Groups working to increase food access in Pittsburgh have two more weeks to seek a second helping of city funding.
Pittsburgh’s Food Justice Fund opened applications for the second half of the program’s federal-COVID-relief-powered grants back in mid-March. The deadline to apply is in two weeks, on April 14.
While an earlier round of funding was aimed at larger projects, the focus this time is on organizations with annual operating budgets of $500,000 or less. And the maximum size of the grant they can request is $75,000.
“There’s a lot of smaller-budget grassroots groups doing really great work in our neighborhoods,” said Gabbi McMorland, program coordinator for the Food Justice Fund. “We’ll be distributing $1.5 million. So if you do the math, that’s at least 20 awards, and potentially a lot more.”
The city approved the first-of-its-kind $3 million investment to improve food access and address food deserts back in 2023. Four recipients – Grow Pittsburgh, Jasmine Nyree Homes in Sheraden, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, and the Just Harvest Education Fund – were chosen last year to split around $1.1 million.
To receive funding, applications must focus on a goal that coincides with the list of program priorities: providing free food to food-insecure residents; facilitating community gardens and non-profit urban agriculture, providing assistance with public benefits; assisting farmers markets and farm stands, offering educational programming about food, composting and food waste; or conducting job training in fields related to the food system.
The application process for this round of funding is intended to be more accessible for smaller groups. Funding will be administered by nonprofit New Sun Rising instead of the city: That will allow organizations to complete a grant application, McMorland explained, rather than go through the complex procurement process used to contract with the city directly.
Grant recipients will be chosen by a review committee of stakeholders from around the city, including officials from City Council and local nonprofit groups. Assistance and virtual office hours are also available for those who need help navigating the application process.
“We want this to be a good process for organizations that are applying,” McMorland said. “We’re here to answer questions.”
That offer of help is particularly exciting to Pittsburgh Food Policy Council interim executive director Zinna Scott. PFPC helped kick-start the Food Justice Fund, and was involved with planning and implementation. She hopes the aid will make the process less intimidating for smaller organizations.
“People who have never written a grant may not understand how to fill out the process,” she said. “That will help them a lot. They may not have their financials in order to answer some of the questions, so it’s a matter of understanding how to do it.”
Smaller-scale grants can still have a big impact, noted Sally Ellwein of the United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania. Her organization runs a similar grant program, the Community Food Solutions Collaborative, that distributes mini-grants of up to $5,000 to community-based organizations that increase access to healthy food. The United Way sent out information about the Food Justice Fund program to their current and past grantees, she said.
“Currently there is certainly a significant need around food in our communities. and so both Community Food Solutions and Food Justice Fund are really critical to help us ensure that there’s a robust local and kind of community-based food infrastructure in our neighborhoods to help meet some of those ongoing needs,” Ellwein said.
Awards for this portion of the Food Justice Fund will likely be announced in early fall, McMorland said. But even after the money is distributed, McMorland anticipates increasing enthusiasm and need to support local food-related organizations.
“We had a little over a million dollars to distribute in the first round, and we received over $7 million in requests,” she said. “So many of those ideas are really high quality and impactful, and this city has so much to offer, and it’s really a message to the entire funding ecosystem. People are ready for funders to step up to this challenge and build a local and resilient food system.”
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