Rose Foundation Invites Applications for California Wildlands Grassroots Fund

California has been in the news a lot lately. Today’s story from Philanthropy News Digest brought us a different look at California. The story warmed my heart.

According to the Digest, the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment is inviting applications for its California Wildlands Grassroots Fund (Cal Wildlands), which supports the efforts of grassroots activists to preserve California’s wildlands and natural habitat. The Digest explains that

The fund champions conservationists advocating for the permanent protection—including restoration and stewardship—of intact wildlands on both public and private lands, to help preserve California’s wilderness and native biological diversity. This includes policy advocacy, litigation and regulatory watchdogging at the local, state and federal levels; efforts to advance wildlands and open space protection through county general plans and local planning; as well as direct stewardship and maintenance of intact wild areas.

The Digest continues:

Priority areas include community-based advocacy and organizing efforts steered by affected community members; efforts predominantly driven and staffed by volunteers; projects in areas that have not received significant foundation support, including rural communities; projects that build diverse constituencies for wildlands protection and engage non-traditional stakeholders, especially communities of color; project-specific requests, though general support requests will be accepted from strong organizations whose work is well aligned with the fund’s objectives; and projects that will establish or combat a critical precedent that will influence other wildlands protection efforts.

The Fund awards grants ranging between $4,000 to $8,000, with a maximum award of $10,000.

Eligible applicants include nonprofits, or an individual/organization fiscally sponsored by a nonprofit. Further, organizations must have annual actual expenses and income of $200,000 or less. The project’s impact must be within the state of California.

Complete program guidelines and application instructions are available on the Rose Foundation website. 

Vaughn E. James