Sparkplug Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Sparkplug Foundation supports education, community organizing and music with a strong focus on movements for social justice.
IP TAKE: One of the core beliefs of the Sparkplug Foundation is that “communities are best qualified to say how funds should be used to make the change they need.” This funder maintains a strong focus on community organizing and representative leadership and decision making. Many of its grantees are small organizations in their earliest stages of development. Sparkplug accepts letters of inquiry for its spring and fall grantmaking cycles, but grantseekers should read the foundation’s guidelines carefully to ascertain if they are a good match for this selective funder’s grants.
PROFILE: The Sparkplug Foundation, established in 2003 by Felice and Yoram Gelman, is a small family foundation that prioritizes “grassroots organizing and innovation as the key for creating change.” It primarily supports small, start-up nonprofits that are not religiously affiliated and takes a hands-off approach to its giving, in the belief “that communities are best qualified to say how funds should be used to make the change they need.” Funding supports education, music and community organizing. It also makes Emergency Grants to current and previous grantees of its education and community organizing giving areas.
This funder works through a social justice lens and strongly encourages “Black, Indigenous, People of Color, people with disabilities, women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, queer and other queer-identifying communities, organizations or organizers to apply.” Of note is the foundation’s support for organizations addressing human rights concerns and political tensions between Israel and Palestine.
Grants for Civic Engagement and Democracy, Criminal Justice Reform and LGBTQ Causes
Sparkplug’s community organizing grantmaking supports civic engagement in a range of fields. The foundation distinguishes between community service—defined as “giving to others and providing benefits to others”—and community organizing—meaning a project “originated by and from the community itself.” In response to this distinction, the Sparkplug Foundation indicates that it only funds the latter. For example, while foundation would not fund “programs that provide services to the homeless,” it would fund “organizations led and staffed by homeless people.”
Past grantees related to civic engagement include Arise for Social Justice, Citizens for Local Power and Community Voices Heard.
Community organizing grants have often gone to organizations involved in criminal justice reform, including the Alliance of Families for Justice, California Families Against Solitary Confinement and the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons.
Grantmaking from this program has also prioritized LGBTQ causes, with grants going to organizations including the Bronx Lesbian and Gay Health Resource Consortium, Black and Pink and Everyone is Gay.
Grants for K-12 Education and Community Development
Sparkplug’s education grantmaking supports “communities, including but not limited to school-age students, that move beyond traditional classroom instruction.” The foundation names specific areas of interest including “education projects that engage excluded students in new ways, projects that restore knowledge that has been marginalized through racism or colonialism, and projects that rebuild community and collective problem-solving.” Education grants do not support school directly and do not fund arts education programs or “programs that have been eliminated by budget cuts.”
One recent grant supported HEARD, an organization that runs movement building “workshops on ableism, disability justice, incarceration, and abolition.” Other grantees includue the Xicanx Institute for Teaching and Organizing, Hidden Voices and the Palestinian American Research Center, which received funding for exchange programs and collaborations between Palestinian and U.S. scholars.
Grants for Music
Sparkplug’s music giving focuses on “the critical importance of music in bringing communities together and building collective creativity.” Grants prioritize a broad range of programs and projects including the development of new works, community music education, musical collaborations and “sharing existing work with a wider community through events or media.” aims to “launch new voices and ideas” by funding “emerging professional musicians or music-development programs” in order to help their careers become more sustainable.
Past music grantees include 651 Arts, for the development of Tania Leon’s Son Sonora Ensemble, and the American Radio Choir, for its “Music of the New World” program.
Other Grant Opportunities
Sparkplug offers emergency grants to current and previous grantees in its education and community organizing funding areas. Requests are accepted on an ongoing basis for grants of up to $5,000. Applicants must demonstrate need based on “the result of an unexpected event.” Guidelines are provided on the program page.
Important Grant Details:
Grants generally range from $10,000 to $20,000, with the exception of Sparkplug’s emergency grants, which are awarded in amounts of up to $5,000.
This funder favors small and startup organizations with strong roots in the communities they serve.
Sparkplug makes 20-25 grants for each of two annual grantmaking cycles.
Sparkplug takes a hands-off approach and tries “not to make demands of applicants and grantees that get in the way of their work.” However, the foundation does “offer assistance and supportive feedback along the way, as best we can with a small staff.”
Sparkplug accepts letters of inquiry for its spring and fall cycles via its application portal. See the foundation’s application page for updated guidelines and due dates.
For information about past grantees, see the foundation’s searchable grants database.
Submit questions to the Sparkplug Foundation via email at info@sparkplugfoundation.org or by telephone at (877) 866-8285.
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