Good morning everybody. As we're sort of trickling in here, I'll invite you to use the chat to introduce yourself your name and pronouns, your organization and where you're beaming in from today.
Hello, everybody, I know some of you, there are also some new folks, nice to see you all
great, so if you're just joining us, go ahead and use the chat to share your name, your pronouns, your organization, where you're beaming in from today, to introduce. We're going to go ahead and get started here in just a minute. In case you need them, closed captions are enabled there's a button at the bottom of your zoom control to use those. We are also going to be recording today and sharing a zoom recording of this video as well as transcript and we're using a robot called otter to do that. And so because we're recording and going to be sharing that on the internet, feel free to turn off your camera or whatever makes you most comfortable. We will have a lot of people I think viewing this recording
recording in progress
Great. Well, thanks for coming everybody. If you haven't already, please use the chat to share your name and pronouns your organization and where you're beaming in from today. We are recording this. It will be live on the website later. This week, early next week. And we'll have also a transcript and the slide deck available to share as well. So take notes how you need to, but all of this will be available afterwards for your reference. I am Tyler kidder. I'm the Environment Program Officer Onion Foundation. And I'll just describe myself I'm a white woman with brown hair asymmetrical haircut. I have sort of a blue shirt top on and I'm zooming in from my home office where I have a white wall in the background and my guest bed. I'm also joined today by some of my colleagues from the Onion Foundation. I believe Diana Morris, our executive director is here. I think our co founder Susan onion is here and the arts program officer my colleague Nat May is also here and Nat is going to help me manage the chat and the tech. So if you're having any issues he's the one to reach out to directly on the on the chat if you need anything. So our time together today will be broken up into these sections. I'm going to do a quick overview of Onion Foundation mission and the Environment Program. Then we're going to spend most of our time together talking about the currently open grant program the nature learning grant program. We're going to talk quickly about our new ish grant making system which if if you haven't put in an application with us from starting last August, it will be new to you, otherwise you may have already touched it. And then the most important part of the session will be the question and answer section. I'm going to try and move through my material pretty rapidly. So hold on to your questions. We'll get to them all at the end. And we hope to have a good amount of time to spend with questions.
You may have been to our website recently, you notice that we made a lot of updates in the first half of this year. We're talking about our work in a lot of new ways. But the bones of what we care about is really the same as it has been in the past. And we'll be continuing to roll out updated strategic thinking and clarifying communications throughout the year. So our website will remain the best and most current place to find information. The mission of the Onion Foundation is to build a more equitable and healthy Maine by deepening the connection of all people to the arts and nature. We do have our vision, our values and our priorities up on our website. And we're especially interested in learning a couple of things from you. Who has access to the work and the programs that you do. How are you engaging the people in Maine? Are the people benefiting from your programs also involved in the work and the design and implementation? If relevant, are you collaborating with key partners? Do diverse perspectives inform how you do the work? Do you have clear goals? And how does your organization think about equity? The Environment Program is half of the work of the Onion Foundation. We also have an arts program. Find out more information about that on our website. The Onion Foundation Environment Program aims to enable all Maine residents especially in rural areas, to enjoy the state's natural resources and to develop the resource the knowledge, skills and motivation to protect means environment. The environment program focuses its resources on the people of Maine whose lives and behaviors will shape environment and climate change outcomes rather than on capital investments and land acquisition. So we've really worked to hone in on what's most important to us and what we believe will have the most positive impact for Maine's residents and the environment. So there are three strategies in the Environment Program. We have a goal of expanding equitable outdoor access supporting high quality nature learning and encouraging advocacy and movement building to protect the environment and mitigate climate change. So those are the way we've organized our strategic work. And we think about our three strategies as a continuum. Each builds on the previous with the ultimate goal of developing and supporting more environmental stewards. We think that means natural and human assets have a key role to play, both in ensuring our communities are thriving while also ensuring resiliency in the face of a changing climate. So we hope that many more Maine people have meaningful experiences in nature that sparked their curiosity. And we believe that young people should have opportunity to participate in transformative educational programs that provide them with important knowledge about their place in natural systems. And finally, we really want Maine residents to build the skills and networks necessary to allow them to advocate on behalf of the environment. And I'm still getting over COVID So my voice sometimes does unexpected things and I just finished a cough drop so hopefully, hopefully we're good for a little while. So let's talk briefly about this first strategy, equitable outdoor access. This is to increase access to the outdoors so that Maine residents are comfortable outside feel connected to the natural world and develop an ethic of care for nature. As to priorities, working with me and land trusts to develop equitable organizations inclusive programs and easy access to the outdoors and then eliminating barriers to accessing the outdoors and nature confronted by underserved groups, specifically people of color and people living with disabilities. This program had an April grant program this spring and we'll have another opportunity to apply next spring.
Second strategy is to expand nature learning. This is the strategy that brought most of you here today. So we'll be talking about this in a little bit more detail. Really interested in providing high quality science based nature learning opportunities that give Maine residents the knowledge they need to take action on environmental and climate challenges in their communities. We have two priorities under this strategy to deliver high quality standards aligned nature learning opportunities to Maine youth and to support the development and growth of nature learning programs in underserved regions of the state.
And our third strategy is advocacy and movement building to enable Maine residents to be effective champions for enhanced access to nature and nature learning, environment protection policies and practices and community and state action to mitigate climate change. And we have two priorities for this strategy as well. Enabling young people to gain the skills, tools and networks necessary for successful advocacy and mobilization and to support mobilization and advocacy initiatives towards the goal of conserving means natural assets and developing climate resilient communities. This strategy is still in development. Currently, we have a small cohort of existing grantees being funded in this strategy and this strategy is only funded by invitation.
So going back to strategy to nature learning, which is where we're going to talk about most today. All this information is taken right from our website. So that is going to continue to be a really great resource for you. We're most interested in providing high quality science based nature learning opportunities that give Maine residents the knowledge they need to take action. And we're really interested in supporting environment mission nonprofit organizations that offer robust nature based education programs for most young people. Based on what we know, it's the organizations that already have really strong environmental roots that are most effective at delivering environmental education in nature learning. So organizations with other primary focus areas outside of the environment are not going to be as competitive.
The term nature learning encompasses educational opportunities, centering natural systems science, and includes Outdoor and Experiential elements. And this is the grant program that's currently open for applications right now. We've been doing a lot of work paying attention to practitioners on the ground here in Maine, and last year, a great group of state agencies and environmental educators got together and updated Maine's environmental literacy plans, so we had one but it was pretty old. Now we have this beautiful new updated document. And it was a collaborative project. And our grant program is closely aligned with the vision and the goals of the Maine environmental literacy plan. A digital version of the plan can be found on the Maine Department of Education website. You can click right on that graphic if you're looking at this slide deck. The Maine environmental literacy plan defines environmental literacy as "the ability to recognize the components of healthy natural and human built systems and to execute the actions necessary to maintain restore and improve them" A lot of folks are no longer using the term environmental literacy. But don't let that hang you up. It's just one of our many words in this space that we're all using in different ways to try and more effectively communicate what we're doing. And a lot of institutions continue to use environmental literacy as a term and a lot of government agencies use it. So that's why we're still using it in this context.
So in the Literacy Plan, they establish a vision and a series of goals to help reach that vision in the coming years. So this is a little screen grab from the plan itself. What do we envision? I mean, we're all individuals, institutions and organizations understand that the health of our communities is deeply linked to the well being of the natural world. Every child has age appropriate opportunities for culturally relevant and accessible outdoor learning and all youth have the attitude knowledge and skills needed to make positive change in their communities.
So how do we get there and we need deep collaboration across entities and across the state to ensure that Maine youth have access to these high quality, culturally relevant HR based and outdoor learning experiences. The plan goes on to outline goals of how to bring about these collaborations and high quality experiences. And I've got the link right here at the right if you need it. So if you haven't already, please check out the plan so that we can make sure that we're really all working together in this space.
Digging in a little bit more. We do have the two priorities under nature learning. The first is to really deliver high quality nature learning and I'll talk a little bit more about our criteria. And this is to really ensure that programs and organizations are having the highest impact and are using known effective practices. And we're using the Next Generation Science Standards as a convenient sort of measuring stick so that we know that what you're doing is vetted and impactful and effective. Our second priority is to support the development and the growth of nature learning programs and underserved regions of the state. And we really are hoping to ensure that more parts of Maine are served by nature learning programs. There's a lot of growth in this area. And still certain parts of our state are just don't have the number or the quality of nature learning programs as other parts. So we're very interested in hearing how this work is being spread out how we're growing it in areas where it maybe hasn't existed in the past. So work that focuses on one or both priorities is going to be a really good fit for this grant program.
You can request grants for between five and $30,000. We have an online application system that I'll show you in just a minute submissions are due before midnight, on Wednesday, July 12, this summer, and we will be able to notify applicants of our decisions in September. We have an application preview. There's a link here. There's also a link right on our website. It's a Google document that you can just click on the link see all of the see a whole preview of the application all the instructions, all the questions, you can download it for your own use or just reference it online. And if you need any accommodations to complete this process, please do contact us. So this list on the right is half of the characteristics of high quality programs list also available on the website. I'll just talk through these briefly. And then I'll switch to the second slide that has the rest of the list. So we're most interested in programs that are high quality and some of the ways we're going to be measuring those high quality programs is do they include curricula, pedagogy and learning experiences, preferably linked to standards, which aim for transformative learning. I bolded this part, you know, we're really looking for transformational experiences for our youth. To place an emphasis on experiential learning. All of the research points to the effectiveness of this, you know, really getting hands on with the content. These programs should result in students gaining an understanding of natural systems. This is our way of saying that like you know science should be at the root of this work and that it's natural science and there's lots of different ways to express natural science. And so we just really want to see programs that are really centering natural systems. These programs should be led by qualified educators. Those qualifications come in lots of shapes and sizes. So if you're putting in an application, just please tell us how the people that are leading your programs or the people designing your programs are qualified.
Second half of the list, these programs should thoughtfully integrate their efforts into communities, schools, networks, other institutions that ensure continuity and complementary opportunities. Really, what we're hoping to understand from you is where does your work fit in the larger ecosystem? How are you collaborating with the schools, with the summer camps? How are you collaborating with the after school programs? How do kids get into your program? And then what are they doing after they leave your program? Are we really building a system where there's essentially a pipeline of experiences across seasons, across ages? So if you could just help us understand how your work complements or is unique to other practitioners in your geography, in your age group, that really helps us understand both the impact and the value. Also, we're always trying to get a better grasp on who's doing what, where, and how all these pieces of work fit together. So that's what that is trying to describe.
And number six: programs should focus on one or more groups and engage in durable and relevant partnerships to drive and support the participation of the targeted group. This could be a certain demographic, it could be a certain age group. It could be a certain geography. So the more you can tell us about who you're actively trying to reach, the better it will help us understand how effectively you're going to accomplish those goals. And everybody is focusing on a target population, even if that feels like kind of wonky language to be using. It's really helpful for you to go into some amount of detail so that we can better understand how your work is serving various groups and who those groups are, as well. And number seven: programs should demonstrate a commitment to equity and accessibility. We're very interested in understanding how people are learning about your programs, how are you promoting them, and where are you promoting them? How are you telling the story about how expensive they are? How are you working to reduce the costs or offer cost equity? How are you welcoming people with oppressed or marginalized identities? And how are you solving known barriers to participation such as costs, such as transportation barriers, such as people not feeling welcomed in certain spaces? So there's an opportunity for you to really tell us the story and for you to advance your work using our funding in this area specifically.
I quickly want to talk about the difference between strategies one and two. So equitable outdoor access versus nature learning. We really believe that there's a place for outdoor experiences that are not necessarily structured, or not structured to be about education, per se, but may instead be about play, exploration, connecting with people, or other living things, health, etc, and so experiences that introduce or expose people to nature and myriad ways are captured in our equitable outdoor access strategy. The program we're discussing today in nature learning is more about ensuring that Maine youth specifically have access to experiences designed for learning about natural systems and the environment around us. So we're using the Next Generation Science Standards as a way to determine that applicants are aligned within school educators and are delivering accurate information using proven methodologies. We think about our three strategies as a continuum. And so we hope that many more Maine people of all ages have experiences in nature that are meaningful, and spark their curiosity, and then that they have the opportunity to participate in transformative educational programs that provide the knowledge needed to take action to protect the environment. Organizations may only apply to one program per year.
To zoom back out to the full environmental program, to go over the timeline. The due dates passed for strategy one equitable outdoor access grant programs. The due date for the current nature Learning Program, which is open now, is Wednesday, July 12. And then the third strategy has an invitation based rolling format.
A quick note on eligibility. To apply for and receive a grant from the Onion Foundation, you must be a 501 C 3 public charity or be fiscally sponsored, or you can be a governmental unit. The organization and/or the project must be based in Maine, and must be focused on benefiting Maine's people and meet the mission and the priorities of the Onion Foundation. We do accept requests for either general operating support or for project and program support. You'll see that indicated right on our application, you kind of orient your work early on. So in our application, you'll click project or you'll click general and that will affect which fields appear to you. So you really just need to have your head straight early on in your process to decide which you're applying for. And I'll just talk quickly about that. I'm guessing that for most of you, you're going to be looking at a project applicatin. General operating grant is for everything that the organization does. So in general, we're really interested in focusing on your environmental education, your nature based learning work. For most of you that's going to be a project, a portion or the org, a department. a program that you operate, and so you will be looking at the project and program grant option. When you put a budget in, feel free to include the prorated portion of any indirect expenses that might come along with it. Let's say you're a land trust or an conservation organization, some of what you do is environmental education. You'd put in a project grant request, and your budget could include all of the staff time that's associated with that environmental education program. It might be full somebody's full time position, it might be that part of some staffer's position supports this program. So you're going to say that 20% of this full time person, there's a dollar number associated with that. So all of those are your direct expenses, including supplies materials, and then your indirect expenses are your overhead, you know, the money that it takes to keep the lights on and so you're free to also put in a portion of your overhead as a line item in your budget. And of course, nobody thinks that budgets are sexy, however, they're really great way of telling a story so make sure you include some notes in your budget as well. You know, there's like a number/dollar amount in one column, there's a short description in another coloumn, and then maybe there's a little bit more information that you provide where you say, you know, X number of staffers working this number of hours, you know, you're sort of breaking down those numbers for us. So we can really understand. We're also really interested in compensation. And so we ask that you do break down staffing costs in your budget so that you're specific about which roles and how many hours and what that actually costs. We're very interested in people getting living wages and being compensated and we're also just really interested in how how much it actually costs of doing business. It helps us when you can go into a little bit more detail in your in your budget. And then organizations may request two year funding and if you plan to do that, you need to make sure that you include two years of work in your application and that you submit a really clear budget, with year one as one column, year two as a second column. All this is written right on our website as well. So if you get onto the environment page, scroll all the way down. There's our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section, and we have a lot of help text and instructions on our application preview about this as well.
Just going to quickly go through our new grant system. Sally Struever is our grants and office manager. She is traveling today so she's not with us. So I'm channeling her right now. And there's a link right at the top here nature learning application. That's the link to get directly into the application. This link is also on our website. At that link, you can register for a new account if you don't already have a GivingData account. Then you can log in and start an application. As a note Davis Foundation and Sewall foundations also use giving data so if you already have a Davis or Sewall account, you'll use the same credentials to log into ours. So look for the big orange button right on our website.
When you when you navigate to that page, you'll have an opportunity to sign in or create an account. That brings you right to the open application. For nature learning this screenshot is for our previous grants program, but it'll look the same it'll just say nature learning at the top and you can either start a new application or you can log back in to continue working on an in progress application.
And it does autosave as you go and then you're going to use the on the right hand side those gray gray column is your navigation bar and that moves you between different sections of the application.
And application saves automatically. It's not super easy to collaborate, your application is assigned to your user account. So we recommend you either share your login credentials or you download a version of the Google doc application preview and work on that together and then paste in what you've got. When you've completed the application, be sure to submit on the last page, which is the bottom choice of that green navigation. On the right.
And Sally is out of town for about a week but she'll be back soon and we're both happy to help you if you have any trouble.
So you can reach me for more like content related questions. And Sally for any technical process related grant system questions. So that's all from me. Until I did that I'm right on time. We'll open it up to questions. You can use the raise hand function you can type stuff right into the chat that's easiest for you we'll we'll navigate that on the fly and that can help me notice you and I'm going to move everybody's faces back to the top of my screen.
Kacey, go for it. Hey Tyler, how are you? Fine, thanks. I have a question about Grant Terms. I understand that the decisions are made in September that all makes sense for me. But what I'm trying to understand is when the grant money like when when the timeline of that so for us for fiscal year starts January 1, will the funds go January 1 of '24 to '25? That's what I'm trying to sort out.
And so in your case Piscataquis Co Soil & Water Conservation District, your organization, does other things. So this would be a project grant. Yes. And so I think it's totally acceptable. You're putting your application in in July to do a little bit of backdating. You are putting this in July 12, but maybe your program starts July 30. You know, you're not going to hear from us until Sept, but you can say you want your grant term to start July 30. And that way, if you are awarded, you can use our money to pay expenses that started accruing starting July 30. So that's how to orient the front end of your grant term. It's really when you think you'll need the money. You think you'll need to start spending the money and then the end term is really up to you. And so it's how many months forward do you think you'll need it? That's sort of like it's a little bit on how you account whether you use cash or accrual accounting, back of house, but essentially, you'll be able to use our money for any of the months as you indicate from between your start of term and your end of term. So if you do a lot with the school year, which I know you do, your startup term might be August 1, and your end of term might be May 30, or June 30, 2024 or whatever. And okay, you'd experience a transition of fiscal year at that point and you just for your own internal accounting, you need to round up your expenses accordingly.
Would it be ok to start the term January 1, 2024?
Absolutely. We're generally comfortable with the end of your term being for a single payment up to 18 months out from when you apply. Any longer than that we really wanted to sort of feel like a multi payment. And also we're fine with the beginning of your term being out up to a year from when you apply, because we just have this one due date per year. Some of you are working more at different times of the year. You're gonna have to put in an ask this year that probably will fund part of next year. That's all totally fine. And if you put an application and we have questions about it, we'll just we'll let you know. It's also helpful to us if you include a sentence or two in your application like 'this is to support 2024 work.' Orient us to what you're trying to get done.
You've answered my question perfectly. Thank
Okay, Nat says there are two questions about age, including college age. Is that okay? I think that's fine. We haven't limited the age for our nature learning. We usually are saying school age. So I think up through higher education is great. We'd love to hear about that - we are curious what you are working on and this is the first year of running this program and we are hoping to learn from you.
Caroline Elliot sent me a message. 'Can you give an example when it makes sense to apply for operating vs project grant?' Caroline is coming from CREA, which is Cathance River Educational Alliance, which is soon merging with a land trusts, Brunswick Thompson land trust. So I think going forward Caroline for you, it's going to be a project grant and it's going to be your entire education department or whatever work falls under your education world within BTL T. Is that helpful? Yes.
Next question. Chelsea's waiting for her official 501 C 3. Those can be very slow. I think it's worth you going through the process of applying with the assumption that it will come through. If for some reason there's a delay, we can work with you on that. If we decide to award your work, we can delay the start of your term until you get that; we have a couple of other tools in our toolkit but my preference would be to award you once you do get that official letter. But that's a piece of financial review stuff that Sally is really good at advising on, but I think as long as it's like on the horizon and the processes in the pipeline, I think you should go ahead and apply.
Next Question from Nicole: are you open to funding for professional development for educators? Yes. I think we're really interested in understanding how that professional development fits into the larger goals of, for example, getting more classroom teachers comfortable with leading outdoor learning, or bringing more informal teachers up to speed on the standards, something like that. So it kind of needs to be pointed where we're all trying to go but we we do and we have funded professional learning in the past. We've funded nonprofits who offer that professional learning and they may offer it for informal or classroom teachers. And that's, that's all good.
Next Question from Melanie: could you speak more to how the foundation defines underserved and rural? Yes, most of Maine is rural. So with rural in particular, I'll start there. We know that there are big parts of the state that have fewer humans, and therefore tend to have fewer services and programs. The 2019 census for community based Environmental Learning (CBEL) did a little bit on this, identifying areas of the state where there are just less programs, the data is organized by county. So that's a simple unit of measurement that we use as well. And, you know, pretty much anything outside of Portland, Lewiston, Auburn, Bangor is technically considered rural. We also know that Cumberland County and parts of Sagadahoc County have a lot more money, more resources, more action, more environmental awareness. So, you know, those areas are really well served by this work already. And they are technically qualified as rural but I think in access to resources, they would not qualify as underserved. So with underserved we're really thinking economically. And then we're also thinking in some cases, sort of, you know, politically or ideologically, maybe another ways of thinking about it. We know there's just going to be less environmental and climate education in certain parts of the state. Onion Foundation at this time doesn't have priority areas. We're really interested in learning from you all about what needs to happen and what needs to happen where, and so you can you can inform us, you know, think about your applications is really a chance to help us learn what you're seeing on the ground and what you think the needs are. As well as of course, you know, we have long standing relationships and we pay a lot of attention to the work of our lovely networks, Maine environmental ed Association [MEEA], nature based education consortium [NBEC], and Maine Math and Science Alliance [MMSA]. We look to them a lot to guide how we're thinking about which parts of the state might need more, which parts of the state might be maybe more focused not on needing more, but on needing better. So the two priorities kind of fit together in that way where there's some parts of the state where there's a lot of leadership, a lot of momentum, and what we can be really focusing there is top quality. Then there's other parts of the state where there may be emerging, or growing, new, or just less-resourced work. And in those parts of the state our efforts might be focused on growing what is there, bringing in more, bringing up the quantity.
Next question: We'rework with early childhood birth to age eight. I think we're slightly less interested in early early childhood. And we're really more interested in pre K through 12, a little bit with higher education. I know there's a lot of work happening in early childhood, but we haven't specifically focused on that in the past and it's not a focus of this program now.
And Michelle wants a visit! I will tell you that I maintain over 100 unique grantee relationships and so visits from the Onion Foundation are few and far between and we do try and make time for that but we rarely make time for it unless we have already funded you. Our approach is to try and get as much information from your application and then our you know, financial review and our research. And then if we decide to award an organization then it sort of comes onto our list for site visits. At least that's how we're thinking about it right now. So it's possible that you'll be visited.
And, Susan asks: when applying for operating support, is there a percentage of our overall budget to help determine the grant asked mount? That's a good question. You can look on our website at how we've sized grants in the past. We have previously granted lots of different organizations and we do make an attempt to kind of right size our grants when possible. However, there isn't necessarily a map for that going into this year since we've reorganized our grantmaking by priority or by strategy. But you can get kind of a feel for it if you look back at previous grantmaking from 2022. And pretty soon, we'll be posting equitable outdoor access grant making from 2023. And so, I mean, we only have a grant range of $5,000 to $30,000. So in a lot of cases, were never going to be a significant portion of your budget, depending on how big your budget is. But I think we're also unlikely to fund your entire program, whatever it is, I think is a fair way of thinking about it. We'd love to be a part and we'd love to know that you've got some other support going into it as well. So Susan, feel free if you just want to send me an email we can talk more specifically. Susan runs the Maine school garden network for those of you who don't know, it's cool organization
Well, if there's no other questions, we don't need to sit here together in silence. But I am happy to answer anyone's question even if it's super specific. If it's if you feel like it's kind of silly, like it's, it's a fine exercise for us to work through each other's questions together because I think in a lot of cases people have they share a question so don't worry about it. If you're worried about if it's a silly question or not, I would encourage you just to ask it.
Hi, Tyler. You've already answered my question a little bit, but I think it's a valuable question to your point that maybe others have and could use a reply. We're currently inside a grant term with the Onion Foundation before some of these new developments around the nature learning grant specifically. We had hoped that we might be able to maybe put in a project specific request in lieu of our typical fall general operating request this year. But from what I understand from Tyler we actually will need to wait for a later invitation. Maybe you could speak to that a little bit for other grantees.
Yes, if you got a 2022 or even a 2021 grant in this issue area like outdoor education, nature based education, environmental education, you probably got an email from me sometime in the last couple of months, showing you sort of where you are in the progress of your current grant and when you should think about reapplying. And so because we've moved to this single due date for the program, many folks who had a 2022 grant term that ends after the July due date, I'm sort of scooping them up and offering them an invitation to come through at a second time this year in September. And that's to make sure that they have a chance to reapply without going a whole year without reapplying. And so some organizations, if you've been reached out to this applies to you. If you have an active Onion Foundation grant, the end of which goes beyond July, there will be for this year, and this year only, a special sort of September invitation. And the goal of that will be to let our friends reapply, hopefully, you know they're still doing work that we believe is impactful and important. And if they get a grant, those grant terms will be short to line them up for a summer grant making schedule going into 2024 and beyond. Because we make grants at a pretty high volume, we're interested in maintaining these sort of due date programs as opposed to having a sort of a trickle or a rolling due date. It just the administration gets really unwieldy and difficult pretty quickly. But we definitely want to give everybody a chance to get on our schedule. So this is the year of transition where we're offering orgs who have a current grant opportunity to come in at a little bit of a later time. They'll get their grant in the fall, but the term of that grant will point them towards July of next year we application.
I'm also really curious to hear from this group of smart, mostly women, if this summer deadline works for you. It was really hard for us to create a grant making program that made time for all three of our strategies in this year where we're sort of building all of this for the first time and I asked a bunch of practitioners when they would recommend having the program due and they all said different things. I felt like the summer is both a creative and generative time for us as humans, as well as maybe a moment where you're fresh off of one thing and you're thinking about the next thing and then you get the money in the door right when the school year is starting. But of course we don't all work on those seasons. So if you do end up putting in an application, there's a feedback section and I'd be really curious to hear about your experiences of trying to respond to a grant program at this time of year and how that is for you. Go ahead Michelle.
Thanks. Just to quickly respond to that. I would say like summer is our busiest time and also it's totally doable. My question is, so we've never received a grant from the Onion Foundation, and our primary, exclusive work is nature based education. Primary primarily for school age, so elementary through grade 12. We do have a little bit of adults and college age programming, but it's quite small. So I'm wondering that and we have we don't have a relationship. You aren't really familiar with our work. And so I'm wondering about Project versus general operating and also like one year versus two year. What you would favor there.
Yeah, so with project funding. I mean, it sounds a little bit like you could go either way with general or project. Knowing, I think this year, where we're still kind of we are practicing these criteria. We're looking to better understand what's out there in terms of who's reaching what ages. So I think if if it really is if all you're doing is educating young, mostly young people, then general operating seems appropriate. If you have a big enough part of your program that really is reaching adults or little kiddos or something, then project is probably safer because thenyou're honing in on the area that we're most interested in. With regard to the one or two year, I think if you are organized and you know what next year holds, then to me I don't think there's a downside for you applying for two years. We can then say that we are interested in getting to know you before we invest in these two years, or for whatever reason our grants budget didn't stretch as far as we thought, but we're excited about your work but we can only fund you for one of the two years. The work to plan and to get yourself sorted out and to build out a budget is not inconsequential. It is a body of work that takes time, but doing it now means you don't have to do it later, too. So I think I would encourage people who know what next year looks like to put in a two year grant, but only if you really know. We're going to continue running some version of this grant program for the foreseeable future, so it's not like you need to get locked in because it's going to end. I can't really advise you on gaming the system too much because the system is fairly new. But I will say that if you have been doing the things, and you know what the things are, and you do them in some variation year after year, and they're strong, like go ahead and put in a two year request. We'd also love to see it, like we'd love to know what your plans are for two years. That also just informs us about the field about how organizations are planning, and what they're doing, what's important to them.
I was just wondering about your consideration of projects that are sort of already underway and having some momentum behind it. Compared to developing new projects.
We do not have a preference. I think we're really the most interested in impact and effectiveness. And so if you've been running a highly effective program and you have it like dialed in, that gives me great pleasure and great confidence. Also, we as an organization, as a foundation, we're interested in pushing the envelope. We're somewhat comfortable in investing in some planning, some piloting, some figuring things out, and especially in the areas of equity and accessibility. If there's something you're like, 'dang, I wish we could do this, but we never seem to have the money for it'. That's a place to ask us for help. Because we're actually really interested in advancing this field to make it more equitable, more accessible. And that can look a lot of different ways: it might be organizational culture change work that needs to happen. It might be our programs need to become more expensive because we need to adjust them to cover the fact that the people taking part in them have fewer resources. Like those are the kinds of things to really be thinking about, how to strategically leverage our dollars in this space. And in this moment there's a ton of growth, a ton of excitement, and we're happy to hear about your dreams and aspirations. Great, thank you.
Okay, Cheryl has a question in here: 'Could website enhancement be included as part of an emerging program tied to interpretive signage at public sites accessible to all?' I think this feels like more of an outdoor access kind of ask. I think with this in general, feel free to like come off of mute and tell me more about what you're talking about. Because clearly Tom is and others are also interested. I think what we're going to be mostly interested in funding in this space is programs, less interested in infrastructure. I understand that the world needs a blend, but we have small dollars to give and we're really we're passionate about people. And we want to pay for people to be doing the educating and of course they need the bug nets and the waders. And like put that in your ask if that's what you really need to get the work done. exmple: 'we need to update our website to have a better registration process for our programs'. That's that's moving us in the right direction. But Cheryl what I'm hearing here is more about access to public sites, which is less about educational programs and active learning.
Another I'll just say another note about that is like when you put in a project request, we know that we're really not interested in big capital campaigns. You know, we're not going to be into the naming of the buildings and we're not going to buy land. However, when you put in a project budget to us, it should include every single thing that you need to be successful with that project. Because if you leave something off, like insurance, or staffing, then it undersells and it undercuts you in how much it actually costs to successfully run a thing. And so you may put in a big $40,000 or $120,000 budget for your project request. And that should just reflect the reality of how much it will actually cost your organization to do that work. When you're asking for Onion Foundation contributions, for us specifically this coaching applies, you do not need to put our name against any specific line items. It's on us to say yes, we want to contribute to this overall body of work. And we may have some questions for you like, 'what would you leave out if you weren't able to fully fund this?' or we may say, 'we're really most interested in this, this and this, and you shouldn't use our money for this, this and this.' But you get to go into this application process with an abundant mindset of how much it actually takes to do the work that you want to undertake. And then if you get our grant, you get to use our money in the way that best fits the outcomes you hope for that project. And so you have some flexibility, like maybe you thought another funder was going to pay for a certain line and then they don't, that gives you the flexibility to use our money to fill in what you actually need to accomplish the project, especially if you aren't able to get it fully funded. And any amount of story you can tell us in your project budget about what other funders you're applying to or you think you might apply to, or you've already lined up, that really helps us understand the likelihood of you getting to that goal by the time you want to start the work. We may even know some of the people, we may have other ideas for people not on your list. So that income top section of the budget, where you talk about how you're going to fundraise for the project, put as much information in there as you know, because that story is really important to us. When you think about from our point of view, we want your work to be successful. And so the more we know about it, the better we can help you do it and support you.
Okay, so we're at exactly noon. So I'm gonna wrap it up. If you still have questions that didn't get answered, please send me a quick email. If you still have questions as you get into developing your projects, I'd encourage you to set up a 25 minute phone call, link is either in my email signature or right on our contact page. Really nice seeing you all thanks for sticking with us. And looking forward to hearing all the cool things that you're working on! Thank you.