In mid-April, New Harvest was approached by a Stanford philanthropic team disbursing a one time $10,000 grant before the end of the school year. The team, working with the Stanford Center for Philanthropy, was assigned to find the best nonprofits in the environmental category, and identified New Harvest as one which fit the criteria of addressing climate change while building a new food system.
After receiving an RFP, sending in a grant application and speaking with the four person team over Skype for an hour, I am happy to say that New Harvest won $9,000 from Stanford PACS, announced officially on June 4, 2014!! There appears to be a giant cheque there waiting for us!!!
Stanford University offers a class “Theories of Civil Society, Philanthropy, and the Nonprofit Sector” taught by Dr. Bruce Sievers, which is in receipt of funding from The Once Upon a Time Foundation, a philanthropic foundation promoting the values and practices of philanthropy
The class and the associated funding enable students to learn about philanthropy through hands-on grant-making, distributing funds to nonprofit organizations in their chosen field.
Students in the class divided into four teams, focused on different philanthropic areas, one of which was the environment. These were the grant priorities set out by Stanford PACS:
- Demonstrate a community-based approach involving solutions that recognize and incorporate the unique perspectives of food consumers, producers and the communities they live and work in.
- Are scalable – there is no requirement that organizations are of a particular size, but expected to become part of solutions that have large impact in the short-term or the potential for large impact in future.
- Have a track record of success and are willing to take risks.
If you want to read more about this philanthropy class, check out these stories in the Stanford Daily and the NY Times.