Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation logo next to images of children gardening
Sprouts healthy communities foundation logo, photos of kids in garden.

Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation Grants

Neighborhood Grant

Neighborhood Grant

2023 Neighborhood Grant Application Update: We are in the process of realigning our grants to better support our commitment to advancing children’s nutrition education outcomes. With that, the 2023 Neighborhood Grant application cycle is on hold. We do not yet have a launch date to share, but once finalized, all grant information will be announced on our website and social media pages. Thank you for your support and understanding!

Our Neighborhood Grants support organizations working at the community level, providing nutrition education and healthy food access to kids. With grants ranging in size from $5,000 to $10,000, we support organizations that help children develop healthy eating habits that last a lifetime. From school gardens to youth cooking classes, our partners offer a variety of educational and hands-on programming. Since 2016, the Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation has awarded more than $4 million in Neighborhood Grants to 400 nonprofit organizations.

The Neighborhood Grant program is available to 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations with a presence in cities and communities where Sprouts Farmers Market operates stores. Applicants must demonstrate strong mission alignment and promote community wellness in order to qualify.

Meet the 2022 Recipients

We’ve partnered with 108 organizations across 23 states to help kids in our communities access fresh, healthy food.

View Grant Recipient List

Foundation grant recipients in garden

Healthy Communities Grant

Healthy Communities Grant

The Healthy Communities Grant is designed to help nonprofit partners scale programs and serve a greater number of individuals. Grants range in size from $50,000 to $100,000, spread over two years. By offering multi-year funding, organizations can build capacity and expand their reach within the communities they serve. Organizations must first complete a full Neighborhood Grant cycle before they may be invited to apply for a Healthy Communities Grant.

Meet Our Healthy Communities Grant Partners

With a focus on nutrition education and food access, our Healthy Communities Grant partners help children through in-school and after-school programs.

kids boys & girls club of palm beach holding apples

Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County

The Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation is partnering with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County to support their organic garden project at the Max M. Fisher Boys & Girls Club in Riviera Beach, Florida. Through this program, children and teens in grades K-12 will learn how to plant, maintain, and harvest an organic garden via weekly education sessions and hands-on gardening experiences. Youth will ultimately boost their nutrition, confidence, and curiosity, while also learning to become stewards of the environment.

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field with solar panels

Sprout City Farms

Sprout City Farms has been cultivating educational urban farms since 2010 that are a platform for food access, education, health, food justice advocacy, ecological stewardship, community wealth building, and neighborhood resiliency. In 2021, they began expanding to a larger rural site, growing food under solar panels through a farming technique known as agrivoltaics. Additionally, Sprouts City Farms has continued to increase the reach of their farmer training programs by building an incubator farm for aspiring farmers to test out their business plans. The organization believes strongly in community partnerships and continues to develop capacity for thought leadership through coalition building and sharing their models for replication with institutions like schools and park systems everywhere.

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basket full of produce

Local First Arizona

Local First Arizona is committed to building community and economic development across Arizona. Their work connects people and locally-owned businesses to build a diverse, inclusive and prosperous Arizona economy. Funding from their Healthy Communities grant will support the South Phoenix Healthy Food Entrepreneur Center which aims to strengthen the food system in South Phoenix by working with farmers in a commercial kitchen incubator to develop strategies for growing their food businesses. Local First aims to increase local food production, diversify locally grown offerings, and connect growers to markets across South Phoenix where they can sell their fresh produce while helping to strengthen the local economy.

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people shopping in the common market

The Common Market

The Common Market connects communities with sustainable family farms, building an interdependent distribution network that empowers small producers and provides food procurement practices that are socially and environmentally sound. The organization’s Food Access Fund provides discounted pricing on healthy food purchases to mission-driven organizations committed to alleviating food insecurity in their communities. The primary beneficiaries of this program are low-income, urban communities where access to healthy fresh food is scarce, hunger is high, and diet-related diseases are prevalent. The Common Market estimates that 150,000 individuals will receive nutrition assistance this year through the Fund.

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kids tasting food

First Place AZ

First Place AZ is a community-integrated living center, where young adults with autism and other neuro-abilities learn independent living skills, with a goal of living on their own. The Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation has invested in age/ability-appropriate nutrition education, cooking classes and a community gardening program at First Place AZ. In 2019, with grant funding from Sprouts, award-winning chef, Charlene Badman, hosted monthly cooking and gardening classes for residents at First Place AZ and succeeded in building out a loyal following with the desire and interest to do more. Funding from Sprouts will support the existing cooking, nutrition and gardening programs at First Place AZ and will allow for the expansion of the gardening program to two additional residential sites.

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kids holding up flower drawings

PEAS

Partners for Education Agriculture and Sustainability (PEAS) hosts gardening and nutrition education programs across 15 elementary schools in Austin, Texas. Their mission is to cultivate connection with the natural world through outdoor learning and edible education. To achieve this, PEAS brings together STEM, agriculture, nutrition, and environmental literacy lessons with hands-on activities for kids. With an increased request for professional development among teachers and administrators working in the schools where PEAS hosts programs, the Healthy Communities Grant will be used to develop and launch a professional development course for adults and to launch a summer camp program for kids, keeping students engaged in outdoor education, even when school is out of session.

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kids learning to cook food

Garden School Foundation

Garden School Foundation (GSF) provides garden-based education to children in Title I schools across Los Angeles. Their Seed to Table program teaches 3,000 students each year how to grow, harvest, and prepare healthy foods. In 2018, GSF launched the Cafeteria to Compost program at 24th St. Elementary, diverting 2,000 pounds of food waste each month from the lunch tables to the school garden’s compost piles. As a Healthy Communities Grant recipient, GSF aims to increase their monthly diversion of food waste to 4,000 pounds, expand their food recovery and redistribution efforts, and bring the Cafeteria to Compost program to six other schools.

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kids in in wheelchairs in a sports complex

Orlando Health Foundation

The Orlando Health Foundation created the Healthy Lifestyles Program to curb obesity in Orange County, Fla. Through this program, the Foundation provides nutrition education and physical fitness activities to youth, focusing on groups disproportionately impacted by obesity, including those with physical disabilities and children from non-English speaking households. Combining in-person cooking instruction with personalized coaching, the Healthy Lifestyles Program is bringing healthy change to children and teens across Orlando.

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Impact Grant

Impact Grant

Our Impact Grant Partners provide experiential learning to youth, with garden-based programs that span across cities and states. They use established curricula, implementing STEM education alongside hands-on learning. Impact Partners are experts in their field, and they contribute to advancing the school gardening movement by providing research alongside large-scale programming. Grants of varying amounts are awarded for three-year terms and are dependent on the organization’s needs.

Meet Our Impact Grant Partners

Aiming to shift the nutritional landscape and to share knowledge with others, our Impact Grant Partners create programs that transform communities.

person gardening

IDEAS For Us

IDEAS For Us works to develop ideas, fund action, and scale solutions that solve the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. Their flagship program, Fleet Farming, transforms individual lawns into micro-farmlettes. By doing so, they teach community members across Orlando how to grow their own food while building a local food system. Through their Sprouts grant, IDEAS For Us will enhance operational aspects of their Fleet Farming program with the purchase of a farm pick-up truck and the purchase of commercial kitchen equipment that will be used to complete a commissary kitchen where they can process and store produce before selling it at their farmer’s market.

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group of people in front of a jones valley teaching farm barn

Jones Valley Teaching Farm

Through the power of food, Jones Valley Teaching Farm (JVTF) creates opportunities for academic exploration, environmental stewardship, personal growth and leadership, and pathways to employment for young people across Birmingham. They operate seven Teaching Farms where students can learn, create, explore, and grow a healthy future for themselves. With the goal of making these resources more accessible, JVTF is building a Center for Food Education, allowing more students, teachers, and community members than ever before to grow, cook and share food together. Their Impact Grant will be used to support operations at the Center for Food Education.

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photo collage of people in network

National Farm to School Network

National Farm to School Network is an information, advocacy and networking hub for communities working to bring local food sourcing and food and agriculture education into school systems and early care and education environments. This grant will be used to support National Farm to School Network’s work to address their Call to Action, that by 2025, 100 percent of communities will hold power in a racially just food system. This Call to Action will guide their work over the next five years, underscoring what National Farm to School Network needs to do as an organization to realize their vision for a just, community-based food system.

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kids looking at a plant

Out Teach

Out Teach works with schools in creating rich outdoor learning environments, increasing student performance and teacher engagement with the power of experiential education. Through hands on, garden-based lessons, students learn science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) while also enjoying the social and emotional benefits of spending time together outdoors. Their Impact Grant will be used to support teacher training and outdoor learning programs at 10 underserved schools across North Carolina.

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kids in a garden

Denver Urban Gardens

Denver Urban Gardens has been helping Denver residents create sustainable, food-producing neighborhood community gardens for over 35 years. Their Impact Grant will be shared among 14 community gardens, providing enhanced support for new gardeners, and helping to fund sustainability features and season extension elements. Additionally, Sprouts’ grant will support the launch of DUG’s Garden Equity Project, ensuring that every one of its community gardens is adequately resourced to thrive, regardless of a community’s ability to fund the human and physical resources needed for success.

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a field of vegetables

Spaces of Opportunity

Spaces of Opportunity is a community farm that has been serving the residents of South Phoenix for more than five years. The farm contains 10 acres of incubator farm plots, an on-site farmer’s market, and additional plots for family gardens. Through a collaboration among five nonprofit partners, the teams who work at and cultivate spaces aim to break the cycle of generational poverty in South Phoenix by improving access to healthy food and nutrition education and by providing a neighborhood hub where people can work, learn new skills, and earn a living selling goods back to the local community. Funding from Sprouts will be used to develop operational infrastructure and to support program implementation at Spaces, helping to strengthen the organization and to create additional economic opportunities across South Phoenix.

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kids holding up turnips

UT Austin

From 2015 to 2020, UT Austin ran a study called “TX Sprouts” which offered elementary-aged children the chance to experience hands-on garden, nutrition and cooking lessons during the school day. The success of this study led UT Austin researchers down a path of wanting to know what creates long-term sustainability of a school garden program, in which teachers continue using the garden year after year. Sprouts’ funding will support this research, as well as an internship program in which student interns from UT Austin will lead hands-on gardening lessons across local elementary schools, building upon the foundation established through TX Sprouts.

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kids serving homegrown food

Sage Garden Project

Partnership will serve 38 school sites in San Diego County with cooking carts and program-related materials for school-based nutrition and cooking programs, and funding for educational staff to operate the program.

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kids holding up produce

Life Lab

Program support for the National School Garden Support Organization Network, including collaboration, conferences and sharing best-practices resources. The Foundation’s support for Life Lab will refine and share a new program model for highly integrated school garden and nutrition education programs currently being piloted in the Parajo Valley and east San Francisco Bay areas.

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