Cooking Matters Grant Announcement
Piloting Innovative Ways to Offer Food Skills Education to Parents In the Healthcare Setting
Purpose
Cooking Matters inspires families to make healthy, affordable food choices. Our programs teach parents and caregivers of young children with limited food budgets to shop for and cook healthy meals. Cooking Matters is a campaign of Share Our Strength, an organization working to end hunger and poverty.
Cooking Matters is excited to announce a competitive grant opportunity to organizations that meet the following criteria:
• Interested in offering Cooking Matters food skills education to pregnant women and/or parents and caregivers of young children (ages 0-5) in communities experiencing inequalities* through a healthcare setting. Examples of healthcare settings include pediatric, obstetric, or family medicine practices, federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), community health clinics, birthing centers, etc.
• Applicants must be the implementing healthcare organization itself, or have an existing partnership with the implementing healthcare organization, verifiable through a letter of support.
• Both non-profit and for-profit organizations are eligible.
Background
Through our co-creation work with the University of North Carolina, parents and caregivers of young children in communities experiencing inequalities described their experiences in the healthcare setting and identified their needs and desires for receiving food skills education there. The results, summarized in Implementing Cooking Matters in the Healthcare Setting and described in more detail in Design Thinking for SNAP-Ed: Healthcare Sector Summary of Findings, show parent-identified key themes and specific ideas for how to effectively offer food skills education in this setting, such as leveraging smartphones, using available TV and tablet technology in waiting and exam rooms, and offering individualized education opportunities when possible. Cooking Matters is looking to support interventions in healthcare settings that offering food skills education to parents and caregivers grounded in these ideas and themes.
Grant Award
You may apply for up to $40,000, though awards larger than $40,000 will be considered for larger-scale ideas that reach a more significant number of parents (e.g., a region- or state-wide approach). Desired funding amounts should be commensurate with the planned activities. Applications must be submitted by March 20th, 2022.
Eligible Use of Grant Funds
Grant funds must be used to test offering food skills education to parents and caregivers through the healthcare setting in communities experiencing inequalities. Grantees must use Cooking Matters curricula and/or messaging as the foundation of the food skills education offered. All grantees will have access to the complete set of Cooking Matters curricula, content, and training available for partners, including: short, standalone lesson plans that can be offered online or in-person, digital messaging that can be used for text, social, or other communications, print resources, online facilitator training, and more.
Examples of grant fund use include:
• Costs for providing food and other materials that enable in-person, virtual, or do-it-yourself education
• Technology costs for adding food skills education messaging to existing communication platforms reaching parents
• Costs of incentives or materials provided to parents via pick-up, delivery, mail, etc. (e.g., handouts, take-home groceries, child incentives, parent or caregiver incentives)
• Staff time for organizing and implementing education, recruiting or spreading the word to parents, etc.
• Technology, translation/interpretation, and/or other services to support the delivery of education and decrease barriers for reaching parents and caregivers.
Application Considerations
Grant applications will be evaluated based on:
• Preference will be given to grant applications that indicate how their idea is grounded in or will build on the co-creation ideas and/or themes reported out in the ECE Roadmap (referenced in the Background section above).
• Ability to reach primarily parents and non-professional caregivers of children ages 0-5 in communities experiencing inequalities.
• Additional consideration will be given to organizations addressing other elements that strengthen food security for families as part of their plan (e.g., strengthening families’ connection to food assistance programs or availability of healthy foods in the community).
We are available to support you in your planning for this application! If you would like assistance determining how this opportunity could work for your organization, please reach out to Jill Panichelli at jpanichelli@strength.org to set up a time to talk by phone.
Reporting Requirements
Grant recipients:
• Must track and report the number of participants reached with food skills education during the grant period.
• Are required to survey adult program participants using a Cooking Matters survey tool.
• Must participate in a grantee learning cohort, with monthly Zoom calls, during the grant period, on topics of mutual interest to grantees that support successful implementation of their grant programming.
• Must complete a final grant report. Late or missing reports will make the grantee ineligible for another grant for at least one year.
• May be asked to participate in a final interview following grant completion to answer questions about their learnings and to dive further into the information shared in the final report.
• Must use grant funds for the approved purpose only. If an organization wishes to significantly change the use of funds or activity timeline, it must submit a letter of request to Share Our Strength no less than 30 days before the end of the grant period.
Grant Cycle
• INFORMATIONAL GRANT WEBINAR: March 2nd, 1:00 pm ET. Pre-registration here.
• APPLICATION OPENS: February 14th, 2022
• APPLICATION DUE: March 20th, 2022, 8pm ET
• AWARDS ANNOUNCED VIA EMAIL: No later than April 11th, 2022, 8 pm ET
• FUNDING DISBURSED: Grant checks will be mailed directly to the recipient organization’s address listed in the grant application. Please allow two to four weeks for delivery after awards have been announced.
• GRANT PERIOD: May 1st – October 31st 2022
• A kick-off/update webinar will be held in March, date and time to be announced to accepted grantees.
• Grant-funded activity must be completed by October 31st 2022
• GRANT REPORT DUE: November 30th, 2022
Application Access
1. Log into or create an account for the No Kid Hungry Grants Portal at https://nokidhungry.force.com. Please do not use Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge when registering or working within the portal.
2. To create a new account, click “New User.”
3. After you have logged into the No Kid Hungry Grants Portal, click “Start a New Application” on the Home page.
4. Input the following access code to gain access to the application: CookingMatters2022. Click “Start Application” to begin.
5. Be sure to input all required answers and save frequently as you are inputting information.
6. Once all questions are completed, click “Review Application.”
7. Download your application as a PDF and then click “Submit.”
As you prepare to apply, please note: Share Our Strength is committed to fostering, cultivating, and preserving a culture of equity, diversity, and inclusion. As part of Share Our Strength’s equity, diversity and inclusion efforts, it is critical to measure organizational diversity of grantees and how grant funds impact diverse communities. In the grant application, applicants will be asked for information regarding organizational diversity as well as the ethnic and racial composition of the communities served by this project.
Have Questions?
Please direct inquiries about the application to Elena Rees at erees@strength.org. For questions on planning or determining how this opportunity could work for your organization, please reach out to Jill Panichelli jpanichelli@strength.org. For technical support related to the grant portal, please contact GrantsHelpDesk@strength.org.
*Communities experiencing inequalities: Share Our Strength is committed to addressing the systemic and structural health, social, and economic inequities that disproportionately impact communities of color. To ensure we are supporting individuals and communities most impacted by these inequalities, we will prioritize grant funds to organizations serving communities where over 50% of the population identify as Black, Latino, Native American, Asian, Hawaiian Native, or Pacific Islander. We will also prioritize funds to rural communities that face unique challenges in addressing hunger and communities where members experience an intersectionality of identities and environmental factors that contribute to a number of discriminations and disadvantages. We consider a community to be Rural when it is classified by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) as either Rural-Remote, Rural-Distant, or Town-Remote, with exceptions made on a case-by-case basis.