Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiative: Mini-Grant Program
Goals of the Trust’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiative
The mission of the Chesapeake Bay Trust is to promote public awareness and participation in the restoration and protection of water quality and the aquatic and land resources of the Chesapeake Bay region. One of the Trust’s core corporate values is Inclusion: The Trust feels that the watershed will not be restored without a broad range of communities investing in and reaping the benefits of healthy natural resources. The success of these efforts will require increased outreach, capacity building, and a willingness to listen to and understand the values and specific concerns of diverse communities.
For two reasons, the Trust aims to reach beyond groups already committed to the environment to new groups, or groups with a large gap between how they could be engaged and how they are currently engaged with natural resource issues. First, given the breadth of the natural resource restoration challenges, the Trust will only garner the resources and individual participation necessary for solutions if it represents and engages all communities in the watershed and develops stewards of our natural resources from wider audiences. Second, given that healthy natural resources improve lives in various ways, populations who are not engaged will be at a disadvantage. Humans have capacity to improve natural resources, and natural resources have the capacity to improve human life.
History of the Trust’s Mini Grant Program
In addition to approximately 10-15 larger grant programs that offer grants up to, in some cases, $500,000, the Trust has long offered to its community of grantees a “Mini Grant Program,” or grants up to $5,000. These funds are offered on a rolling basis with a quick turnaround time and allow groups to accomplish an array of natural resource awareness, engagement, and restoration projects. Typically, 30-50 organizations are awarded funds through this mechanism each year. Grantees have included large, high-capacity, primarily watershed organizations well known in our larger grant programs who seek a small amount of funds to finish a larger project, as well as small organizations new to grant-making for whom $5,000 is a large portion of their annual budgets. One of the uses of this program has been to advance organizations up the “ladder” of grant-making: Allow them to start with a small grant, teach them the skills of grant-writing and project management, then foster their use of our larger programs.
Strategy Shift in the Trust’s Mini Grant Program
New this year, in our fiscal year 2017, the Trust aims to focus on the second type of grantee discussed above, and focus use of the Mini Grant Program on new applicants. Our goal is to attract audiences who have traditionally been under-engaged in natural resource issues, but can benefit from obtaining grants that connect their primary goals with environmental issues.
New Mini Grant Program Elements to Foster Diversity and Inclusion
The restructured Mini Grant Program will have several elements:
- Only applicants who have received three grants or fewer from the Trust in the past will be permitted to apply. Our outreach efforts will target new applicants.
2. We will focus our outreach efforts specifically on three major audiences hypothesized by our Diversity and Inclusion Committee to have a particularly large gap between current and potential engagement and who are large enough in size that reaching them will have a large impact:
a. Communities of color
b. Faith-based communities
c. Communities involved in the human health sector.
3. We will expand the types of activities and projects that we fund, to make clear that we are willing to fund elements of projects that may not have a primarily environmental purpose but that have an ultimate connection or potential to improve natural resources.
4. Connector Groups: We understand that the messenger is important, and an organization with a name like ours may not be the best messenger. As a result, we plan to engage 3-5 “connector groups” whose mission combines both natural resource issues and issues connected to the three communities identified above. These connector groups will help provide outreach on the grant opportunity, translate our goals into language that is best received by the new audiences, and help new applicants navigate the grant-making process.
5. Mentorship Program: We do not wish to fully exclude previous, experienced grantees, as we feel they have a significant role to play. Experienced grantees will be encouraged to offer mentorship to new applicants. These groups can help new applicants with proposal ideas, wording suggestions for applications, project management, budget management, and reporting. In exchange for mentoring a new applicant, a previous grantee will be permitted to themselves apply to the program for Mini Grants, allowing them to complete their own small projects.
Ultimate goals of the newly structured Mini Grant Program
The Trust’s hope through this newly formatted program is two-fold: First, we hope to make aware a wide range of groups with wide-ranging missions that natural resource issues should be part of their portfolios. Second, we hope to provide grants to those organizations to fund projects with co-benefits, one of which includes a natural resources benefit. Ultimately, these groups will receive training through on-the-ground practice in applying for grants, will learn that environmental funding opportunities are relevant to them, and will develop the capacity to apply for larger grants from the Trust. We want people and communities who benefit from healthy natural resources to fully engage in natural resource issues and serve as stewards. Communities sometimes miss the connection between their primary concerns and watershed issues. Extending our reach into these communities will benefit them and will benefit natural resources.
