Browse Ambrook’s collection of funding programs by National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC)

This application is designed to guide you through a narrative arc, telling us first about your operation as it is now, then about your longer-term goals. Then, the questions ask you to tell us about the barriers and challenges you face in reaching those goals, and how you will use this funding to help you move past or begin to address some of those barriers. Our evaluation criteria are based on how clear a picture you give us of your operation, where this funding will be used, and what kind of difference it will make for you in your long term goals. Successful applications will leave reviewers with a clear understanding of where the grant funds will be used, and how that use supports you in your farming career.

Reviewers will be considering four main criteria in evaluating applications:
- Contribution to Farmer Goals: These funds are designed to help you get closer to achieving your goals in your career as a farmer. A strong application will illustrate how the use of these funds will contribute to the long-term vision you outline in your application. A strong illustration directly links the steps you make with this funding to your options and potential choices down the road in your farm business.
- Addressing Challenges and Barriers to Success: Priority of selection will be given to applicants who can illustrate how these funds will be used to address a particular challenge they are facing in moving their business forward and the results or changes they expect to see with this funding. Strong applications will illustrate a cause and effect of what this grant funding would allow them to do for their operations and careers.
- Sustainability: One requirement of this grant is that you are making, or intend to make, steps on your operation to preserve and potentially even improve the natural resources of the land you steward for future generations. Your ability to illustrate how you currently implement, or plan to implement, sustainable farming practices and/or ethics will contribute to the strength of your application.
- Financial Need: Because a $5,000 grant with few restrictions on its use is such a unique opportunity to meet costs unmet by other funding options, we will prioritize applicants for whom this money will make a significant difference in their financial ability to meet their goals and for those requests for which other funding opportunities are difficult, or impossible to access.

Other Considerations:

While there are no regional quotas for this program, we will be looking for a geographically well-distributed cohort of 50 grant recipients.

Note on Language:

Though we encourage you to take time and care in writing your application, we will not be evaluating applications by the quality of the prose, but by the content of the proposal. Take advantage of the narrative questions to paint a picture of your operation, your personal and professional goals, and the challenges you face in reaching them. Feel free to write in whatever style or language feels truest and most comfortable to you and to representing your voice in this application.

For applications submitted in Spanish, they will be reviewed first by our Spanish-speaking reviewers in the original language and then will be translated for a final round of review.

Young Farmers

In 2020 The National Young Farmers Coalition (Young Farmers) launched a new grant program to help young and beginning farmers and ranchers start up and grow their businesses. The program provided 50 farmers and ranchers with $5,000 grants in the spring of 2020. Grant recipients also received a one-year membership to the National Young Farmers Coalition.


In 2021 we will be offering 50 grants to a new cohort of young farmers and ranchers – forty-five awards will go to businesses already in operation, and five to projects starting in 2021. This year we have expanded the program to be able to offer grants to farmers and ranchers in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, in addition to the 50 states and Washington D.C.


**_What can a Young Farmer Grant do?_**


Young Farmer Grants are designed to provide a flexible financial boost to young farmers building long term careers in agriculture. This fund can be used for anything that will further your goals as a farmer, even if that means just getting started. The goal of this fund is to provide financial assistance for any cost that currently limits your ability to start, run, or grow your operation in the way you’d like.


Grant funding may support completing a project, purchasing a new piece of equipment, covering operating costs such as seeds and compost, building new infrastructure, attending a farmer training program or conference, hiring additional farm labor, or covering personal finances that stand in the way of farm success, including but not limited to childcare, housing, or student loan payments. Funds, once awarded, may be used to match other grant opportunities.



In 2020 The National Young Farmers Coalition (Young Farmers) launched a new grant program to help young and beginning farmers and ranchers start up and grow their businesses. The program provided 50 farmers and ranchers with $5,000 grants in the spring of 2020. Grant recipients also received a one-year membership to the National Young Farmers Coalition.

In 2021 we will be offering 50 grants to a new cohort of young farmers and ranchers – forty-five awards will go to businesses already in operation, and five to projects starting in 2021. This year we have expanded the program to be able to offer grants to farmers and ranchers in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, in addition to the 50 states and Washington D.C.

What can a Young Farmer Grant do?

Young Farmer Grants are designed to provide a flexible financial boost to young farmers building long term careers in agriculture. This fund can be used for anything that will further your goals as a farmer, even if that means just getting started. The goal of this fund is to provide financial assistance for any cost that currently limits your ability to start, run, or grow your operation in the way you’d like.

Grant funding may support completing a project, purchasing a new piece of equipment, covering operating costs such as seeds and compost, building new infrastructure, attending a farmer training program or conference, hiring additional farm labor, or covering personal finances that stand in the way of farm success, including but not limited to childcare, housing, or student loan payments. Funds, once awarded, may be used to match other grant opportunities.

These grants are available to farmers of all races and gender identities. To ensure that our grants are contributing to ending inequity in access to agricultural careers, we commit to providing a minimum of 50% of our grants to Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, and 50% of grants to female-identifying, non-binary, and trans farmers. These are not mutually exclusive identity categories and should not be understood as adding up to 100% of available grants.
- This program seeks to support “livelihood farmers and rancher” or those seeking long term careers that financially support them through agriculture. At this time we are not able to offer funding to farmers who are not currently, or working toward making an income farming through long term careers in agriculture.
    - Applicant must be the operation owner or plan to start their own operation in 2021.
    - For non-profit farms without “owners” applicant must be the lead farmer/farm manager.
    - Farmer part-owners of cooperative or collective farms are qualified to apply. Please choose just one owner to represent the operation in the application.
- Young farmers and ranchers between 18-40 years of age as of April 1, 2021.
- Applicant must use farm practices that protect natural resources for future generations.
- Applicant must be farming or ranching in one of the 50 U.S. states, in Puerto Rico, or in the Virgin Islands.
- There are no preferences for what applicants produce on their operations or for current scale of farm.
- We strongly encourage farmers of color, indigenous farmers, and farmers who are facing significant structural barriers to accessing other funding opportunities and success in agriculture to apply.
- Staff and Board members of the National Young Farmers Coalition are not eligible to apply.
- Recipients of the 2020 Young Farmer Grants are not eligible to apply.

A lump sum of money for a specific purpose that does not need to be paid back.

Grant

Marketing

- Grant recipients will be required to submit two reports
    - A progress report between in the summer of 2021 detailing progress toward goals and any potential changes to original plan
    - A final brief written report in October 2021 detailing how the funds were used.
- Grant recipients are required to spend the entirety of their $5,000 grant before their report is due in October 2021.
    - Savings accounts for later use are not an eligible application of these funds.
- Applicants must submit a photo with their application. If the applicant is selected, their name and photo will be included in a public announcement of grant recipients on youngfarmers.org and on the Chipotle and the Chipotle Cultivate Foundation websites.
- The National Young Farmers Coalition, Chipotle, and the Chipotle Cultivate Foundation will work with some grant recipients to share their stories nationally through their communications channels; grant recipients have the option to opt out of this coverage.
- Please note that this grant is taxable income.


List of National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC) Funding Opportunities

National Young Farmers Coalition's Young Farmer Grant