Sustainable Forestry Initiative: Conservation and Community Partnerships Grants
The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) is dedicated to promoting sustainable forest management. It works with conservation groups, local communities, resource professionals, landowners, and other organizations and individuals who share its passion for responsible forest management.
Grants from SFI contribute to understanding the critical linkage between forests and communities across the range of American and Canadian forests and represent SFI’s long-standing commitment to forest research. These projects provide the science-based data resource professionals need to improve forest management and to assess conservation values. SFI community grants build engagement at the intersection of sustainable forestry, responsible procurement, and thriving communities. Grantmaking focus areas are detailed below:
1. Conservation grants: This program places a priority on projects that measure, demonstrate, or establish methodologies to demonstrate the conservation-related values of SFI-certified forestlands or such values which result from application of the SFI Fiber Sourcing standard. Ideally such projects will be scalable to a regional or bio-regional scale (e.g., Ponderosa Pine forests, Boreal Plains, Longleaf Pine ecosystem, the central hardwood forest, etc.). Particular attention will be paid to applications focused on conservation values in the areas of water, climate change (including both carbon attributes and forest resiliency), and biodiversity.
2. Community grants: This program seeks to elevate and enrich the link between people and forests. SFI awards grants to collaborative community-based projects, activities, or events that support SFI’s core mission to connect communities to forests. Applications that feature creative partnerships and/or high degrees of leverage (e.g., matching funds, scale of impact, etc.) are preferred. Requests are sought in the following areas:
- Leverage the engagement of Sustainable Forestry Initiative
- Implementation Committees (SICs) to enrich the link between people and forests
- Engage and educate youth to encourage understanding, appreciation, and hands-on interaction with the natural world
- Train and educate current and future practitioners who are engaged in actions affecting the future of forests
- Support and promote Aboriginal, tribal, and heritage values
- Support underserved communities through forestry with a focus on urban forestry, rural communities, and/or minority landowners
Amount: Conservation grants typically range from $15,000-$30,000 and community grants from $5,000-$10,000.
Eligibility: Nonprofit, tax exempt organizations (e.g., a 501(c)(3) in the U.S. or registered with the Charities Directorate of the Canada Revenue Agency in Canada).
This post was filed under: