The mission of the New England Grassroots Environment Fund is to energize and nurture long-term civic engagement in local initiatives that create and maintain healthy, just, safe, and environmentally sustainable communities. Focus areas of the fund are in Food, Environmental Health, Climate Change and Energy, Land & Water, and Living Economies.
The Fund offers three competitive grant programs designed to foster local community-based environmental initiatives in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
Grassroots Fund's Guiding Values:
- Just Transition & Strategic Considerations: To make transformative social change, the Grassroots Fund will always advance direct democratic decision-making and community organizing efforts that ensure those who are being impacted by a problem are a part of the solution.
- Shifting Power: Transparency, Accountability, Democracy: Transparency and accountability are crucial to the success of the democratic processes. They seek to create opportunities for people and groups to work together, particularly with those outside of their regular network, so that they may share their expertise and experiences.
- Lowering Barriers to Funding: The Grassroots Fund's process welcomes groups without tax-exempt status. The Grassroots Fund particularly seeks to support leaders who face a disproportionate struggle in accessing traditional funding mechanisms.
- Flexibility and ‘risk' taking: They are interested in supporting projects that offer creative, new, community-based solutions and which are unlikely to receive grant funding from other sources. We believe that grant guidelines can be flexible at times and that we must trust recipients to use the funds effectively.
- Change versus Charity: Their assistance is designed to share information and lessons learned to address root causes, not symptoms.
- Community-based Fundraising: The foundation is committed to creating a more balanced income portfolio with new and more sustainable sources of funding based on the solidarity of the many, rather than the generosity of the few.
- Process Is The Product: The foundation believes in adaptability and understands that our relevancy depends on bringing in many perspectives, lowering barriers for engagement at the local level, and holding space for co-creating solutions across all viewpoints.
The overall goals of the Grassroots Environment Fund are to:
- Increase civic engagement, volunteerism, emerging leaders and community initiatives that create healthy, just, safe and environmentally sustainable communities at the neighborhood and town level in New England;
- Help community leaders move single issue, backyard debates to positive, inclusive, systemic, constructive, and lasting community solutions;
- Link community-based advocacy with the work of state-wide and national organizations without losing local identity; and
- Establish and maintain informed networks of activists across the region that are committed to building a just and equitable society.