Community Impact Environment Grant Examples

Madison Community Foundation awards Community Impact grants to fund a range of environment projects, ranging from challenge grants to help build capacity and endowments to funding projects to protect and restore land. 

Groundswell Conservancy

$19,000 to support a partnership with Community GroundWorks to create land security for Hmong farmers at Westport Community Farm.

Dane County Parks Foundation

$45,000 to help build development capability and a permanent endowment for the parks, help Friends groups increase their own development capacity and endowments, and facilitate fundraising for special projects, including accessible fishing piers and docks.

Phoenix From the Ashes

$75,000 to support multiple agencies, schools, and artists in Dane County by providing reclaimed Ash wood rescued from the local Ash Tree devastation. Project including internships, furniture making, several capital campaigns, and an exhibition at Overture Center of ash-based artwork.

Pheasant Branch Nature Conservancy

$100,000 challenge grant to help leverage the final funding in a $3 million land expansion campaign.

Aldo Leopold Nature Center

$40,000 endowment challenge grant to increase the sustainability of this premiere nature education organization. Funds also provided for capital campaign and climate change exhibition.

McFarland Parks

$25,000 for the creation of a natural playground and park adjacent to the new E.D. Locke Public Library in McFarland, which will serve as an educational play space for both neighborhood children and those visiting the library.

Holy Wisdom Monastery

$30,000 to acquire and restore 53 acres on the north side of Lake Mendota to native prairie and oak savanna.

Village of Belleville

$30,000 to The Lake Belle View Restoration Project to restore the ecological health of the lake, its associated wetlands, and engage the community in protecting this resource.

Clean Lakes Alliance

$42,000 to fund the Yahara Watershed Academy, aimed at developing the grassroots leadership capacity needed to advance elements of the Yahara CLEAN Strategic Action Plan for Phosphorus Reduction.

Community GroundWorks and Center for Resilient Cities

$10,000 for the merger of the two agencies into one agency called “Rooted.”