Petaluma Bounty is honored and proud to launch the Request for Proposal for the Sonoma County Food Recovery Network Coordinator positions. This funding opportunity is available to organizations, agencies and individuals to launch, expand, or support ongoing food recovery efforts in the 5 Supervisorial Districts of Sonoma County.

Grant funds will be awarded to 5 successful applicants to support their work as Sonoma County Food Recovery Network Coordinators. Each coordinating agency will be awarded $10,000 per program year (currently, program duration is 8/1/24 to 5/1/25 with a possible second-year extension through 5/1/26): $7,500 for people power supporting food recovery work and $2,500 for food recovery supplies (examples include storage, refrigeration, gleaning supplies, and food distribution materials).

This grant project seeks to establish a Sonoma County Food Recovery Network (a working group of the Sonoma County Food Recovery Coalition) to expand local needs assessments with a food recovery lens, increase structural and systems capacity for food recovery, provide more robust geographic coverage of food recovery across our county’s food system, and broaden the scale and scope of existing community-based food recovery operations.

Proposals from 501(c)3 nonprofits, faith-based groups, and individuals will all be considered. Organizations and individuals may apply to become the FRN Coordinator of more than one Supervisorial District but there will ideally be one entity awarded per District.

The grant administration team values collective impact and seeks to fund multidisciplinary, integrated approaches between agencies who can work well together in support of common goals. The collective impact approach is premised on the belief that no single policy, government department, organization, or program can tackle the increasingly complex social problems we face. This approach calls for multiple entities from different sectors to set aside their own agendas in favor of common alignment and collective capacity building. The grants administration team supports fair, accessible, and relevant services for families and individuals that promote equity and social justice.

Funding Source:

Zero Waste Sonoma, the government agency tasked with SB 1383 implementation, is partnering with Petaluma Bounty to administer an RFP process to regrant some funds from the USDA’s Composting and Food Waste Reduction (CFWR) program. This regranting project will allow for increased food recovery capacity throughout our county and is especially concerned with supporting equitable, regionalized local food systems. 

Food Recovery Network Coordinators will support local food recovery efforts in capacity-building projects, such as populating a list of needed supplies and existing assets, prioritized to remove bottlenecks in food recovery and emergency food distribution systems. Examples include storage, refrigeration, gleaning supplies, and food distribution materials.

In using grant funds to expand food recovery and food waste reduction efforts in our region, Zero Waste Sonoma will be better able to gather proof of concept and potentially secure ongoing funds from government sources to continue the project beyond the grant term.

Background:

Sprouting from a decade of work done at the community level, the FRN is one of several different regionalized efforts to build collective capacity in our Sonoma County food system. To help differentiate the FRN’s purpose, here is an abbreviated list of local regional food systems coalitions and their focuses: 

• Sonoma County Food Recovery Network (FRN) | Funded by USDA’s CFWR program, administered by Zero Waste Sonoma and Petaluma Bounty. Purpose is to build collective capacity for food waste reduction in order to support climate resilience and food security. Will be a working sub-group (meeting every two months) of Sonoma County Food Recovery Coalition (which meets monthly). Launches 2024.
• Sonoma County Food Recovery Coalition (SCFRC) | A group of local organizations and individuals who operate food recovery programs. Meets monthly to share resources and collaborate on co-promotion of events and awareness-raising. Founded 2014.
• Sonoma County Community-Based Food Networks (CBFN) | Funded by the USDA Regional Food Systems Partnership program, administered by UCCE. Purpose is to support equitable regionalized food systems and develop collective capacity for ongoing and emergency feeding needs. Launches 2024.
• Sonoma County Food System Alliance (FSA) | A group of organizations and individuals in Sonoma County focused on food policy advocacy to support a vibrant local food system. Founded 2012.

Answer to Potential Applicant Question

Q: While I want to apply for this grant, my concern is that I won’t have the bandwidth to carry out all of the objectives. What do you advise? 

A: Organizations, groups, and individuals are encouraged to collaborate with each other to put together comprehensive applications. You will need to have arrangements in place in order to respond to the application questions (such as invoicing, expenses, Memos of Understanding).

According to the Request for Proposal (RFP), the grant administration team values collective impact and seeks to fund multidisciplinary, integrated approaches between agencies who can work well together in support of common goals. The collective impact approach is premised on the belief that no single policy, government department, organization, or program can tackle the increasingly complex social problems we face. This approach calls for multiple entities from different sectors to set aside their own agendas in favor of common alignment and collective capacity building. The grants administration team supports fair, accessible, and relevant services for families and individuals that promote equity and social justice.

Organizations can articulate self-awareness and an actionable plan to complete the grant requirements by increasing their organization’s own limited capacity, for example through partnership. 

There will be an application review committee that will score applications based on the process described in section 5 of the Request for Proposals, pasted below for your convenience:

5.1. Proposal Evaluation Criteria: Proposal evaluation will focus on a proposer’s experience and capacity to fulfill the project goals. Criteria for evaluating applications will include, but not be limited to, the following: Organizational Capacity (maximum 30 points), Food Systems Capacity (maximum 35 points), Equitable Network-Building Capacity (maximum 35 points). 

There are multiple ways to express your capacity to complete the grant objectives. Evaluators will be looking for a proposer’s ability to comply with grant requirements, but that can be done as a collective or through other creative means of capacity-building, including using grant funds to create the capacity needed to carry out grant actions.