Norman Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Norman Foundation supports economic and environmental justice initiatives throughout the United States. It also links economic justice work with environmental justice.
IP TAKE: This modest but well-established funder is very approachable for grantseekers that align with its mission. It offers general support, project support, collaboration and capacity building grants. It likes to collaborate with grantees, so take note to build this into your proposal if your work is collaborative. Submit an LOI to be considered for a grant application.
PROFILE: The Norman Family Foundation was established in 1936 from the estate of Aaron Norman, the American entrepreneur who bought Sears, Roebuck & Co. from Richard Sears and turned it into a national retail giant. It is still run by the fourth generation of Norman’s descendants, and continues to support “efforts that strengthen the ability of communities to determine their own economic, environmental and social well-being, and that help people control those forces that affect their lives.” It primarily conducts grantmaking in the areas of economic justice and environmental justice.
Grants for Work and Opportunity
In the realm of economic opportunity, the Norman Foundation supports programs that “promote economic justice and development through community organizing, coalition building and policy reform efforts,” “link environmental issues with economic and social justice,” and “link community-based economic and environmental justice organizing to national and international reform efforts.” The foundation awards a variety of grant types, including general support, project support, collaboration, and capacity-building. It prioritizes organizations with a budget under $1 million. Past grantees include Pittsburgh’s Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, Chicago’s Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, Maryland’s Comite de Apolyo para Trabajadores Agricolas and Minneapolis’s Awood Center, which supports the area’s East African workers.
Grants for Environmental Conservation
Areas of grantmaking in interest include preventing toxic waste disposal in communities, and connecting community based economic and environmental justice organizations to like-minded national and international organizations. In the conservation grantmaking space, the foundation has awarded grants to organizations including Minneapolis’s Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy; the North Carolina Climate Justice Collective; Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services and Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend of Corpus Christi, Texas.
Important Grant Details:
Grants generally range from $20,000 to $30,000. To get a broader sense of the types of organizations the foundation supports, explore its current grants list.
The Norman Foundation accepts letters of inquiry (LOI) year-round. Grantseekers whose inquiries are positively received may be invited to submit a full proposal.
PEOPLE:
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