The City of Phoenix is offering grants to small, food-related businesses that have been negatively impacted by COVID-19 or its negative economic impacts.
Donor Name: City of Phoenix
State: Arizona
City: Phoenix
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 03/31/2023
Size of the Grant: $5,000 – $99,000
Grant Duration: 12 months
Details:
Applications are now open for the Food Systems Transformation Grant, which is part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA)-funded Phoenix Resilient Food System Initiative.
This Grant is intended to provide financial assistance to small business within the City’s food system that have been negatively impacted by the COVID-19 public health emergency or its negative economic impacts.
The term food system describes the interconnected systems and processes that influence nutrition, food, health, community development, and agriculture in the City. The City’s food system includes all processes and infrastructure involved in feeding Phoenicians: growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, distribution, and disposal of food and food-related items.
Small business within the food system have been negatively impacted by COVID-19 because the pandemic has reinforced systemic barriers limiting their ability to obtain credit. To ensure a resilient food system, the City, through the OEP, invites small business within the City’s food system to submit applications seeking funding to implement projects designed to transform the City’s food system into a more resilient, sustainable, equitable, healthy, and thriving system.
The City will award Food System Transformation Grants to small business for projects that help transform the local food system as indicated below:
- Advance justice, equity, and fairness within the local food system.
- Promote efforts to reduce the impact of the local food system on their changing climate (mitigation).
- Strengthen the resiliency of the local food system in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, various shocks and disruptions (adaptation).
- Enhance food security, accessibility, affordability, and healthy eating.
- Adopt new and/or expand existing sustainable and innovative urban food production, distribution, aggregation, processing, and recycling practices.
- Develop product prototypes.
- Create new, high-quality jobs to implement grant funded projects.
- Improve local market options.
- Funding for the Food System Transformation Grant comes from the American Rescue Plan Act. This Grant is one of thirteen programs under the Phoenix Resilient Food System Initiative, designed to:
- Continue and expand the programs that have provided food for COVID-19 impacted individuals, families, businesses, and non-profits, while creating jobs, economic opportunities, and strengthening the local food network.
- Achieve the goals established in the 2025 Phoenix Food Action Plan and the Local Food System goals within the City of Phoenix 2021 Climate Action Plan.
- Create a resilient food system.
Funding and Duration
- Total available Grant funding for 2023 is $800,000.
- The maximum Grant request is $99,000. The minimum Grant request is $5,000.
- The time period for the grant is 12 months.
- Funds will be paid on a monthly reimbursement basis. The City may consider advance payments of no more than 20 percent of the total grant request for demonstrated need.
- All funds awarded through this grant opportunity must be expended within 12 months. Any funds that remain at expiration of the Agreement, must be returned to the City.
- Prior ARPA Phoenix Resilient Food System Initiative grant awardees are eligible to apply for a project that is different from their current award.
Examples of Food System Transformation Projects
Examples include but are not limited to:
- Water management and efficiency measures
- Renewable energy adoption (agrivoltaics, photovoltaics, etc.)
- Green and climate resilient infrastructure
- GHG emissions reduction
- Indoor farming/vertical farming
- Regenerative agriculture practices or carbon farming
- Greenhouse with sustainability features
- Shade structures and cloth
- Enhancing wildlife habitat and biodiversity
- Soil health improvement projects
- Establishing/promoting community food sovereignty
- Increasing healthy food access
- Planting native and ancestral crops
- Creating or enhancing food hub
- Hydroponics and aquaponics production
- Climate smart farming
- Food loss and waste mitigation efforts
- Collaboration across food system
Eligibility Requirements
- Have no more than 50 employees.
- Be located within the City’s boundaries.
- Small businesses outside the City’s boundaries are not eligible unless they work in partnership with a stakeholder within the City’s boundaries, i.e., producers, distributor, aggregator, processor, and/or recycler located in the City and benefits City residents.
- Stakeholders with 50 or more employees will be required to match 100% of the award.
- Joint proposals are encouraged to create a larger impact to transform the City food system.
- If submitting a joint proposal to collaborate across the food system, an applicant may also submit a separate application, provided that the project is not duplicative of the joint proposal.
Benefit
- Support entities across the food system impacted by the pandemic to transform how they produce, distribute, aggregate, process, and circularize food.
For more information, visit City of Phoenix.
