Environmental Grantmaking Foundations

Jennifer Altman Foundation
A private foundation dedicated to the vision of a socially just and ecologically sustainable future through program interests in environmental health and mind-body health.

American Express Company
Funding that protects important natural and man-made cultural or historic sites around the world, By supporting effective, nonprofit advocacy organizations,

Beldon Fund
S eeks to build a national consensus to achieve and sustain a healthy planet. The Fund plans to invest its entire principal and earnings by 2009 to attain this goal.

Ben & Jerry's Foundation
The Ben & Jerry's Foundation offers competitive grants to not-for-profit, grassroots organizations throughout the United States which facilitate progressive social change by addressing the underlying conditions of societal and environmental problems.

Frank Stanley Beveridge Foundation
Grants for environmental quality, protection & beautification .

William Bingham Foundation
Works for a world that is environmentally self-sustaining.

Captain Planet Foundation
The mission of the Captain Planet Foundation is to fund and support hands-on environmental projects for children and youths. Our objective is to encourage innovative programs that empower children and youth around the world to work individually and collectively to solve environmental problems in their neighborhoods and communities.

Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation is a private philanthropy-based foundation headquartered in Flint, Michigan. Through four program areas, they make grants that support a just, equitable, and sustainable society in the United States and selected regions internationally. Organizations seeking funding are encouraged to view the Foundation's grants guidelines on their website in detail.

Cottonwood Foundation
The Cottonwood Foundation is dedicated to promoting empowerment of people, protection of the environment, and respect for cultural diversity. The Foundation focuses its funding on committed grass roots organizations that rely strongly on volunteer efforts and where foundation support will make a significant difference.

Nathan Cummings Foundation
The environment program seeks generally to foster respect for the natural world in order to engender a mindful human place in nature and to develop and implement just environmental policies and practices that will enhance, rather than detract from, the quality of life for future generations. In promoting these goals, the program makes grants in three areas: Environmental Vision and Values, Habitat, and Campus Programs.

Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
The Land Conservation Initiative seeks to protect and restore ecologically significant land in suburban and rural areas that are threatened by development. The Foundation awards grants for national research and information dissemination on promising strategies to improve land-use planning and mitigate sprawl. The Foundation also invests in research that focuses on strategies to integrate biological data into land-use planning; evaluate regulatory strategies to protect land; and analyze new models of environmentally compatible growth and development.

Dunn Foundation
The Foundation believes that nature and the built environment must be integrated in a planned and designed manner that enhances community character. 

Fields Pond Foundation

The primary mission of Fields Pond Foundation is to provide financial assistance to nature and land conservation organizations which are community-based and which serve to increase environmental awareness by involving local residents in conservation issues.

Frey Foundation
Funds protection of the environment and encouragement of better land use planning. Regional land protection efforts include projects that enhance water quality, protect ecological corridors and valuable environmental features, and protects or improves the ecological health of natural areas.

 Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat Network and Fund (GLAHNF)
The Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat Network & Fund was developed in 1996 to provide information and financial support to grassroots citizen initiatives working to protect and restore Great Lakes shorelines, inland lakes, rivers, wetlands, and other aquatic habitats in the Great Lakes Basin. The Great Lakes Basin is defined by its rich water resources and aquatic habitats. From the sweetwater seas that contain 20% of the earth's freshwater, to expanses of coastal marsh teeming with fish and wildlife, to blue-ribbon trout streams, to inland lakes that sparkle like jewels, to small isolated bogs, aquatic habitats in the Great Lakes Basin protect water quality, provide important fish and wildlife habitat, serve as reservoirs of biological diversity, and improve the quality of life of Great Lakes residents and visitors. To ensure that aquatic resources in the Great Lakes Basin are protected and managed soundly into the next century, the Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat Network & Fund was designed to support the efforts of individual citizens and citizen groups participating in local and regional resource decision-making. There are two elements of the Fund. The first is the Grants Program that provides grant awards ranging from $500 to $3,500 US. The second is the Special Opportunity Grants Program that provides grants of up to $500 US on an ongoing basis. Both programs are administered based on the same eligibility and decision-making criteria. Specific information on the GLAHNF Grants Program, the Special Opportunity Grants Program, and summaries of grant recipients and projects from prior funding cycles can be found on our website. Network activities revolve around communication "hubs" in each of the Great Lakes States and Ontario. Hub contacts within the communication network provide advocacy support for their state or province, and also serve on the GLAHF advisory panel. If you would like to discuss aquatic habitat issues in your region, or would like assistance with the Fund grant application process, please feel free to contact an advisory panel member in your state or the staff of GLAHNF. Another component of GLAHNF is the Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat News--a bi-monthly newsletter serving as a communication source for individuals and organizations working to protect aquatic habitats in the Great Lakes Basin. The newsletter provides updates on regional aquatic habitat protection efforts and serves as an information source for GLAHFN activities.

Great Lakes Protection Fund
Formed in 1989 by the Governors of the Great Lakes States, the Fund is a permanent environmental endowment that supports collaborative actions to improve the health of the Great Lakes through projects that lead to tangible improvements in the health of the Great Lakes ecosystem, promote the interdependence of healthy ecological and economic systems, and are innovative, creative, and venturesome.

The HIVA Environmental Fund has just be established to help registered environmental charities in Ontario whose action-oriented projects focus on habitat and species preservation. Projects funded include, but are not limited to, habitat restoration, migratory bird conservation & rescue, cleanup of watercourses and wetlands, wildlife rehabilitation and helping to purchase wilderness to preserve it in perpetuity. Preference is given to smaller environmental groups that may otherwise have difficulty obtaining funding. Grants range from $2,000 to $50,000 and most will be between $5,000 to $10,000. Application deadlines are January 15th and July 15th of each year.

Richard Ivey Foundation
Most of the grants have been for the General Program category, which comprises projects in health, education, social development, environment and arts/culture. The balance of the funds has been allocated to other funds including Biodiversity in Forest-Dominated Ecosystems. 

Mitchell Kapor Foundation

Thoreau Center for Sunbstainabiltiy

Contributes both to improving human well-being and to sustaining healthy ecosystems that support all life on earth. The Foundation accepts applications for grants in the Environmental Health Program. The Jenifer Altman Foundation, the Mitchell Kapor Foundation, and the StarFire Fund are three like-minded foundations with shared goals and objectives through which we seek to make what contribution we can to the well-being of humanity and life on earth.

 Laird Norton Family Foundation
The mission of the Laird Norton FamilyFoundation is to fund distinctive programs in policy work supporting the Western Climate Initiative, Energy Efficiency, and Watershed Stewardship (limited to Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana). We have expanded our giving focus to include Arts in Education and Global Fundamentals as well. The Foundation votes our proxies to persuade corporations to adopt appropriate environmental standards.

Patagonia
Growing the Grassroots Patagonia pledges at least one percent of sales or 10 percent of pre-tax profits - whichever is more, giving at the grassroots level to innovative groups overlooked or rejected by other corporate donors. We fund activists who take radical and strategic steps to protect habitat, wilderness, and biodiversity.

Rotary Charities of Traverse City
Rotary Charities makes grants in the five-county Grand Traverse Area of northern Michigan. Grant priorities include: Proposals that address our funding priorities of Affordable Housing, Culture/Recreation, Education, Environment/Managing Growth, and Strengthening Families.

 Surdna Foundation
Environmentally, our goals are to prevent irreversible damage to the environment and to promote more efficient, economically sound, environmentally beneficial and equitable use of land and natural resources. We are most interested in conservation-based development, promoting public policies that insure species preservation, promoting market-based approaches that ensure species preservation, and creating programs that raise broad public awareness of these issues.

 Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation
The Leadership Grant program gives non-profit organizations, educational institutions and government agencies greater access to individuals with superior technical and scientific expertise. Grants are awarded to organizations actively addressing issues of environmental quality, to implement programs designed collaboratively with Switzer Fellows.

 Tides Foundation
The Tides Foundation partners with donors to increase and organize resources for social change. The Foundation promotes conservation and community-based natural resource management, and supports the renewal of communities through sustainable development efforts.

 Wallace Global Fund
The mission of the Wallace Global Fund is to catalyze and leverage critically needed global progress towards an equitable and environmentally sustainable society including the early stabilization of growth of human populations; participatory and accountable economic, social, and environmental governance; and significant changes in global patterns of production and consumption.

 Water Environment Research Foundation, (VA)
Funds projects and research on watershed management, managing total maximum daily loads (TMDLs), multiple stressors, stormwater management, and watershed-based trading, projects that work toward sustainable environmental management practices. By funding such research, we help to inform not only water resource managers but regulatory agencies, so that regulations are based on the best possible scientific grounds.

 Waste Management
Contributes money and services to a broad variety of local events. For information on the specific activities we're supporting in your community, visit the WM site that serves your area. You can find it by entering your zip code in the "Locate your Service Provider" section of our home page.

 Weeden Foundation
From its inception in 1963, the Foundation embraced the protection of biodiversity as its main priority. Organizations supported to date range from those that protect ecosystems and wildlife to those that raise the status of women and increase awareness about family planning. Projects that serve as catalysts inducing others to lend support receive priority consideration.

 Working Assets
Working Assets makes it easy for busy people to support causes they care about. Through their credit card and long distance services, customers can generate donations for progressive nonprofit groups just by doing what they do every day.