urban farm distributing harvests free of charge to the community and training community members in urban agriculture skills.
• Developing training programs for at risk individuals to increase skills for future job placement