Grant-making has always been my favorite part of our family foundation. It’s pretty simple, really. We’re require by law to give away a certain amount of money each year. Family members reach into our communities and invite organizations to help us with our annual distribution. They apply for a grant, we collect all the applications and the grant committee carefully sorts through each one. At our annual meeting the committee makes a recommendation to the trustees and we usually select 5-7 organizations to partner with. Checks are written to those non-profits to support a specific program need and in return we get periodic updates with stories and photos.
I received one such update just last week. FEEST (Food Empowerment Education Sustainability Team), a Seattle organization, received a grant in 2012 to help produce their training manual so that other cities across the country have a model for building community through cooking. In honor of Food Day 2013, FEEST was featured in a Huffington Post Blog! Read the blog and watch the 3 minute video about FEEST here. Inspired? Our 2014 grant application will be available soon (deadline to apply is March 1)!
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