The Environment grant making program focuses in two specific program areas: to improve the water quality and quantity of Lake Michigan and surrounding waterways and to build a healthy, locally sourced food system in southeast Wisconsin.
Twenty percent of the world’s fresh water lays on our shores and a long term, sustainable and coordinated strategy to ensure conservation and stewardship is not yet identified. Our grant making strategies in our water program tend to center around organizing and advocacy, reflecting the value of active community leadership to drive policy change, and to promote the implementation of sustainable policies and practices that will restore and protect the quality and quantity of Lake Michigan, the watershed and connected surface and underground waters.
Too often, we see a lack of coordination around strategies to initiate policy reforms and change. Therefore, we also tend to fund organizations connecting to or collaborating with others beyond their areas of expertise and core mission. Linking advocacy efforts to research, policy making, and assertive communication strategies that will lead to more effective and integrated water resource management and sound land use practices are also strategies we tend to fund.
Program area under development.