McCune Charitable Foundation: New Mexico Collaborative Zone Grants

The “Collaborative Zone Grant” is an opportunity for collaborations of organizations and other entities to apply together for multi-year funding to test, prove, and support approaches to New Mexico’s challenges that extend beyond the mission of any single organization. The New Mexico Collaborative Zone Grant (“Zone Grant”) opportunity includes awarding of a one-year planning grant followed by the potential for two years of implementation funding. Zone Grants support alignment, collaboration, and integration in the New Mexico nonprofit sector by providing funding and technical support to groups of organizations seeking to truly test the effectiveness of their collaboration.

A “Zone” can be thought of as a distinct area of alignment among the collaborating organizations. It can be a geographic (e.g., the South Valley in Bernalillo County or rural southeast New Mexico), programmatic, and/or policy (e.g., early childhood education or family economic security) zone.

The Zone Grant seeks to support work within self-identified “Zones of Alignment” among organizations seeking to support and build prosperity and resiliency in New Mexico communities. Specific issues that will be addressed by work proposed must show general alignment with the priorities of the Lead Funder of the grant and should be responsive to the appropriate to one of the framing questions below.

Lead Funder – Santa Fe Community Foundation:

• What will it take for affordable housing to become a more equitably accessible/available resource in Santa Fe?

Lead Funder – McCune Foundation:

• How can vulnerable families be supported to overcome the barriers they face in building assets and wealth?
• How might organizations work together to connect “direct service” provision to broader policy change for the benefit of vulnerable New Mexican families?
• What would an equitable energy transition look like for New Mexico communities?

Lead Funder – Thornburg Foundation:

• Institutional procurement (by entities such as schools, prisons, universities, hospitals, etc.) of locally produced food holds tremendous potential to promote local production and to provide access – especially for smaller-scale and mid-size producers – to consistent and reliable market opportunities; and to offer healthy, local food to consumers, particularly lower-income populations. To date, however, institutional procurement has yet to realize its potential in New Mexico. Building upon past successes and failures in the state and elsewhere, how can the myriad potential benefits of institutional procurement be achieved?
• In many ways for future farming and ranching in New Mexico to be more sustainable and beneficial to the health of the working lands, water, and people, it will require a wide-scale (re)turn to methods used in the past – be they in using less tillage and fewer chemicals for production; in grazing that mimics how herds roamed in the past; in promoting more diversified farm/ranch operations; in water and land management; etc. What can be done to accelerate the (re)turn to and wider-scale adoption of these types of practices?

Amount: Dependent upon the sponsoring funder, as follows:

• Santa Fe Community Foundation: One $35,000 planning year grant; up to two years of implementation funding at $135,000 per year.
• McCune Foundation: Four $25,000 planning year grants resulting in two implementation grants with up to 2 years of funding each at $100,000 per year.
• Thornburg Foundation: One $30,000 planning year grant, with the possibility of up to 2 years of implementation funding from $75,000-$125,000 per year (implementation funding is not guaranteed at this time and will be subject to funding availability and the results of the planning grant).

Eligibility:

• A minimum of 3 distinct organizations must participate in the application
• The submitting organization must be a New Mexico-based 501(c)3 organization, educational institution, federally recognized Indian tribe or governmental entity
• The submitting organization can only submit one application per Zone Grant cycle; however, individual organizations can participate in multiple Zone Grant applications
• Proposed work must be primarily for the benefit of New Mexicans and should be aligned with the priorities of the Lead Funder of the grant

Link: http://nmmccune.org/2018_webinar

Application Link: https://sharenm.org/nm-grants

Note: A webinar/information session will be held on May 10, 2018 (see link above to register).

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