The Sustainable Forests and Communities Initiative aims to support the development of environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable communities in forested regions of the United States.
Donor Name: Weyerhaeuser Family Foundation
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 01/15/2025
Size of the Grant: $10,000 to $100,000
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
As part of the SFCI goal to promote environmental sustainability and financial viability in forest communities, WFF is also seeking proposals in the area of forest ecosystem services. Many vital public benefits are derived from forests, but their costs and values are either ignored or underpriced and undervalued in the wider economy and in local forested communities. Thus, they encourage proposals that aim to include forest ecosystem costs and values in market-based pricing in order to improve ecosystem benefits or halt their degradation, thereby leading to greater forest and economic sustainability. They aim to internalize the economic externalities of sustainable forestry.
WFF, through SFCI, is interested in supporting organizations that work in forested landscapes to enhance the environment, the economy, and the community. Programs that implement integrated approaches in these areas and enhance market valuation of forest ecosystem services are favored.
Priorities
WFF gives priority to programs that promote vibrant forest-based communities and address the following outcome areas:
- Environment: Employ sustainable forest management, conservation, and ecological restoration.
- Economy: Develop and encourage enterprise-based sustainable economic activities.
- Community: Use innovative social and locally-based processes to meet agreed upon environmental and economic sustainability goals.
Projects of potential interest include the following examples:
- Creation of local market-based jobs for in-forest activities (such as sustainable forest management, forest restoration, or sustainable silviculture).
- Development of demand for certified wood and for products made with sustainably produced forest resources, including non-timber forest resources (e.g. boughs, biomass, and mushrooms).
- Promoting sustainable forest management alternatives to conversion of private forested land to other uses (e.g., community forests, working forest conservation easements, or other title-related forest conservation tools).
- Creating value in forests and forest communities through developing, producing, and marketing new forest products or forest ecosystem services.
- Advancing community-wide, long-term planning for monetizing the full range of forest values, including explicit valuation of and creation of markets for forest ecosystem services.
- Forest Ecosystem Services: using innovative business or policy models to better establish prices and markets for ecosystem services. Forest ecosystem services can include, but are not restricted to, carbon sequestration, forests’ role in the carbon, nutrient, and water cycles, providing habitat to support biodiversity, and providing aesthetic, educational, and other cultural services.
- Partnerships: utilizing partnership-based programs that build on the strengths and capacity of collaborating organizations. Benefits of this approach may include:
- facilitating expansion of successful program models to new geographies;
- enabling organizations to broaden the impact of their expertise or benefit from the expertise of partners;
- allowing organizations to deploy their core expertise without creating redundant capacity.
Funding Information
The maximum grant size for SFCI is $50,000.
Geographical Focus
SFCI focuses on supporting activities in forested communities throughout the United States.
Eligibility Criteria
Organizations must be classified by the Internal Revenue Service as 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations.
For more information, visit Weyerhaeuser Family Foundation.
