Get to know us by getting to know some of the organization we support.
FOOD
PLANET
HEALTH
OUTDOOR
COMMUNITY
FOOD
Calypso Farm and Ecology Center
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Calypso Farm and Ecology Center promotes local agriculture and environmental awareness by providing hands-on education about natural and farming ecosystems to school children and community members. The farm also operates as a CSA to feed local families.
Native Seeds
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Native Seeds promotes sustainable agriculture and food security by conserving heirloom seeds. The regional seed bank includes 1800 varieties of arid-land adapted agricultural crops, which have been chosen by generations of farmers and gardeners for their genetic adaptations to particular growing conditions. To promote agricultural biodiversity and food security, Native Seeds offers 350 varieties—many of them rare or endangered—to traditional communities and to gardeners worldwide.
Alameda County Community Food Bank
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Alameda County Community Food Bank provides nutritious food to people in need, and promotes public policies that address hunger and its root causes. Through 275 food pantries, soup kitchens, child-care centers, senior centers, after-school programs, and other community-based organizations, the Food Bank distributes enough food for 300,000 meals weekly.
Alameda Meals on Wheels
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Alameda Meals on Wheels delivers hot, nourishing meals to Alameda residents since 1973. Seven-day-a-week, volunteers carry mid-day meals to more than 140 local residents of all ages, who are welcome to pay on a sliding fee scale.
Alameda Point Collaborative
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Alameda Point Collaborative provides 200 units of housing to families and individuals who have been homeless. Each year it serves approximately 500 people, including nearly 300 children and youth. The Collaborative also offers employment opportunities, on-the-job training, two playgrounds, an urban farm and community garden, a retail plant nursery (specializing in native and edible plants), and a commercial kitchen.
Catalyst Commons
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Catalyst Commons works to reform our complex food system. They’re currently developing platforms and networks to organize vast amounts of data about all aspects of the system – from production, processing, and distribution to urban agriculture, restorative production, and food security – in a simple format, so that people can quickly understand the intricacies of the food system, and support smarter business, policy, investment, and environmental decisions.
Center for Land Based Learning
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Center for Land Based Learning teaches California’s youth and the next generation of farmers about the importance of environmentally sound farming and watershed conservation. Interns work on a variety of habitat restoration projects and learn about related scientific concepts—why and how each task relates to the productive intersection of agriculture, conservation, and sustainability.
Ceres Community Project
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Ceres Community Project works to reestablish locally grown, organic food as a cornerstone of health. The Project provides people who are facing life-threatening illnesses with nourishing meals and, at the same time, gives teens the opportunity to grow and prepare healthy food, and educates the larger community about the connection between food, healing, and wellness. To date, Ceres teen chefs have provided 83,000 meals to families in five counties. The Project model is currently being developed in three other states.
City Slicker Farms
GRANTEE PROFILE:
City Slicker Farms grows sustainable, high-yield, backyard gardens and urban farms that provide West Oakland residents with affordable organic fruits and vegetables, and the tools they need to grow their own food. The gardens empower children and adults who want to learn about the connections between ecology, farming, and the urban environment.
Community Alliance with Family Farmers
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Community Alliance with Family Farmers advocates for California family farmers and sustainable agriculture. Programs include Buy Fresh, Buy Local, which opens new markets for family farmers and educates consumers about the benefits of buying local, and Farm to School, which reconnects children with local food and agriculture in their classrooms and cafeterias.
Connolly Ranch Education Center
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Connolly Ranch Education Center connects kids with nature through farm-based environmental education programs focusing on farm life, organic gardening, the sources and benefits of healthy foods, and an appreciation of how nature sustains us.
Ecology Center
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Ecology Center facilitates urban lifestyles that advance ecological sustainability, social equity, and economic development. They provide the information and infrastructure that make sustainable practices possible on a large scale. Projects include the Berkeley's Farmers' Markets and residential curbside recycling program, Farm Fresh Choice food justice program, and EcoHouse demonstrations and classes.
Farmer-Veteran Coalition
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Farmer-Veteran Coalition helps returning veterans find training and employment on America’s farms. FVC believes that America’s aging farmers, local and regional agriculture, and the sustainable farming movement would all be well served by people accustomed to discipline, dedication, and hard work. In turn, veterans also can benefit – even in these economic times – by helping to grow the green economy.
Food Forward
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Food Forward addresses urban hunger. Volunteers harvest locally grown food from private homes and public spaces and deliver it to local food pantries and organizations serving those in need.
Glide San Francisco
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Glide San Francisco offers programs to create a “radically inclusive” community, alleviate suffering, and break the cycles of poverty and marginalization. Programs include Feed the Hungry, Inspire Youth and Children, House the Community, and Green the Tenderloin.
Green Schools
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Green Schools works to catalyze “green” actions by kids, teachers, parents, and policymakers to improve the environmental health and ecological sustainability of U.S. schools. It acts to leverage the schools’ sector to transform the school environment—and the markets that supply them—to improve health and sustainability by eliminating toxins, using resources sustainably, creating green spaces and buildings, serving healthy food, and teaching stewardship.
Growers First
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Growers First helps rural farmers in Mexico, Honduras, Indonesia, and Rwanda cultivate sustainable, higher incomes and new jobs in their communities. Through ecologically balanced farming methods, increased crop yields, and organic certification of their coffee (available in Traceable-Transformation™ blends), over 600 families in 24 villages are improving their quality of life.
GrowingGreat
GRANTEE PROFILE:
GrowingGreat addresses the problems of obesity and rising health care costs by helping children and communities reconnect with healthy food. Through elementary school gardens, a Farm-to-School Harvest-of-the-Month tasting program, and nutrition education, GrowingGreat has reached over 30,000 students and families in California and Hawaii.
International Development Exchange
GRANTEE PROFILE:
International Development Exchange (IDEX) promotes sustainable solutions to poverty by providing long-term grants and other resources to locally run organizations. IDEX’s international development model, inspired by returning Peace Corps volunteers, centers around small grants targeting grassroots groups that are trusted by their neighbors and that understand the needs of their own communities. IDEX’s initiatives involve entire communities in building local economies, empowering women, protecting the environment, creating food security, and promoting local leadership in Guatemala, India, Mexico, Nepal, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
Local Ecology and Agriculture Fremont (LEAF)
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Local Ecology and Agriculture Fremont (LEAF) provides local residents with information about sustainable and ecological practices including local food production, organic gardening, waste reduction, green building, and resource conservation. LEAF also collaborates with other community organizations to start neighborhood gardens and to build community among Fremont’s diverse residents.
OBUGS
GRANTEE PROFILE:
OBUGS (Oakland Based Urban Gardens) reaches over 400 children each week through a network of school and neighborhood gardens, green spaces, and farmers' markets. In partnerships with West and North Oakland schools, OBUGS offers in-school, afterschool, volunteer, and internship programs and summer camps at seven gardens that emphasize hands-on educational activities. OBUGS has served more than 2,000 children from preschool through middle school since its inception (and 400 adults through related events).
Organic Farming Research Foundation
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Organic Farming Research Foundation advocates for the improvement and widespread adoption of organic farming systems. Through an integrated strategy of grant making, policy, education, and networking initiatives, OFRF supports organic farmers’ needs for immediate information while moving the public and policymakers toward greater investment in organic farming systems.
Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA)
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) works to replace the use of hazardous pesticides with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives. Through a citizens’ action network that includes consumers and labor, health, environment and agriculture groups, they challenge the local and global proliferation of pesticides, and defend public health and environmental quality.
Petaluma Bounty
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Petaluma Bounty helps local residents grow their own healthy food, redistributes surplus food, and provides affordable fresh food to low-income families and seniors. Core programs include the Bounty Hunters food gleaning program, an educational urban farm, weekly boxes of organic fruits and vegetables sold at wholesale prices to low-income families, and custom designed, permaculture-inspired food forests.
Pie Ranch
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Pie Ranch serves as a model of sustainable farming and supports “pie in the sky” idealistic thinking to guide social change. The working farm hosts regional high school students, and collaborates with educators and community leaders from diverse settings to help students apply what they’ve learned to their daily lives in order to create meaningful and measurable change. The Ranch also mentors aspiring farmers through yearlong resident apprenticeships.
Rooted in Community
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Rooted in Community, a project of Earth Island Institute, prepares young people for leadership positions in neighborhood food security through urban and rural agriculture, community gardening, and related environmental justice work.
Slide Ranch
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Slide Ranch is a nonprofit teaching farm located at a historic coastal dairy. The Ranch uses its organic gardens as well as its goats, sheep, chickens, and ducks to teach an appreciation for fresh healthy food, and the farms that grow it. Each year, thousands of Bay Area residents participate in Ranch Programs and learn about growing and preparing nutritious foods, and how to use natural resources sustainably.
Urban Tilth
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Urban Tilth helps to build a healthier food system in west Contra Costa County. The group works with schools, community-based organizations, government agencies, businesses, and individuals to develop the capacity to produce 5% of their food supply. Urban Tilth trains and employs local people, establishes cross sector coalitions, engages in local policy decisions, and grows food using permaculture principles (waste reduction, and water and soil conservation, preservation and restoration).
The Organic Center
GRANTEE PROFILE:
The Organic Center supports the conversion of conventional agriculture to organic. They offer comprehensive, peer-reviewed scientific studies that demonstrate the benefits of organic food and farming, and help the public understand the multiple benefits of organics to people and the planet.
Chicago Rarities Orchard Project
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Chicago Rarities Orchard Project supports the establishment of rare-fruit orchards in reclaimed urban spaces. By filling empty lots with orchards, the Project will foster varieties of tree fruit that aren't commonly grown commercially, while creating urban green space, and educational opportunities for local children. Fruit from the orchard will help fund the Project and also will be distributed throughout the local community.
Seed Savers Exchange
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Seed Savers Exchange saves and shares heirloom seeds in order to protect the endangered genetic diversity held in North America’s fruits and vegetables for future generations. The Exchange is building a network of people committed to collecting, conserving, and distributing heirloom seeds and plants; educating people about the value of genetic and cultural diversity; and sponsoring programs to combat decreasing diversity by promoting crops that aren't often grown commercially.
New Orleans Food & Farm Network
GRANTEE PROFILE:
New Orleans Food & Farm Network addresses the city’s need for affordable and locally grown fresh produce. The Network focuses on underserved neighborhoods with limited access to fresh food, creates projects specific to each neighborhood’s identity and resources, and emphasizes food-growing gardens in backyards, schools, and churches. By cleaning up spaces, providing jobs, and growing good food, New Orleans’ neighborhoods-in-need can play a key role in revitalizing the city.
Cape Ann Farmers’ Market
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Cape Ann Farmers’ Market works to provide fresh, nutritious food – produced with environmentally benign methods and delivered with a smaller carbon footprint – for their entire community, regardless of income. Buying local means food dollars stay local.
Sustainable Nantucket
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Sustainable Nantucket integrates sustainable food production, processing, distribution, and consumption to enhance the overall environmental, economic, and social health of the island. Through programs such as Farm to School, Farmers and Artisans Market, and Community Agriculture, it supports a more locally based, self-reliant food economy.
Land Stewardship Project
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Land Stewardship Project promotes sustainable agriculture and ethical stewardship of farmland through cultural programs and a farmer-to-farmer network that helps farmers move to more sustainable farming methods. They also help communities stop factory farms, link sustainable livestock producers to potential urban customers, and support federal policies advocating for farming alternatives that benefit farmers and the land.
EarthDance
GRANTEE PROFILE:
EarthDance focuses on growing and inspiring local FARMS – Food, Art, Relationships, and Music. They operate an apprenticeship program at the historic Mueller Organic Farm that trains local residents in soil fertility principles, organic pest and disease management, proper harvest and post-harvest handling techniques, direct marketing, and CSA operations. Graduates have gone on to farm school gardens, CSA Farms, and backyard gardens.
Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Jersey
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Jersey includes farmers, consumers, retailers, processors, educators, and researchers working to develop a sustainable organic agricultural system. They provide assistance to both organic and progressive conventional farmers, educate diverse audiences about how organic practices affect food and the environment, and provide independent, third-party certification to organic farms and processors.
Queens County Farm Museum
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Queens County Farm Museum is the only working historical farm in New York City, and the longest continuously farmed site in New York State – the Farm, which dates to 1697, includes a greenhouse, livestock, farm vehicles, planting fields, an orchard and a herb garden. Through programs and events, they educate the public about Queens County's agricultural and horticultural past, and present-day sustainability practices.
Truck Farm
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Truck Farm – a 1986 Dodge pickup with a mini-farm planted in the truck bed – travels from school to school teaching kids about farming and healthy food, engaging them in thinking about where food comes from, and getting them excited about growing food themselves.
Rural Advancement Foundation International USA
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Rural Advancement Foundation International – USA works with farm, community, university, and government groups to support socially just and environmentally sound family farms. Through practical assistance, market opportunities, policy changes, and access to financial and technical resources, RAFI-USA promotes sustainability, equity, and diversity in agriculture.
World Neighbors
GRANTEE PROFILE:
World Neighbors strives to eliminate hunger, poverty, and disease in isolated rural villages in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. They do not give away food or material aid, but provide people and communities with knowledge and training in agriculture, literacy, water, health, and environmental protection so that they can create their own life-changing solutions.
Food Alliance
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Food Alliance is one of North America's most comprehensive third-party certification organizations for the production, processing, and distribution of sustainable food. They promote sustainability in agriculture and the food industry, safe and fair working conditions, careful stewardship of ecosystems, and humane treatment of animals.
Food Waves
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Food Waves promotes sustainable agriculture as a long-term solution to health and environmental problems. They offer future farmers the technical and financial support they need to learn organic farming practices, supply local food banks with organic fruits and vegetable, and provide low-income families with materials and training so that they can grow their own food.
Grow Portland
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Grow Portland expands urban gardening and agriculture by connecting diverse populations with knowledge, supplies, and land.
Organic Materials Review Institute
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI) provides an independent review of products intended for use in certified organic production, handling, and processing. OMRI reviews products against the National Organic Standards, determines which inputs are allowed in organic production and processing, and provides guidance to subscribers and certifiers regarding the acceptability of various material inputs. OMRI also helps growers find organic seed.
Rodale Institute
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Rodale Institute has pioneered groundbreaking research in organic agriculture for over 60 years. It advocates for policies that support farmers, and educates people about the benefits of organic practices. The Institute’s Farming Systems Trial® is the longest-running side-by-side U.S. study comparing conventional chemical agriculture with organic methods (demonstrating that organic yields equal conventional, and outperform them in years of drought). New areas of study include rates of carbon sequestration, and new techniques for weed suppression.
Puente a la Salud Comunitaria
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Puente a la Salud Comunitaria advances the health and economies of rural communities in Mexico. Through their Healthy Families and Eco-Amaranth programs, Puente works with subsistence farmers to produce nutritious crops using sustainable, environmentally sound methods; to combat malnutrition; and to raise community awareness about principles of food sovereignty and a healthy diet.
GRuB
GRANTEE PROFILE:
GRuB (Garden-Raised Bounty) encourages individual and community food solutions. Since 1993, it has partnered with youth and people with low-incomes to build more than 2,300 backyard and community gardens, host workshops, and provide training and resources to increase healthy food access in Thurston and Mason counties. GRuB in the Schools allows students to earn credits while learning about and contributing to their local food systems through programs such as Farming Self, Farming Land, and Farming Community.
Organic Seed Alliance
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Organic Seed Alliance (OSA) fosters the ethical development and stewardship of agricultural seed—a living natural resource that’s fundamental to our food security. Through collaborative education, advisory services, and research programs with organic farmers and other seed professionals, OSA works to restore and develop seed varieties for current needs while safeguarding seed as an invaluable genetic resource for future generations.
American Farmland Trust
GRANTEE PROFILE:
American Farmland Trust protects America's fast disappearing farm and ranch land, promotes environmentally sound farming practices, and works to ensure an economically sustainable future for farmers and ranchers. Through efforts such as the No Farm No Food campaign, the Steward of the Land Award, and the Sustaining Farms on the Urban Edge report, the Trust inspires people to act on behalf of farms, clean water, and local food.
Campus Kitchens Project
GRANTEE PROFILE:
Campus Kitchens Project empowers thousands of college students each year to recycle food from their cafeterias, turn these donations into nourishing meals, and deliver them to those in need. Simultaneously, they cultivate resourceful and mutually beneficial partnerships among students, social service agencies, businesses, and schools.
FUNDED BY CLIF BAR & COMPANY
©2011 CLIF BAR FAMILY FOUNDATION