OVERVIEW: The Wild Geese Foundation supports youth, reproductive justice, climate justice and food justice. Its grantmaking combines national support for social-justice organizations with a regional focus on food systems in New England.
IP TAKE: The Wild Geese Foundation is a small progressive funder with a national reach and a clear preference for grassroots, community-based organizations. Wild Geese is more accessible than its spare website suggests. It accepts unsolicited applications twice a year, doesn’t require a prior relationship. It also allows fiscally sponsored groups to apply. That makes it a legitimate cold prospect, especially for smaller, justice-oriented nonprofits with strong community roots.
Wild Geese publishes brief program descriptions, but no searchable grants database, detailed selection criteria or substantial staff information. Applicants will need to make a crisp case for fit without much hand-holding. The strongest proposals will focus tightly on one funding area and show how affected communities shape the work. Advocacy, organizing, legal strategies, research, movement infrastructure and community-based programming may all be competitive when closely aligned.
A warm introduction through a current grantee, reproductive-justice coalition, youth-organizing network, New England food-justice group, environmental-justice alliance or civil-rights organization may help, but it is not essential. Use the foundation’s contact form for specific eligibility questions—not as a substitute for an application.
PROFILE: The Wild Geese Foundation was established as the Two Sisters and a Wife Foundation in 2009, by the writer, professor and activist Sara Whitman and her sister Catherine. After her sister passed, Sara decided the original name of the foundation no longer fit and decided to change the name based on Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese.”
Wild Geese pursues a mission to “defend human rights and promote environmental justice” through grantmaking that “supports work that promotes equality and respects the diversity of human expression and identity.” This funder works nationally to support: reproductive justice, youth, climate justice. Additionally, in New England, it supports food justice and expanding access to affordable and healthy food.
Grants for Reproductive Justice
The foundation’s Reproductive Justice program supports reproductive freedom, bodily autonomy and self-determination across the United States.
- Wild Geese uses the language of reproductive justice rather than the narrower category of reproductive healthcare.
- Organizations working at the intersection of reproductive rights, racial justice, economic justice, gender equity and community organizing may be especially relevant.
- The foundation does not publish detailed program guidelines, preferred populations or a list of current reproductive-justice grantees.
- Applicants should show a close connection to reproductive freedom and explain how their work responds to the experiences of communities most affected by restrictions on reproductive autonomy.
Grants for Youth
Wild Geese supports projects that help young people thrive and build power in their communities. The foundation describes Youth as a national funding area but provides few additional details about preferred strategies or populations.
- Recent grantmaking suggests an interest in youth leadership, organizing and community-based development.
- The City School, a Boston organization that develops young leaders and supports youth-led social change, received a $30,000 general-purpose grant in the latest publicly available grant data.
- Education is not currently listed as a separate funding program. Grantseekers should therefore frame academic or school-based work around the foundation’s broader interest in youth rather than treating Wild Geese as a conventional education funder.
Grants for Climate Change
Wild Geese supports climate-justice efforts that help communities move away from fossil fuels and extractive energy systems and toward resilient, regenerative economies.
- This is not a broad environmental-conservation program. The foundation’s language points toward community-centered work addressing both environmental harm and economic inequity.
- Strong prospects may include organizations involved in environmental justice, just-transition planning, grassroots climate organizing, community resilience and locally controlled clean-energy systems.
- Wild Geese does not publish separate climate guidelines, funding ranges or geographic restrictions for this program. Its website describes Climate Justice as a national funding area.
- Grantees include New Hampshire’s Land for Good, Maine Youth for Climate, City Blossoms of Washington, D.C. and the environmental education program at Holly Hill Farm in Cohasset, Massachusetts.
Grants for Food Justice
The Food Justice program supports community-based food systems, sustainable agriculture and access to affordable, healthy food in New England.
- This geographic language is broader than older secondary listings that characterized the program as Massachusetts-focused.
- Grantseekers should rely on the foundation’s current description, which identifies New England as the relevant region
- Likely prospects include organizations involved in food sovereignty, community agriculture, cooperative food systems, healthy-food access and sustainable farming. Applicants should connect their work to justice and community power rather than presenting it solely as agricultural development or hunger relief.
Other Opportunities
Wild Geese does not currently list separate programs for LGBTQ rights, civil rights or legal advocacy, but recent grants indicate that these areas remain relevant within its broader social-justice framework.
Recent publicly visible recipients include:
- Lawyers for Civil Rights, which received $40,000 in general support.
- The City School, which received $30,000 in general support.
- Movement Advancement Project, which received $30,000 in general support.
These awards suggest an appetite for advocacy, policy research, legal work, youth organizing and movement infrastructure. Because the foundation does not maintain a public grants database, grantseekers should not assume that every historically supported issue remains a formal priority.
Important Grant Details:
Many grants appear to fall between $10,000 and $40,000, although larger awards are possible. At least some recent grants have provided unrestricted or general-purpose support.
- Geography: Wild Geese makes grants nationally in Youth, Reproductive Justice and Climate Justice. Food Justice funding is focused on New England. Historical grant data shows a significant concentration in Massachusetts, but the foundation has also supported organizations in numerous other states.
- Fiscal sponsors: Organizations without their own 501(c)(3) status may apply through a U.S.-based nonprofit fiscal sponsor. This is an eligibility pathway rather than a Wild Geese fiscal-sponsorship program. The foundation does not appear to provide fiscal sponsorship itself or operate a separate intermediary or regranting arm.
- No current rapid-response fund, donor collaborative, open RFP or donor-advised-fund program was identified in the foundation’s public materials.
- The foundation’s application information states that eligible applicants include:
- U.S.-based organizations recognized as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3).
- Organizations fiscally sponsored by a U.S.-based 501(c)(3).
- Wild Geese accepts unsolicited electronic applications twice a year.
- Applications are generally due:
- May 1.
- October 1.
- The application form is not continuously available, and the foundation publishes relatively little information about review criteria, required attachments or decision timelines before each cycle opens. Grantseekers should monitor the application page for current instructions rather than relying on older third-party listings.
- Applications should not be mailed to foundation officers, and a prior grant or invitation does not appear to be required.
- Wild Geese does not accept telephone calls. Questions should be submitted through the contact form on the foundation’s website.
PEOPLE:
Search for staff contact info and bios in PeopleFinder (paid subscribers only).
LINKS:
CONTACT:
The Wild Geese Foundation
c/o Benjamin Cowen-Whitman
35 K St.
Hull, MA 02045
(617) 320-6635
Last updated on