Food:Land:Opportunity grantmaking relies on three primary strategies for building and supporting the Chicago region’s foodshed:
Land Access
FLO supports innovative models for accessing land for growing food in urban, peri-urban, and rural areas. These projects provide viable pathways to land ownership and incorporate conservation values and protection of natural resources as well as building wealth in communities.
Incubation of new/future farmland owners
Create intentional programming and pathways to prepare farmers to be future landowners. These may include a variety of models of preservation, land access, and succession planning.
Incentivize farmland preservation
Create incentives and tools to preserve farmland and generational farms to incorporate sustainable food growing into the metropolitan landscape.
Supply-Side Skills
FLO grant recipients provide training, education, and support to address market innovation, skillbuilding in regenerative farming, and financial management. Farms and food businesses engage in workshops, peer collaboration, and network building.
Holistic supply-side skill building
Support holistic supply-side skill building that encourages market development and supply chain coordination. Potential investments and activities include:
- Skill building for climate resilience
- Assembling a group of experts to serve as peer educators and referral sources
- Developing mid-stage businesses and supply chain entrepreneurs
- Providing equitable access to skill-building resources to disinvested communities and populations
Shared services for farmers and organizations
Strengthen farmer and organizational capacity within the food system by funding shared or collaborative services within critical operations to increase management capacity, such as legal, accounting and finance, and human resources.
Access to Capital
The parameters of traditional debt, equity, and financing structures do not fit the needs of local food producers and businesses, and they are not often accessible to diverse entrepreneurs in the food system. FLO supports organizations providing short-term financing for working capital needs and longer-term financing for land, infrastructure, and sustainable cultivation.
Financial fluency
Developing financial literacy across the foodshed ecosystem represents a strategic investment opportunity. By helping foodshed participants better understand their financial requirements and available financing options, they may be empowered to access capital beyond FLO’s resources. Potential programmatic support may include:
- Technical assistance to those who want to become eligible for financing
- Encouraging integrated capital (financial capital, grants, technical assistance, and strategic advice) for innovative food system projects
- Building community wealth by intentionally connecting investment in the local food system to climate change and racial equity
Pooled funding resources
Create deeper pooled funding opportunities for grantmaking by working collaboratively with other funders to leverage resources. FLO has been a leader in this space and can continue to build on this model with projects such as the Chicago Region Food System Fund and other subject matter or place-based collective approaches.
Cross-Cutting Strategies
In addition to the three strategies above, FLO understands that the way it approaches supporting the food system and the dynamics inherent in such a far-reaching, collaborative system are important strategic considerations.
Phased funding that supports the current maturation level of the food system
Develop a process of staged investment in innovation, scale, and sustainable activities and promote interaction of FLO with cohorts of grantees at specific stages of development. This approach acknowledges and addresses the need for investments tailored to organizations and businesses operating at a range of stages working within a system that is itself evolving. Different stages require different competencies. Potential levels of phased funding include:
- Innovative, experimental, or high-risk activities
- Proven catalytic projects that need to scale up or down
- Established, strong programs and activities, which are “bedrock” to the food system, that need to become long-term sustainable
Rapid response funding pool
A pool of funding with a streamlined process can quickly identify and fill specific gaps and be responsive to emergent/emergency ideas. This funding pool may:
- Fill specific gaps/needs
- Demonstrate trust-based philanthropy
- Be responsive to uncertainty
Reducing fragmentation
To reduce fragmentation across the local food system and support values-driven collaboration, FLO should continue to support projects that facilitate networks, peer-to-peer learning, and exchange, and that grow the voice and visibility of the local food movement.
These projects build on existing community assets and foster resiliency for people, organizations, and the environment. Example activities include:
- Host an annual system-wide gathering that brings together grantees and other stakeholders for a valuable exchange of experiences and lessons learned, and to cultivate a culture of knowledge-sharing across the foodshed
- Develop and support networks and collaborations
- Address policy issues by educating decision makers and building coalitions of food system stakeholders