I'm always here to chat about that. I also love to share kids stories. I want to hear your restaurant recommendations from wherever you hail from. And while we're at it, why don't you tell me your movie and book recommendations. But most importantly, I want to hear about the important work that you're doing, what you find exciting, the ones that you're celebrating, but also what's keeping you up at night and what the Onion Foundation can do to serve you better.
We're recording this session today Sally started the recording already. You're welcome to turn your camera off if you don't want to be seen in the in the recording. Please keep the interest coming in the chat as we move through today's agenda. Also, we're going to have plenty of time for questions. If you have any burning questions you want to put in the chat as we go please do that but we're not going to be able to address them until we get through the slides. So this is what we'll be talking about today. We'll be talking for about 20 minutes before we move on to q&a. We'll spend a little bit of time talking about the Onion Foundation overall, its mission and its history will give an overview of the environmental program and the strategy that was put into place for the environmental program in the past couple of years. Then we'll dive into the Equitable Outdoor Access grant program and specifics around eligibility and guidelines. We'll touch on our grant making system which is called giving data. And like I said we'll spend most of our time for q&a. And there will be plenty of opportunities before this grant closes if you want to talk one on one at any time. If you'd rather do that then bring your q&a here to the session. You can reach out to me separately.
So the Onion Foundation is a private philanthropic foundation that works to provide the people of Maine with meaningful connections to and experiences in the arts and the natural environment that inspire them to sustain those resources for future generations through our grant making and other support. We help organizations to build their capacity to achieve their goals. And we pay particular attention to rural and other underserved communities in the state. Our commitment to fostering an inclusive and equitable Maine underlines everything we do. The Onion Foundation was started by Susan and Fritz onion in 2014. They made their first grants in 2015 through direct outreach and then organizations began applying for grants and 2016. Soon Susan and Fritz specifically chose to work on the arts and the environment because these are the areas that bring joy and fulfillment to their own family. And to date the Foundation has awarded more than 1600 grants to 514 organizations totaling nearly $19 million. In our work, or in working to achieve our mission we strive to be accessible and curious, forward thinking and thoughtful and we also strive to build build trusting relationships with our grantees, community members, government leaders, and other like minded funders across the state of Maine. So a little bit more about the environment program overall.
The Environment Program aims to enable all Maine residents especially in rural areas to enjoy the state's natural resources and to develop the knowledge, skills and motivation to protect Maine's environment. Over the last couple of years, the Onion Foundation has worked to bring more shape and specificity to our environmental work. Based on what is most important to us, and what we believe will have the most positive impact for Maine's residents and the environment. Importantly, we focus our resources on the people of Maine whose lives and behaviors will shape the environment and climate change outcomes rather than on capital investments or land acquisition. And that's because we believe that meaningful experiences in nature lead to a deeper understanding of our environment and a stronger desire to protect it for our shared future.
And we do this through three strategies. We think about these strategies as a continuum with each building on the previous to develop and support more environmental stewards and advocates who will protect means natural environment now and into the future. The first strategy is to increase equitable access to the outdoors so that Maine residents feel comfortable outside and connected to the natural world and so that they can begin to develop an ethic of care for nature. The next is to expand high quality science based nature learning opportunities that give Maine's youth the knowledge they need to take action on environmental and climate challenges in their own communities. And the third strategy on this continuum is to enable Maine residents to be effective advocates for protecting the environment and mitigating the effects of the climate crisis. These strategies are interrelated because our theory of change is that once you spend time in nature and spark that ethic of care for nature, and if you learn more about natural systems and the threats facing them, you can use that passion know how to then advocate for lasting change. We support nonprofits doing work in these areas with the combination of solicited and unsolicited grants. Today we're going to be talking about the open call for equitable outdoor access grants, which is open now until March 27. Later in the spring, we will open the nature learning grant call that will open on May 8 And we'll have an info session shortly after that. And then our advocacy and movement building grants which are by invitation only.
Each of our three priorities or each of our three strategies rather, is supported by one or more priorities. You can see how they're organized here and you can also read more about each priority on our website. I'm going to be directing you to our website a lot. There's a lot of great information there. If you want to talk through any of these strategies, or if you're not sure where your organization fits, please schedule a time with me and we'll chat about it. Not everything is cut and dry. Some organizations really defy categorization so it can help to talk through where the best fit is in a particular year. But today, we're going to be talking about the equitable outdoor access strategy. And really we're going to be spending the bulk of our time on the eliminate barriers to access priority because that's the focus of this particular grant call.
All right, so first, let's zoom in on strategy one overall. The aim of the strategy is to increase access to the outdoors so that Maine residents feel comfortable outside and connected to the natural world and then develop that important ethic of care for nature. The priorities supporting the strategy are listed here. The first priority is to encourage Maine land trusts and watershed organizations and other freshwater organizations to develop their own equitable outdoor organizations and inclusive programs with easy access to the outdoors. The second priority is to eliminate barriers to accessing the outdoor outdoors confronted by underserved groups, the underserved groups that were focusing grant resources on now are black, indigenous and people of color and people living with disabilities. And a third priority is to support catalytic statewide or regional networks, initiatives and infrastructure that can really connect and strengthen the outdoor access sector overall. So we're gonna quickly go over each of these priorities before diving into the specifics of the grant program.
The aim of Priority A is to encourage land trusts and watershed organizations to build their own capacity to engage a more diverse and growing number of Maine residents. Now our approach to providing support under Priority A has shifted. And if you haven't applied for a grant in the past year, or if it's been a little bit of time, this might be news for you. So at this time, any land trusts that have previously received Onion Foundation support can now apply to the land trusts grant program at momentum conservation, formerly known as Southern Maine conservation collaborative. This program opens April 10 of this year, and will close on Friday May 24th. We made this shift last year and so any This is a competitive grant program. But any land trusts that previously were supported by the Onion Foundation should apply through that program. And then any watershed or freshwater organization that previously received Onion Foundation support will be invited to apply for grant funding working directly with Susan. And Susan, do you want to take a minute to say a little bit more about the approach?
Sure. So as Roz explained, we view land trusts and watersheds as resources in the in the state of Maine. So, Onion Foundation is interest in these spaces are the places where we can recreate learn healing work, and we know that these are needed resources to enable people to connect with nature and to get outside our freshwater work specifically, we're interested in access and supporting the local stewardship of the lakes where people can engage equitably with nature. So that's the focus that we're taking there. At this time, as Roz said, we're working with staff watershed and network organizations and we're currently supporting this work through invitation only. So if anyone were interested or felt they had a project that they'd like to talk to me about, then they would reach out to me directly. We do not have an open call for applications at this time. Thanks, Roz.
Thanks so much, Susan. So Priority B is kind of the essence of the current grant call. Priority B for equitable outdoor access is to eliminate barriers for accessing the outdoors that are confronted by underserved groups. And for now, the underserved groups that are the focus of these grant resources are Black, Indigenous and People of Color and also people living with disabilities. Now across the country, these groups face significant barriers to enjoying the outdoors and Maine is no exception, despite its abundant natural resources, and that in Maine, 84% of people of color are living in an area considered nature deprived versus 26% of white people. And this disparity is actually more pronounced in Maine than the national average. And people living with disabilities, including their families and caregivers, face extremely profound challenges to accessing the outdoors. And until very recently, this need was practically invisible and the outdoor community according to the CDC, adults with disabilities make up 27% of the population of Maine, and that stat doesn't include children with disabilities or their caregivers. So what we see is that even when nature spaces are conserved and open to all we know from the research that things like transportation, language, information, gear, and overall comfort level have kept the outdoors largely a white and able bodied domain. So what would it look like if everyone in Maine could enjoy immersive nature experiences, regardless of their race or physical ability? And what would it take to achieve that is the focus of our grant program and
we're going to dive into greater detail in just a moment. But for the sake of completeness, we'll just quickly touch on Priority C. With Priority C, the Onion Foundation believes in investing in statewide and regional organizations that provide infrastructure resources, such as equipment and transportation to ensure participants comfort and safety and reduce the cost of participation in programs or reduce the cost for the organizations that are running these programs. For now, grants in this priority area will be by invitation only. If you think this applies to you. Please reach out to me so that we can schedule time to talk for an hour and jump back to the open grant program.
So on the screen here, this is our eligibility criteria for all Onion Foundation grants. Most importantly, you have to be a tax exempt public charity, so you have to be a 501 C three, or if you're not a 501 C three, you can operate under a fiscal sponsor who's a qualified 501 C three, or it could be a public education institution, or a main governmental unit. If you're not a 501 C three and you plan to apply or if you're applying for the first time to the Onion Foundation. It's best to give me or Sally a heads up before you do. The work also has to be based in Maine and benefiting the people of Maine it has to be aligned with the Onion Foundation, its mission and priorities. Requests can be for either general operating support or for Project Support. Project Support can be for planning work. And you can check out our environmental program page and scroll down to the FAQs. To see which types of grants we generally do not fund. For instance, a couple slides earlier I mentioned we don't support land acquisition or capital projects. And there are some other kind of common requests that we don't support and you can see those on our environmental program page. Alright, so we've covered basic eligibility.
Let's talk specifically about the grant program for eliminating barriers to the outdoors. Here you can see the range of grants size that we'll consider is 5,000 to 30,000 a year. You can also see the submission deadline which is March 27. And you can see a preview of the grant application. So this is just all the questions of the grant application but in a Word document. You can use this if you want to craft your answers in draft form before going into the grant portal, or if you want to work with a colleague before going into the grant portal. As we mentioned on the last slide, you can apply for general operating support or project grant. A little bit of guidance on that. So as we discussed these grants under this priority aimed to improve outdoor access for black Indigenous and People of Color and or people with disabilities. If this is everything your organization does please consider applying for a general operating support grant. If this is one piece of a larger portfolio of work, please consider applying for a project grant. And if your organization doesn't have a track record of this kind of work, but you're committed to starting that work, you may apply for a project grant to cover your planning efforts are really interested in learning about work that not only exposes people to nature once but facilitates a deeper and longer and repeated experiences in nature. As I mentioned earlier, land trusts are eligible to receive general operating support through momentum conservation. Therefore, any land trusts who are interested in applying should contact me first to ensure alignment. Really only land trusts with exemplary outdoor access programs should consider applying and they'd only be considered for project support grants.
So this is a great list. These are the characteristics of a strong application. These are the things that we're going to be thinking about as we read each application. And we will, this is also on our website. And I'm going to pause for just a minute to let you all read through it. And I'm going to take a drink of water while you do.
I want to just make a special note about that second point on representation in the development and implementation of the work. That's meant that the people that this program is meant to serve are represented in the design and the kept conceptualization and the execution of the program. But under this priority, we also have a special focus on Wabanaki people's access to land. And we encourage the inclusion of Wabanaki perspectives and representation in any outdoor access programs regardless of the target audience. So this means that if you are designing a program specifically for children with mobility impairments, you can also bring Wabanaki perspectives into the design and creation of that program as well. I'm going to advance from this slide. Again. This list is also available on our website. And the slides will be available on the site as well. After this presentation.
Since sharpening the environmental program strategy, we found it helpful to reiterate the distinction and the connection between strategies one and two. Most of the questions we get is "Where do I fit, is it in this door or that door?" So to provide a little more clarity, we believe that there is a place for outdoor experiences that are not necessarily structured to be educational, but may instead be about play, exploration, recreation, health, etc. The experiences that bring people to nature and spark that ethic of care for nature would fall under the equitable outdoor access strategy. Nature learning on the other hand, is about ensuring that Maine youth have access to learn about the natural environment. And we would want that strategy we want to know that programs are standards aligned and are delivering accurate information using proven methodologies. Often these programs will be in connection with the schools. Organizations may only apply to one of these grant programs in 2024.
So if you have any questions about which door to enter, please reach out to me and we'll talk through it. A couple notes about how we evaluate grant applications after you submit your applications on March 27. We'll carefully read each one. From time to time we'll reach out to you for more information or with some clarifying questions. If we do that, we're going to be reaching out to the person the contact who submitted the grant application. And then we're gonna consider each application based on the program's potential to eliminate barriers, and also how well each applicant meets those seven characteristics on the earlier slide. We don't expect every applicant to hit all seven but those are the criteria that we'll be using to evaluate the strength of the application. We also think about geographic diversity, the overall impact of the program on the sector, and we'll be thinking carefully about how to fund as many high quality programs as possible within our grant making budget for the year. That means that we may only partially fund some requests.
If you are new to the Onion Foundation, or if you haven't applied for a grant in the past two years, this will be new information for you. We're now using giving data as our online grant portal for applications in reporting. Go follow this URL. It's very long, or you can go to our website. Go to the environmental program page and click on the link that says click here to start an application. And this will bring you to giving data and once you're there you can log in with your existing credentials or you can create a new account. It's pretty straightforward. There's also a step by step instruction guide here on the website. And if you run into any trouble at all, you can reach out to Sally for support. She is our giving data whiz and
Sally's contact info is here. She's your best bet for any technical questions or process related questions for any programmatic questions or to determine fit please reach out to me email is the best way to reach out to me. That's how you'll get a response most quickly. And also you can reach out to me, you can schedule time to talk to me through Calendly, I had extra availability while the grant application is open.
And we're gonna open it up for questions now. So you can rate use the raise hand feature and then take yourself off mute. You can type your questions into the chat. If you think you have kind of a bigger question and you want to talk one on one, you can go right to the Calendly link now and booked time to talk to me later. Again the recording the slides will be up on the website shortly after this presentation. So if you need to refer back to anything that will be available to you. But for now we will wrap up my part and get to your questions. Thanks so much for your attention
I'm gonna take a quick look at the chat and see if any of come in the chat while I was talking. Oh, green, you have your hand up. Hi, cream.
Hi, Roz. I am glad to be here with you a question I had grateful for the encouragement to include Wabanaki perspectives regardless of their involvement in programming directly or not. And I wonder if this is maybe just a big picture question. I wondered if there are any, any relationships or potential liaising that can be done or that is in place with the Onion Foundation to connect folks like myself who might be interested in in gaining Wabanaki perspectives that don't have personal or direct relationships, for example, with folks of indigenous to sense of that community. I think if folks like us want to include that perspective, are there any pathways through the Onion Foundation to connect with the Wabanaki? Community? And if not, is there room to consider potentially funding? Something like a consultant? position for Wabanaki to be able to be compensated for their perspectives and experience?
Kareem, it's a great question. Thanks for raising it. At this time, the Onion Foundation is in a learning posture like a lot of the organizations that we work with in the environmental sector. So we've the Onion Foundation has been involved in the First Light Learning Journey and has been connected in that way. And makes a few grants for Wabanaki programming. But because we're still in a learning posture, we're not in a position to make direct relationships. I would recommend getting involved through First Light, which I think a lot of people already have if you're looking for more information or to start that learning journey to your point about compensating a consultant. That's something that could absolutely be included in a project budget. If you're doing any kind of planning work. That is certainly an expense that we would consider and find very reasonable.
Are you?
Anyone else,
Claudio? Hi.
Um, so I was wondering, do you support like a planning phase? Like if I want to, I want to submit one, a grant. And in it, I want to do some consultations with Wabanaki orgs. That I know and like, how other organizations do you want for the grants proposal? Is the should it be a fully fleshed out plan with already had like, with a consultations already made? Or is there a room to have a planning phase in our grant?
Yeah, thanks for asking. I think that you there is certainly room for a planning phase in the grant, we understand that this is new work for some organizations, we don't expect everyone to have like an ongoing program that we just like, dive into. And careful planning is like, crucial for programmatic success. And a good you know, a good careful plan could also help you with fundraising from other sources when you are ready to launch. So I would definitely say, if you want to do some careful planning, as long as it's kind of well mapped out what the steps are and where you're hoping to go with that. I think that that is definitely an acceptable project grant application.
Awesome. Thank you.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Roz, there's, there was a question in the chat about eligibility for schools. And I just wondered if you wanted to touch a little bit about at talk a little bit about that, or how how a school might approach working with you.
Yeah, thanks for calling that out. So public schools are legally eligible for Onion Foundation grants. Because they are tax exempt organizations. However, we don't actually have a strong history of working directly with public schools. And when we're thinking about program delivery and the kinds of programs that we're supporting, throughout our grants for the sake of impact, we find it more impactful to work with nonprofit partners that are connecting with schools and an engaged in the school activities like we see that a lot in our nature learning portfolio. So if you want to talk more about it, please do reach out to me and we can chat more and maybe identify who the nonprofit partners are in your area and what they're doing. Maybe plant the seeds for some partnership there. But we don't have a history of granting directly to public schools Thanks Hey, Kareem.
Yes, I know the question. Just curious about if there's an organization that is receiving Onion Foundation, funding, separate have work together with my organization. Thinking about how to craft this question. So would we be eligible for to receive funding to work with with with organizations that fit the intentions and the demographics for the equitable healthcare access fund and work with organizations that are also receiving funding but we're not use that funding for our programming. So maybe they're receiving funding for their own projects, but when they want to come to our organization to do a program that's $5,000 that we're going to cover that through an Onion project, for example. They're not going to use any of their funding,
But your grant would be a sub, or you will be a contractor on this other grant?
No, so I supplying Camp Beach Cliff applying for funding to develop programming to support equitable outdoor access with bipoc for example, in Maine, and we want to work with an organization to bring them in for three day program that cost X amount are we not eligible to for funding for the Onion if that organization was also separately receiving an Onion Foundation grant?
So good question. That's something that actually comes up quite a bit in our Arts Program. I think more than it's come up in the Environment Program. And the short answer is yes, but it wouldn't hurt to share with us, you know, the specific orgs that you're thinking of in a quick email. Roz if you if you want to add anything feel free...
But
I, Sally's answer is great. I was gonna say that we do make, we have made simultaneous grants to the same organization, but working on different lines of work. But if the work is from one grant, or the work from the new grant is building on the work of the last grant, those should be sequential, not simultaneous. But we can have a conversation offline and figure out the specifics.
Okay. Thank you.
Any other questions?
Sally, any others in the chat that I may have missed?
I don't think so. But I'm gonna take a quick peek to make sure.
I'm not seeing anything. raised hand.
I have another question. Yeah. So I was also wondering about how you guys would like say we were to get the grant money How would you guys I guess supervisor or would it be more hands off or hands on what that'd be like weekly or like monthly, like updates like? I guess that's my question.
So it is, I would say mostly hands off. Our only formal reporting require requirements are an annual interim report and a final report. But that said, we're just very kind of interested in your work and how things are going, what you're learning so that we can use that information to support other partners doing similar work out in the field as well. So the only formal reporting requirements are that annual report in giving data, but you know, we might check in by phone from time to time maybe there's a good opportunity for like a site visit so we can come see it with our own eyes and really appreciate what you're, what you're doing and the hard work that you're doing. But as for weekly, or monthly reports and check ins You don't have to worry about that. We're not going to be breathing down your neck in that way.
Awesome. Thank you.
I also just add that I wouldn't hesitate to use us as a resource if you have questions. If things come up and we and you think that we could be helpful.
All right, well, I got a thumbs up and no other raised hands and no other questions in the chat. So as things come up, if you know, tomorrow, you think of a question that you didn't remember to ask on the Zoom. Please reach out to me to schedule time. You can either go through Calendly you kind of reach out to me by email, happy to talk through it even as we get closer to the deadline. If you have any technical problems, please don't hesitate to reach out to Sally. She will help you out. And I'm going to close it for this afternoon. I hope everybody enjoys your Leap Day tomorrow with whatever plans you have, Joan. Yes, it has been recorded and we'll put the recording up on our website. Check back on the website for most up to date information. And have a great afternoon everybody. Take care.