Where are all the US eco building grants?

April 1, 2008 1:57 PM

Where can I find funding sources to start an Eco farm/Artist collective?

I've been looking for grants online, but they all seem to be for Europe or Australia, or already too late to apply. I want to build it in either the North or East San Francisco Bay Area. This is my ultimate goal in life so I'm sure I will eventually complete it, but on a lark I moved my timetable from ten years to three and so I need ~$300 000 in the next year to fifteen months.

posted by JackarypQQ to work & money (10 comments total)

The Orange Twin Conservation Community here in Athens funded things primarily through their successes as the Elephant 6 collective. That level of success might be hard for you to achieve in three years, but they've got contact info on their site -- you could ask them for advice.
posted by ewagoner at 2:13 PM on April 1, 2008

Many counties have arts commissions that give grants.

However, the grants are usually given to specific artists, or to established organizations, for specific purposes (complete work of art X, fund art show Y), and they're not usually very large.

Have you established an organization? A 501 (c)3 nonprofit? Do you have partners? A database of (potential) donors? It's been a while since I did any sort of fundraising work, but in my long-ago experience, seed money for big projects like this usually begins with one or more angel donors, who put up a sizeable chunk of startup money.

Are you looking to buy land, or rent? I don't know what it costs (per acre) for land zoned for residential use, but in any of the nine Bay Area counties (well, eight - let's just take San Francisco County out of it!), but I can't imagine it's cheap.

I really don't want to be a downer - I just want to point out some stuff for you to think about. Since you pushed your timetable to three years on a whim, I'd consider pushing it back out again.
posted by rtha at 2:24 PM on April 1, 2008

I think most people who could give helpful feedback would need to know a lot more about your financial plan to be useful. Maybe you could post more details? It sounds like you have a fairly detailed plan to know you need $300k that soon.

My questions include: what's the funding for? Staff? Land acquisition? Construction? What business or nonprofit structure are you planning to use? Is this an established nonprofit? Would you be buying a building or vacant land? Will you be selling or renting space to the other members of the collective? How much of your own money are you putting in? Are you seeking a bank loan or investors for part of the work? (I'm also curious about where exactly you're planning to do this, though that's less relevant for helping with the fundraising.)

The best near term advice I can give you is to take this class at the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center and/or offer to hire its founders as your business consultants. Depending on how you're setting up this venture, you might also look at courses in nonprofit management, nonprofit finances, or real estate management and development. You could also hire people with this type of expertise. (I know someone who does development contracting with a focus on affordable housing if you want a name for that.)
posted by salvia at 3:30 PM on April 1, 2008

These guys would know better than anyone methinks.
posted by watercarrier at 3:33 PM on April 1, 2008

By the way, OAEC is in the Bay Area (western Marin, I think).
posted by salvia at 4:46 PM on April 1, 2008

What rtha and salvia said, and here's a bit more from someone who has assessed philanthropic foundation grants (although not in the US). You're looking for a very large amount of money here (most foundations think they don't have very much money, even if it seems like an enormous sum to you) and you haven't told us what experience you've got in project management or in the arts/eco farming sector. The trustees of foundations have a duty to ensure the money is being wisely spent and will be used well. What they are going to be looking for is a sound strategic plan, including information about how the land will be sourced, where the rest of the money will come from, what resources you're putting into it, where the other members of the collective will come from and how you will find them, how to ensure ongoing sustainability as you can't rely on philanthropic funding forever, what the organisation's structure and governance will be, and a detailed budget on exactly how the funds will be used. (Apologies if you already have and know this stuff - it's hard to tell from your question).

Most philanthropic sources will need an organisation to be sending the money to - a 501 (c)3 in the US - rather than an individual. Grants to individuals are usually fairly small; if they're large (like a research grant) they are usually made through an institution where there are good accounting processes in place.

And I'd be focusing on what this will do for the community, rather than that it's your ultimate goal in life. I see heaps of applications which are just brimming with personal passion, and that's great, and it is taken into account; but most foundations are set up with the goal of benefiting the wider community, rather than fulfilling personal dreams. Even scholarships and fellowships are there so that the person getting them can then apply what they've learned to make the world a better place - the fact that they're fulfiling a personal goal is really just an incidental benefit. So if you talk about the community education aspect of the plan, the fact that it'll be a model for use by other organisations, the self-sufficiency it will produce for participants, the school groups you might eventually get to tour there to learn about ecologically sound farming techniques, etc, then you'll have a better chance because you are taking the purposes of the foundation into account.
posted by andraste at 5:37 PM on April 1, 2008

Addendum - if you haven't done so already, look into doing one of the courses at the Foundation Center. There are some paid and some free and they include all kinds of stuff from proposal writing to establishing a nonprofit to nonprofit management.
posted by andraste at 5:41 PM on April 1, 2008

andraste is exactly right. She also reminded me that in addition to the Foundation Center, Compass Point is a good place to take classes on this sort of stuff in the Bay Area.

In terms of figuring out what groups to apply for funding with once you have a really great plan, the Foundation Center's subscription service (you can sometimes find a big organization or a nonprofit incubator that'll let you use their subscription for free...) is a good way to search for related foundations. Or hire a grantwriter who is familiar with the field.
posted by salvia at 6:14 PM on April 1, 2008

Thanks everyone for your input. I'm going to look at all the links and get as much information from them as I possibly can. The plans for the facility are pretty detailed, because that's the sort of thing I like to work on in my free time, but as far as a business plan I've got almost nothing. I see now that I absolutely need to have that planned out before I even consider looking for outside funding not only to know what to look for, but also to have something to show foundations and things of that sort. I've seen some grants for 25 000 euros for solar installations for non profits, and $100 000-$500 000 Australian government grants for building eco communities or buildings. I guess I was thinking that if I could find some things like that then I would whip a solid plan in to shape and have one of my genius writing friends make a proposal. Up until now I was just going to live simply within my means and save up the money I would need to do this. Concord (where I live) acquired the naval weapons station which is an enormous amount of land; I'm going to look in to getting them to give me an acre or two and if so then I'll take out loans to complete the construction.
posted by JackarypQQ at 10:24 PM on April 1, 2008

If you want Concord to give you the land, you should probably get on the ball. They're actively planning for that weapons station -- they're doing the environmental impact reports right now. To do the EIR means they more or less already have their land use plans figured out. I'm assuming the plans don't have an eco-farm in them, or do they? Have you been working with the city? If not, you might set up a meeting where you show your drawings to the city planners ASAP. If you can get your idea considered as part of the EIR, or if it just naturally fits into the city's existing plans, then great; if not, and depending on how big this project is, you'd be looking at having to do an EIR for your project yourself, which could get expensive.

If this is your life dream, and your time table is three years, you really should get yourself hooked up with some local professionals as soon as possible. They could give you some guidance about how your ideas could become a reality. There are easy ways and hard ways to do something like this -- stuff is going on every day -- and if you can get someone knowledgeable to advise you and help you find and jump on these opportunities, you might save yourself a lot of money. Doing real estate development (by which I just mean, buying a piece of land and building something on it) in the Bay Area means that you're going to be dealing with a lot of big-time players who deal with this stuff every day. You should get yourself some help if you're serious about this. Any money you spend to get advise and find an easy way to do this would probably come back to you a thousand-fold. And in general, the hard way is to do it alone, as your solo dream. The more people and organizations that you can partner up with, the easier it's going to get.

You should probably also read up on zoning / general plan laws. You might consider it an eco-farm collective, but if the land has the rights to build, it's probably going to be priced assuming someone's going to turn it into an upscale suburb. There are definite exceptions depending on the configuration of the land and the buildings. You could learn more about this from any real estate agent that sells rural or ranchette land. If you can find a way to make what you want to do fall within the existing plans and zoning for a particular piece of land, the easier it will be. Good luck!
posted by salvia at 12:20 AM on April 2, 2008