The Keystone program prioritizes grassroots and community-led efforts to address environmental and racial justice, as a key strategy for equitable social change and community well-being.
Donor Name: Elmina B. Sewall Foundation
State: Maine
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 02/13/2025
Size of the Grant: $100,000 to $500,000
Grant Duration: 1 Year
Details:
By funding efforts that use advocacy and community organizing, and strategic messaging and communications, and by funding organizations that provide essential capacity supports for grassroots and community-led efforts, they will contribute to building a robust civic engagement infrastructure to advance a just, sustainable, healthy Maine.
Priorities
- The focus is on supporting organizations and efforts that meet at least three of the following criteria:
- Demonstrate a clear commitment to environmental justice and racial justice
- Are grassroots or community-led. Sewall understands grassroots efforts to be inclusive community-led and -based efforts that include everyday people working to bring about a change through collective action. Grassroots efforts include and are led by people from the community that is primarily affected by the issue they are addressing
- Provide meaningful capacity and technical support to grassroots and community-led efforts in Maine
- Work to create conditions necessary for a just, healthy, sustainable future, with a primary focus on advocacy, community organizing, civic engagement, and/or field- and movement-building efforts
- Work statewide in Maine or regionally with clear impact in Maine
- Foundation prioritizes applicants that:
- Are led by Black, Indigenous, People of Color, rural Mainers, and women;
- Are working collaboratively across sectors; and/or
- Have an explicit commitment to environmental justice and/or racial justice.
Funding Information
- 2025 Available Funding: $1,500,000
- The normal grant range is $10,000-50,000 for individual organizations. Collaborative grants that will be shared with multiple partners may be up to $200,000.
Grant Period
1 year.
Eligibility Criteria
- Applicants must be eligible to receive tax-deductible donations as outlined in Section 170(c) of the Internal Revenue Code. This includes: 501(c)(3) federal tax-exempt organizations; public schools; public agencies working for the State of Maine; Indian tribal governments (and their political subdivisions) recognized by the Department of the Interior
- The Sewall Foundation accepts applications from organizations and groups who work through a fiscal sponsor. A fiscally sponsored organization does not need to be a legal entity, but it must have a signed fiscal sponsorship agreement with a 501c3 nonprofit organization. If you are an organization that is fiscally sponsored, please answer the application questions as they pertain to the applicant organization or collaborative, not the fiscal sponsor.
- The Sewall Foundation has funded 501(C)(4) organizations in the past for specific nonpartisan and charitable work, however it requires additional considerations and expenditure responsibility. They ask that any 501(c)(4) organization contact program staff to explore potential grant support. Organizations with 501(C)(4) status should not start or submit a grant application before speaking with program staff.
- The Sewall Foundation does not provide grant funding to private for-profit enterprises, cooperatives, or individuals.
- Eligible organizations may apply regardless of their funding history with Sewall Foundation.
For more information, visit EBSF.
