Grant Opportunity: PLANTS Grant
OVERVIEW
The Indiana Grown for Schools Network is excited to share an upcoming funding opportunity for local partners who are eager to support system and equity-driven approaches to transforming the school food supply chains. Projects should seek to build and strengthen relationships among community-based food system stakeholders and School Food Authorities (SFAs) as well as expand scratch cooking in schools to build more nourishing school meal programs.
This program is funded by the USDA Food & Nutrition Service Healthy Meals Incentives Initiative and is administered by the Chef Ann Foundation in partnership with Kitchen Sync Strategies Collaborative, Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition, and National Farm to School Network. USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer, and lender.
FUNDING
Using a competitive process, USDA and CAF will award grants between $500,000 and $600,000 to 8 projects (totaling up to $4.8 million). This grant does not require grantees to match funding.
TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
To support the success of their projects, grantees will additionally receive individualized and in-depth technical assistance as well as tools, training, and resources from the PLANTS Project Team: Chef Ann Foundation, Kitchen Sync Strategies Collaborative, Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition, and National Farm to School Network.
OBJECTIVES
Build and strengthen relationships among community-based food system stakeholders, such as school food professionals, local farmers, distributors, aggregators, parents, students, and/or other organizations and populations who are impacted by school food supply chains.
Improve school food supply chain coordination to support the shared values and needs (environmental, economic, regulatory, etc.) of local farmers and other food producers as well as K-12 schools.
Increase awareness of and access to K-12 markets among small- and mid-scale and historically underserved food producers, aggregators, and processors.
Expand scratch cooking operations in K-12 schools to both provide more nourishing, high quality, and culturally inclusive meals to students as well as incorporate more local and sustainably produced ingredients into meals.
Establish a sustainable approach and best practices for improving K-12 school food systems that are scalable and can be adopted by other schools and community stakeholders.
ELIGIBILITY
Projects must be collaboratively administered by at least three local Partners (including a Lead Partner). A maximum of five Partners can be named on the application.
Groups of partners must include at least one School Food Authority (SFA). Other partners may include food producers (including farmers, ranchers, and fishermen), processors, manufacturers, suppliers, and/or distributors; cooperative extensions; local government agencies; and/or community-based food support organizations.
The Lead Partner must have a demonstrated history of building a nutritious school food program and/or developing strong local food systems that serve K-12 schools. The Lead Partner will be responsible for coordinating all grant activities and reporting requirements.
All Partners must be located within 250 miles of the Lead Partner. Partners must be based in the contiguous United States, Hawaii, Alaska, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, or the United States Virgin Islands.
TIMELINE
SNEAK PEEK WEBINAR: OCTOBER 30TH, 2023 (12 P.M. ET)
APPLICATIONS OPEN: NOVEMBER 27TH, 2023 (10 A.M. ET)
APPLICATION LAUNCH WEBINAR: NOVEMBER 29TH, 2023 (12 P.M. ET)
APPLICATIONS CLOSE: JANUARY 22, 2024 (10 P.M. ET)
GRANT AWARDS ANNOUNCED: MARCH 2024
GRANT PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE: APRIL 1, 2024 — JUNE 30, 2027