The Richard King Mellon Foundation seeks proposals that support innovation in wood products; strengthen associated value chains; and/or encourage deployment of these materials.
Donor Name: Richard King Mellon Foundation
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 10/01/2025
Size of the Grant: Not Available
Grant Duration: 2 Years
Details:
The cumulative intent is to accelerate the use of novel wood products across the built environment and among consumers, with attendant benefits to conservation and economic development.
RFP responses may address product development; certification and commercialization; market and value chain strengthening; deployment of new technologies in demonstration projects; and other scalable projects with the potential to secure and enhance the benefits of innovation in innovative wood products.
Types of Support
Applications should fit under one of the following types of support:
- Planning and Innovation: A planning and innovation grant may provide an opportunity for partners to formally come together to assess an opportunity, develop a plan for addressing those needs, strategize on a way forward, and newly deploy a product or solution.
- Implementation: Implementation grants are for efforts to deploy innovative forest products that may have already started or are already planned and therefore need further infusion of funds to support more creative or expansive efforts.
- Scalability: Scalability grants are for projects that expand on the demonstrated success of a wood-based construction material, allowing for the penetration of new markets or accelerated adoption of the product.
- Social Impact Investment: Social Impact Investments in the form of Program-Related Investments are for early-stage for-profit companies that are seeking to grow their business focused on the development and deployment of innovative forest products in construction.
Grant Period
Funded activities must be conducted within 6-18 months.
Proposal Requirements
- Applications must outline an approach to launch, enhance, or expand the application of one or more innovative wood-based construction material(s).
- The Foundation welcomes proposals from non-profit organizations; public sector entities; and scalable for-profit companies. The Foundation provides both grants and Program-Related Investments (PRIs) to nonprofit organizations, and provides grants to public sector entities. The Foundation primarily uses PRIs structured as convertible notes to provide funding to scalable for-profit companies.
- Priority will be given to proposals that address both the conservation and economic-development outcomes of the project.
- Applicants shall be based in the United States, and project implementation shall occur in the United States.
- Submitted proposals must clearly describe:
- The problem statement: the challenge related to innovation in wood products the proposal seeks to address.
- Specific activities that would be undertaken.
- Feasible, measurable outputs, which describe what each activity aims to accomplish. For example, if one activity is to construct modular housing units using mass timber components, example outputs would include the number of units constructed, the volume of timber used in construction, and the total cost of development per unit.
- Feasible, measurable outcomes, including target metrics that describe the degree of change in behaviors, knowledge, or skills that are expected to result from the proposed activities. Example outcomes for an upskilling project aimed at introducing builders to a wood-based material could be, for example, the size of the construction market newly made viable for that material.
- How the proposed outcomes align with the Foundation’s Conservation funding program and any economic development outcomes associated with the project.
- A monitoring, evaluation, and learning plan to track and document outputs and outcomes.
- A sustainability plan, describing how Foundation funds would seed initiatives with the potential to be sustained through earned revenue or other long-term funding mechanisms. Applications should describe how the outcome of the proposed project will result in a financially viable market, enterprise, or program.
For more information, visit RKMF.
