Funding your Farm to School program:

INSTITUTIONS
It is most ideal if you can get elements of your program “institutionalized” within existing budgets from the get go. This will support program sustainability and longevity. Here are some creative ideas:

Invite the school to pay for the FTS liaison: This is a low cost, high value proposition for principals. We pay just $1600 for the year for the FTS liaison to make the program happen at their school. They can either pay a stipend to a parent or, even easier for them, give an existing school employee that stipend, OR easier yet, or give a teacher an extra prep-period and/or sub-days to be the liaison.

Invite the PTA to pay for program elements: The farm field trips, guest chef visits, farmer visits and produce stand produce are all relatively low-cost, highly visible and fun elements that PTA’s love to support.

Integrate Harvest of the Month into the Food Service directors plan: Harvest of the Month produce tasting is one of the most costly elements of the program. Partnering with your food service director on this is ideal because they already have a budget for food (albeit not adequate), they can integrate Harvest of the Month items into their school menu in coordination with the classroom tastings, and if they have a central facility, they could also help with produce delivery to each of the schools.

Invite your Superintendent to pay for your organizing time:

Either your County superintendent’s office (if you are have many small districts like us) or your District Superintendent (if you are only dealing with one district) is the perfect place to house the funding for the overall district/county Farm to School coordinator role. If the other elements of the program are covered in someone else’s budget, asking for a 10h a week position is a steal for what they’ll get.

UCCE: Talk with your UC Cooperative Extension office about what they can do. They usually have funding for nutrition education and the associated produce and if you can make it work, some of the elements can be paid for through their office. Usually this funding is restricted to schools with over 50% free and reduced lunch.

Public Health: Your public health department probably has NEOP (Nutrition Education and Obesity Prevention) money that can be used for cooking classes, produce, nutrition workshops (like rethink your drink), etc. As long as no-one else is already doing programming in your school (they can’t overlap with other programs) and it is over 50% free and reduced, they can likely help fund or do some of the program elements for you.

Master Gardeners: Master Gardeners need to do a certain amount of volunteer hours in the community as part of their program. They could be tapped into for helping with tastings, school garden support etc. The only issue is seeing what your schools requirements are on outside volunteers (usually finger printing, TB test and be in sight of a certified teacher).

NON-PROFITS
Partnering with well established non-profits in your area can be beneficial.

Service Clubs: Service clubs like Rotary and Lyons are good sources of volunteer help and funding. Do a presentation at their meeting and see how they can help.

Food Banks: While it’s often not organic or local, Food Banks usually have food that they can donate for cooking classes or tastings.

INDIVIDUAL DONATIONS
Individual donors fund 86% of the charitable programming in the country and the majority of those donors make less than $60,000 a year! Build relationships with those who are most excited about this programming happening at your school and ask them for their support. Figure out how much the program costs per child and frame it that way. X dollars will fund the farm to school program for one child for one year, x dollars will fund a whole class, x dollars will fund a whole school. Look for people with clout whose financial investment will inspire others. A good place to start in finding these people are the ones who are already giving their time and money to the school, begin with your school board.

BUSINESS SPONSORSHIPS
If there is a local business that would be interested in this sort of program happening, approach them about a sponsorship. Think in the range of $500-$5,000 for a small business or up to $25,000-$50,000 for a large business (or local branch of a national business). A local food cooperative, a garden store etc. If a parent of the school has owns local business that is always a good bet. Often they will be willing to give more through their business than individually. Businesses only give 5% of charitable giving so don’t waste too much time here unless you have a relationship to build on.

GRANTS
You’ll notice that I put this last. So often groups fall into the trap of thinking they need a big grant to get their program started. Grants are nice because you can get all your funding in one place, but they are unreliable and unsustainable. Government grants especially can be a huge headache to report on and can lead to a situation where you have a great program for two to three years but it goes away once the big chunk of money is used up. Your best long-term funding is going to come from people and organizational relationships you develop in your community. That being said, here are some ideas.

Family FoundationsFamily foundations are your ace in the hole. Often you only hear about them because of your relationship with a member of the family. These grants are often the ones with the least reporting requirements and the most consistent long-term funding. If you get in with a family foundation, maintain that relationship!

Foundation GrantsFoundation grants are great for launching new programs. They love being the initiators of a new great thing. Once you have a track record you can get bigger and bigger foundation grants. If you develop a relationship with your program officer, this can be a nice long term relationship, but if that person leaves, do be surprised if your funding leaves too.

Here are some resources for funding grants to apply to:

(search fundraising)

(under grant opportunities)

(search fundraising)

(look for ones in our area)

(you pay for a membership and they send you a monthly listing of education related grants, usually there are some that apply to farm to school)

(they are in the Sacramento public library and have a searchable grants database that is free to the public)

Government GrantsWe have a unique situation right now where there are a number of state and government grants available specifically for Farm to School programs. We can thank the folks at the National Farm to School Network, California Farm to School network and more for working with policy makers to make this possible. Here are the two main ones I know about:
USDA Farm to School grant: (planning, implementation, support service)
CDFA Specialty Crop Block grant: $ in here for supporting specialty crop growers (ie vegetable growers) which can often be used for local school food procurement and farm to school programs.
(If your program includes Farmer Training there are also the USDA Beginning farmer/rancher grants and the Higher Education challenge grant for new growers through JR colleges.)
Tips on being successful with government grants:

  1. Be clear on what you want to do. What exactly is your proposed programming? Who will do each part and what are the steps they will take to do it? What exactly will it cost? What will it’s impact be? How will you measure that impact? What change will it ultimately result in?

If you think you are already clear on all these things, filling out a government grant proposal always help you have more clarity.

  1. Leave enough time. One month or more depending on how far along you are in your ideas and commitments from players.
  2. Consistency. Make sure you are consistent from one part of the grant to the other. ie your budget should match your budget narrative, should match your work plan, should match your expected outcomes etc.
  3. Be realistic with what you can achieve and how much money it will take. Don’t assume that more is always better. Pick clear programs and outcomes and don’t add too much fluff.
  4. Review and letters of support. Plan in a week or two with your finished document to get and incorporate feedback from reviewers and to collect letters of support from key partners and players.
  5. Really, leave enough time. Plan on submitting the grant a couple days early. It takes some doing to get access gov programs and submit a grant. Don’t let all your hard work be wasted by missing the deadline because of a technical glitch.
  6. Success! If you win a government grant, congratulations, and don’t be lulled to sleep by your big chunk of change. You don’t want to end up at the end of your grant period right back where you started. Use this time to develop the relationships necessary for long-term sustainable funding.
    LAST THOUGHT: Start small, we started with just the produce carts and built from there, you don’t have to have it fully funded to begin somewhere!