Sustaining Environmental Systems Grant

Sustaining Environmental Systems Grant

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: The Mortenson Family Foundation
Last Updated: November 17, 2025

Summary

The Sustaining Environmental Systems Grant aims to ensure equitable access to healthy land and water for all Minnesotans. The Mortenson Family Foundation supports community-led environmental solutions and multi-year grants to partner organizations. It prioritizes partnerships that focus on sustainability, racial justice, and community engagement, fostering innovative approaches to restore relationships with nature and address climate change impacts. The foundation seeks organizations that can deliver tangible environmental outcomes while empowering historically marginalized communities.

Overview

Our Goal We strive to enable all Minnesotans to have equitable and sustainable access to healthy land and water. The Mortenson Family Foundation may make multi-year grants as an additional way to support partner organizations with two- or three-year grant commitments that are capped at 33% of the following year’s projected grantmaking budget. The Foundation will use its discretion in considering an organization for a multi-year grant. Our Beliefs We believe that if a broad base of Minnesotans has positive exposure to and experiences with land and water, they will be enabled to acquire, share, and/or implement a range of environmental approaches resulting in: Effective environmental solutions and stewardship that originate in and are led by and for communities most affected by the environmental impact. Opportunities for all communities to experience ways of being, learning, and respectfully and mutually leveraging knowledge that provides alternatives to dominant extractive human/land and water relationships that lead to better outcomes for the land, water, and all Minnesotans.Reduced and repaired environmental harms to black, indigenous, people of color (BIPOC), and other historically marginalized communities resulting in restoration of relationships, communities, and environments. Climate and Racial Justice As we are learning to prioritize racial and climate justice in our work, we seek partners who are doing the same, acknowledging that climate change: Interacts with and worsens existing inequalities in society that are shaped by racism, exclusion, and oppression.Requires integrated, non-siloed approaches centering the well-being of human and natural communities most adversely impacted.Will be best addressed through knowledge, ideas, and leadership from BIPOC communities and others adversely impacted by climate and other environmental harms. Our Partners We acknowledge that a range of environmental approaches could be used to accomplish this outcome and work with partners who promote: Information, education, and practices that lead to new, deeper, and/or resurfaced understanding, and/or a renewed relationship with nature.Opportunities for BIPOC and other historically marginalized communities to practice and/or renew culturally-based stewardship practices that result in improved land, water, and community health.Sustainable economic options grounded in environmental approaches that meet basic needs, stimulate growth, and create opportunity.Policy solutions that center community voice to reduce environmental harms to BIPOC and other historically marginalized communities. Two or more of the approaches above, understanding that comprehensive approaches will achieve deeper and more sustainable outcomes. For example, while an organization that works exclusively to help BIPOC youth understand how their behaviors affect the environment through participating in community-wide cleanups may be considered, an organization that engages those same youth in leadership and advocacy to reduce environmental harms to communities while also supporting the communities where the youth live in transitioning to solar power would receive higher consideration.

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. Applicants must have 501(c)(3) nonprofit status.The Mortenson Family Foundation may make multi-year grants as an additional way to support partner organizations with two- or three-year grant commitments that are capped at 33% of the following year’s projected grantmaking budget. The Foundation will use its discretion in considering an organization for a multi-year grant.

Ineligibility

Although they may complement the overall Foundation goal, the following strategies fall outside of our desired focus:Research without a focus on watershed properties.Conferences, festivals, and events Strategies that focus on watersheds outside of Minnesota.  The Foundation understands ecosystems are not defined by governmental boundaries and that projects outside the state may impact watersheds in Minnesota.  For example, if a project on the St. Croix River was focused only on benefitting a Wisconsin watershed, the project would fall outside of our desired focus.