Grant Recommendations

Welcome! Here are this week’s recommended foundations. These grants will be for various types of organizations, so they may not always be a perfect fit for you. However, there will be some that are. We also offer customized grant research reports that offer grants researched specifically for your organization, provide you with all of the submission requirements, deadlines, and a researched recommended request amount so that you can put your best effort forward when you apply. Some of the deadlines may have passed, but you can keep this information for their next funding cycle.

Transformative Black Led Movement Fund

Nexus is happy to be partnering with the Black Visions Collective on this Transformative Black Led Movement Fund.

The goal of the Transformative Black Led Movement Fund (TBMF) is to transparently and efficiently resource Twin Cities-based Black-led organizations and individuals currently responding to the political and cultural opportunity to defund police and begin the transition process toward developing and implementing a shared vision of community-led safety and investment.

Through this interim fund, they will redistribute $3.1 million from funds raised by Black Visions and Reclaim the Block during the uprising proceeding the murder of George Floyd by MPD. This fund serves as a rapid response strategy as they work to develop a community-led Black Movement Fund for holistic long term resource redistribution strategies.

What are Nexus Community Partners is funding?

Nexus Community Partners have prioritized the following community organizing strategies that will help them defund the police, move towards abolition, and build the future we need. All funds (except mutual and legal aid funds) are general operating and should align with criteria below.

Organizing for a New Future
- Capacity building for Black-led organizations and emerging projects
- Rapid response resources for community organizing strategies to engage diverse communities in the process to reimagine community safety, invest in communities, and transition away from policing.
- Support for on-going grassroots organizing strategies that seek to transform the social, economic, political, and cultural conditions of all Black people.
- Support for cultural organizing projects led by Black artists in partnership with communities and organizations
Transformative and Healing Justice
- Capacity building for Transformative and Healing justice organizations, projects, and initiatives developing models for community safety and accountability
- Resources to support the development of non-police involved safety alternatives
- Capacity building for individual transformative and healing justice practitioners
- Capacity building and project grants for Black artists
- Resources to hold healing processes
Mutual and Legal Aid
- Resourcing organizations to redistribute cash assistance to Black community members
- Direct emergency cash assistance for Black community members
- Emergency resources for Black community legal aid; prioritizing legal costs for frontline protestors and Black immigrants
- Support for POCI community members currently dealing with houselessness and/or who are on the frontlines of the sanctuary movement in Minneapolis, with a focus on Indigenous community members/organizations.
Economic and Cultural Justice
- Supporting Black businesses committed to community wealth building, cooperatives and cultural economic models that are rooted in mutuality, and stewardship. Supporting economic efforts that shift away from extractive models towards strategies that build regenerative local economies.
- Resourcing and small business development for artists leading projects and initiatives expanding consciousness and understanding of abolition; prioritizing emerging to mid-career artists and Black Trans artists.
  - For example: registering as a business with the state, studio rental, business consulting, marketing, developing an artist cooperative, etc.

Funding Information

The funds will be evenly dispersed within 5 months.

Organizing for a New Future
- $200,000-250,000 per month
- $1,000,000 total
Transformative and Healing Justice
- $75,000-$125,000 per month
- $500,000 total
Economic and Cultural Justice
- $40,000-$80,000 per month
- $300,000 total
Mutual Aid and Legal Aid
- $75,000-$200,000 per month
- $1,100,000 total

Criteria

Nexus Community Partners will support Black communities, including organizations and individuals. They will also specifically prioritize funding organizations led by and for marginalized Black communities and Black people who hold the marginalized identities, including LGBTQ communities, especially Trans communities/people; women, femmes, and children; people with disabilities; poor and working-class folks; immigrants, especially those who are undocumented; people who have been previously incarcerated; sex workers; and other criminalized communities.
A small percentage of the funding (5%) will go towards supporting BIPOC-led organizations that help support Black movement work and Black liberation, even if they are not necessarily Black-led. Additionally, resources will be allocated to support Indigenous and people of color with mutual and legal aid.

Fund for Wild Nature

The Fund for Wild Nature is seeking applications to provide small grants for North American campaigns to save native species and wild ecosystems, with particular emphasis on actions designed to defend threatened wilderness and biological diversity.

The Fund supports biocentric goals that are premised on effective and intelligible strategies. They give special attention to ecological issues not currently receiving sufficient public attention and funding. They seek proposals with visionary and yet realistic goals to create tangible change. All proposals must be highly cost effective.

The Fund for Wild Nature invests in bold grassroots organizations and innovative conservation efforts that meet emerging needs for protecting biodiversity and wilderness.

Criteria

The Foundation funds advocacy, litigation, public policy work, development of citizen science, and similar endeavors. They will only fund media projects that have a clear, significant strategic value to biodiversity and a concrete plan for dissemination of the final product.

Marshall Community Foundation

The Marshall Community Foundation awards grants from the Unrestricted and Field of Interest Funds each year for innovative projects and programs that respond to the community’s changing needs.

The Marshall Community Foundation administers more than 100 endowed funds, some of which are restricted to specific purposes in accordance with the donors wishes.

Priorities

Application priorities include, but are not limited to:

Facilitating cooperation and enhancing collaboration amongst organizations.
Avoiding duplication of services
Benefiting the greatest number of people
Strengthening or improving the organization’s self-sufficiency and efficiency
Yielding substantial community benefit for the resources invested
Promoting youth development
Addressing emerging community needs
Representing innovative start-up efforts

Funding Information

The Foundation does not typically grant for:

Annual fundraising drives or capital campaigns
Normal operating expenses, except for start-up purposes or special needs
Multi-year funding
Requests more than $25,000
Endowments or debt reduction

The Foundation DOES NOT grant for political projects, religious or sectarian purposes, or to individuals (except through educational and enrichment scholarships.)

Eligibility Criteria

The Marshall Community Foundation welcomes and encourages grant applications from non-profit, tax-exempt organizations, schools, churches (for non-sectarian purposes_, cities and townships in the greater Marshall-area and Calhoun County that address or impact: arts and culture, community and economic development, education, the environment, health and wellness, human services, and youth and seniors.