Food, Agriculture, and Resilient Ecosystems (FARE) Grant Program

Agricultural Institute of Marin  $91,000
Incubator program to support emerging Marin-based food entrepreneurs to sell at the Sunday Marin Civic Center Farmers Market, Downtown San Rafael Summer Market and Point Reyes Station Farmers Market. Incubator Booth participants will receive booth space free of charge, a tent, stipend, marketing support, and individualized training for business growth.

Audubon Canyon Ranch  $61,635
Fire Forward: Collaborative partnership-building and knowledge-sharing on the use of prescribed fire as a land stewardship tool to enhance the ecology and rangeland productivity of Marin’s working landscapes and forests while mitigating wildfire risk. Supporting relationship-building among conservation nonprofits, landowners/operators, and fire agencies.

Bolinas Community Center   $40,000
Hire cooks to provide cost-optional meals in Bolinas through Feed the People. Purchase refrigeration and other kitchen equipment.

City of San Rafael   $35,000
Physical improvements to support the City of San Rafael Canal Community Garden, working collaboratively with the Canal Community Garden Committee and Gardeners.

Dance Palace Community and Cultural Center   $46,000
Analyze needs of farmers and food makers for commercial kitchen space to create, store, and aggregate value-added products. Analyze how Dance Palace kitchen renovation would best meet these needs and explore permitting requirements to make these upgrades. 

Fibershed   $100,000
Double the land area for perennial native grasses, forbs, and bulb, corm and tuber habitat (from 1.5 acres to 3 acres) by 2026. Increase native grass, forb, and tuber understories with an additional 25,000 plugs and 15,000 directly seeded wildflowers. Expand the integration of carbon farming and multicultural agro-ecology through enhancing opportunities for land-based businesses owned by socially disadvantaged farmers. 

Golden Gate Village Residents Council   $40,000
Support community garden at public housing site in Marin City: increase number of garden plots, install new fencing, and hire part-time garden coordinator. 

Interfaith Sustainable Food Collaborative   $60,000
Fiscal sponsor: Inquiring Systems 
Build relationships between faith communities that own over 1 acre of available land and low-income farmers to establish farm lease or community garden arrangements. Support Buddhist Enlightenment Center (Novato) with establishment of farm and garden.  

Kitchen Table Advisors   $159,000
Planning and network-building to support new land lease opportunities between underserved specialty crop farmers and agricultural landowners in Marin County. Establish pathways to connect emerging underserved specialty crop farmers, originating from local and regional pools of farmers and farmworkers, with new agricultural land leases. Geographic focus: West Marin and Novato.

Lagunitas Community School  $70,000
Launch Lagunitas School Garden-to-Cafeteria effort will expand the educational gardening program into a productive food garden whose produce will be used to make healthy meals in the school cafeteria and shared with the San Geronimo Valley Community Center in their Senior Lunch Program and Food Pantry. Activities include building new garden areas, installing fence, and building processing space to grow and process food for meal programs.

Marin Child Care Council  $125,000
Support low-income children with hands-on garden and nutrition education in childcare settings. Offer workshops to teachers and families to build skills in healthy cooking and eating, purchasing locally grown food, and gardening. Partnering with College of Marin’s Indian Valley College Farm for local produce. 

Marin City Community Development Corporation  $45,000
Create new garden spaces for participants in the Empowerment Clubhouse program that supports individuals recovering from mental illness.

Marin County Cooperation Team (MCCT)  $35,000
Partner with the Sausalito Marin City District to produce food for the community on the Phillips Drive campus in Marin City while exploring opportunities for community and after school participation in food production activities. This grant will complement any food production activities funded by the Health and Human Services Healthy Eating Active Living program. 

Marin County Office of Education  $75,000
Feasibility study to explore countywide collaboration on connecting public school food systems to local farms.

Museum of the American Indian  $15,000
Protect and share Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge, highlighting healthy, local, and sustainable foods through quarterly workshops at the Museum in Miwok Park.

Next Generation Scholars  $50,000
Physical improvements for Next Gen Justice Garden in downtown San Rafael. Train students and families in gardening as part of academic and social support program for Marin County middle and high school students and their families. Stipends for community members to manage garden and produce food for program participants.

North Bay Children's Center  $30,000
Contribute to building Garden of Eatin’ Outdoor Learning Lab at early childhood education site for low-income families. The Learning Lab will serve as a multidimensional seed-to-table education platform where children, staff and families will gain skills and knowledge to grow and use nutritious food, understand healthy food systems and environments, and develop resources to access healthy foods in their everyday life to support garden education and food production for meals.  

Rise Up! 94965 Foundation  $60,000
School Garden coordinator staff and rainwater catchment for Sausalito - Marin City school district.  

Sanzuma  $100,000
Relationship-building and workshops to connect local farmers and a diverse range of institutional buyers such as for childcare meals and senior congregate meals. Maintenance and management staff for farm located on San Pedro School site that produces food for San Rafael School District and educates students in gardening and nutrition.

Sustainable Marin Schools  $197,965
Fiscal sponsor: MarinLINK
Garden program for Novato School District. Build family garden at Rancho Elementary School, food garden at Pleasant Valley Elementary, provide supplies to existing gardens at other schools, and support a staff position to collaborate across all school gardens in the district.

University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, UC Cooperative Extension Marin Office  $120,000
Expand the capacity of school and community gardens countywide, with a focus on priority communities. Activities will: (1) provide resources to gardens across Marin (i.e. seeds, starts, compost, and mulch); (2) build a learning community and connect gardeners with learning opportunities; and (3) conduct ongoing needs assessment and evaluation. 

This program supports sustainable food systems, climate beneficial management, and improving natural resource values on Marin's working lands. Project topics could include initiatives for local food supply sustainability, community gardens, carbon capture farming, increasing access to low-cost farmland and farming for low-income and underserved communities, and more.

This program can fund:

• Next steps for planning and early action stages of a project
• Launch of a new project or program that is ready to begin
• Continuation of a program that is already operational
• Implementation of physical projects on working lands or in communities

Up to 20% of funds can be applied toward administrative expenses that directly support the grant scope of work.

These are just a few examples to illustrate how this funding could be used

• Study school grounds, open spaces, faith-based properties, and other sites that could be available for agricultural uses
• Shared crop planning to support a farm to school food pipeline
• Multi-year programmatic connection between school food programs and local farms
• Year-round staffing to support gardening and education at school and community gardens
• Program to move compost from farms to community gardens
• Place-based projects showing how to connect youth and families to agriculture opportunities
• Create/expand farmers market space, grocery store and grocery cooperative, paying youth health educators to host cooking demonstrations
• Commercial kitchen space, storage, and business education to support home cooks to become entrepreneurs
• Access to incubator farmland for new farmers
• Implementing management practices on agricultural lands that will increase carbon sequestration and soil health long-term to support of Marin County's 2030 Climate Action Plan

Staff will lead an application review process in partnership with the Parks and Open Space Commission and others. Grant agreements will ultimately be approved by the Marin County Board of Supervisors.

Applicants are encouraged to:

• Participate in information sessions, office hours, and other opportunities to talk with staff and technical assistance providers to ask questions and explore proposal ideas
• Discuss project ideas and goals with program staff before applying
• Incorporate involvement of priority communities in project design and implementation. Priority communities experience intersecting challenges of racial, health, economic and other inequities.
• Collaborate among partners doing related work
• Address unmet needs that are not well-suited to other sources of funding, OR demonstrate that this grant would facilitate access to larger State and/or Federal grants
• Address County priorities, including:
  • Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) Community Action Team priorities
  • Marin County Office of Equity priorities reflected in the Marin County 2023-24 annual budget
  • Marin County 2022 Race Equity Action Plan
  • Marin County 2030 Climate Action Plan
• Prepare a proposal that is complete, feasible, and relevant to the grant program

This program will prioritize projects that are co-designed by and benefit Priority Communities in Marin County.

For this program, “Priority Communities” means any Marin County population that experiences inequity related to this Program’s funding areas (for example food security and ecological health) compared to the county as a whole.

Applicants can define for themselves how their project proposal supports Priority Communities. Applicants may use quantitative or qualitative data, community feedback from or centered in communities of color, and direct experience to describe how a Program proposal addresses racial disparities and other inequities.

A map using local data has been developed as one resource to support applicants to tell their story about race equity and intersecting challenges. This map does not define what a Priority Community is. It does provide resources to support communities to tell their own story about race equity and intersecting challenges.

This program prioritizes participation of and investment in communities that experience intersecting challenges of racial, health, economic and other inequities. These are a few examples of how a project can involve these priority communities in the design and implementation of a project:

• Develop and/or implement the project by or in close partnership with an organization based in a community of color
• Use data and community input to demonstrate how a proposal will address historic barriers and inequities
• Center traditional knowledge and direct involvement of indigenous groups in ecological restoration or other project design
• Directly benefit of people of color and others experiencing intersecting challenges of underinvestment and inequity
• Prioritize ways for project funds to support people of color to implement the project, including through new workforce opportunities, professional development opportunities, and living wages
• Support local businesses owned by people of color

The application period was October 10 – December 8, 2023. Sign-up for email updates to learn about the next opportunity to apply. 

Applications will be invited from:

• Public agencies
• Non-profit organizations
• Special district or Joint Powers Authority (JPA) formed pursuant to Chapter 5 (commencing with Section 6500) of Division 7 of the Government code
• Educational institutions
• Federally recognized California Native American tribes
• Non-federally recognized California Native American tribes that are on the contact list maintained by the Native American Heritage Commission

These organizations should be based in Marin, or demonstrate at least one year of leading projects based in Marin.

If you are not eligible to apply, please contact us to discuss opportunities to collaborate with an eligible organization. Applicants that do not meet eligibility criteria can collaborate with a fiscal agent to apply.

All applicants must demonstrate capacity to manage their project's stated scope of work and maintain records on use of all grant funds.

Applicants can request grant awards between $15,000 and $200,000. For the 2023-2024 application period, up to $1.58 million in total may be awarded.

All proposals must include some kind of matching contribution. This can be any combination of funds and/or in-kind resources. There is no minimum dollar amount or proportion for matching contributions.

A series of information sessions and office hours will take place during the application period to answer questions and connect potential partners. Contact the Parks program lead Sonya Hammons at sonya.hammons@marincounty.gov, even if you are in the early stages of considering applying.