Catalyzing Regen CPG Through Grant Funding
Have you ever considered using grant funding to help build your regenerative business?
If you haven’t, you might be overlooking an awesome potential funding source, or maybe you didn’t realize that grants aren’t just for nonprofits!
We Help Regenerative Organizations Access New Funding Opportunities
At Refontê Ventures, we provide grant writing, funding development, and funding advisory services through a holistic lens. We accelerate regenerative agriculture by helping both for-profit and nonprofit organizations access new funding opportunities. This has included seasoned land stewards, leading regenerative brands, agricultural cooperatives, and many more kinds of clients.
🔥 In our short two-year history we’ve helped clients access $1.2 million in grant funding from both federal and private sources.
The Financial Gap For Regen Brands
More and more, we see brands stepping up in the marketplace to help support the adoption of regenerative methods throughout every level of the supply chain. These businesses go the extra mile to sustain and strengthen the production of essential food sources, produce value-added products that utilize and incentivize these methods, and educate consumers about why it all matters in the first place. They are driven by integrity and the perspective that comes from the awakening to, or inherent understanding of, the fact that we have to start to do things differently.
However, all of this effort costs more than our misinformed supply chains and markets have wanted to admit, let alone factor into end costs. These initiatives face financial constraints because entities at every point in the supply chain (producers, copackers, processors, wholesalers, consumers–everyone) have become accustomed to quick fixes and low prices.
This leaves a gap that needs to be filled between the true cost of producing goods and their end market value.
Credit: The True Cost of Food in the U.S. (The Rockefeller Foundation)
Untapped Assets
There are funders out there who make grants to support regenerative brands and supply chains; however, we typically find that knowledge of and access to these sources of capital is scarce. Not to mention that most brands do not have the in-house resources to properly understand, apply for, and activate these pools of capital by themselves.
This is why getting help to navigate the grants process might make sense for you and your business. Though it can seem like a big investment, it is important to consider that the amount you spend to contract a professional is much less than you would spend having a full-time grant writer on staff. Not only that, but your chance of crafting and submitting an effective proposal increases significantly when you work with someone who has an in-depth understanding of the grants world.
👉 The most accessible pools of grant capital currently available to regenerative CPG brands are:
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- USDA Local Agriculture Marketing Program (LAMP) grants such as the Value-Added Producer Grant
- Grants for entrepreneurs such as the Amber Grant for Women
- Public and private state-level grants for regional businesses such as the Buy Local Buy Wisconsin Grant or The Market Entry Fund Micro Grants from Minnesota
- Rural Business Development Grants from the USDA Office of Rural Development
- The Emerging Brands Grant from Emerging Brands Alliance
- Small Business Grants for those who experience systemic inequality such as the Indian Equity Fund Small Business Grant in Montana or the Food City CPG Grants in the St. Louis metro area.
💥 Having a trusted partner who can help you activate this capital can bring immense value, as evidenced by the 747% ROI for clients who have been awarded grants while working with us.
And– while getting awarded a grant is the goal, grant professionals bring more to the table than just the funding!
What Grants Professionals Can Provide:
1) Effectively crafted narratives that clearly convey the complex inner workings that make your business successful.
It is easy to make assumptions or overlook routine tasks that are critical to the operations of the business or your relationships with partners. The simple act of having someone else step in who wants to understand and help you explain how things work can be incredibly beneficial.
2) Support and guidance building and leveraging successful partnerships.
Two heads are better than one. We are experts at thinking critically about the collaborations that you and your business have been a part of. We are here to help you solidify those partnerships and work with other entities that are aligned with your goals. Funders love to see well-connected business ecosystems.
3) Reframing your projects to emphasize how your endeavors align with the funder's objectives.
You might know of all the reasons you need and want the funding, but it is important to understand that funders don’t just want to help you. Instead, they want to understand how helping you will in fact ripple outward, having a deeper impact and affecting a wider audience. They also need to ensure that awarding you funding meets their criteria and mandate. Grants professionals are keyed in on how to strategically frame the work you do in terms of each individual funder and their qualifications.
4) A valuable set of assets that will serve you in marketing, future grant applications, partnerships, and so much more.
Last, but not least, grant writers will leave you with the skills and the assets to do this kind of thing time and time again (whether you want outside help or not). You will have the template to write more strong grant proposals and be on your way to becoming an insider in the grants world.
How Refontê Ventures Has Helped Regenerative Brands
Kalona Regenerative Network
Operating since 2005 as the regenerative dairy brand Kalona Supernatural, the business spent over 17 years deeply committed to investing in their contributing farmers. They realized that investing in producer support and regenerative education in order to source the highest quality raw milk was something they could expand upon through the creation of a nonprofit, Kalona Regenerative Network. We helped the young nonprofit to locate themselves within the brand’s existing structure while applying for significant grant funding in order to supplement and expand the work they were already doing as a business.
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At the close of the contract, we provided fully developed application templates that included project narratives, assessments of broader community need for their product, goals and outcomes, projected budgets, and well-researched citations – all for their future use in marketing, grants, and more.
These Master Program Templates are something we provide our clients that address one of the biggest challenges that we see: clients need more time and a clear roadmap for their grant application work. These templates lead to increased capital over time by significantly lowering future time that would be invested in preparing proposals or laboring over what details to include. Our work is done when brands feel capable of going into the grants world on their own, relying on and building from the toolkit they developed in partnership with us.
Richards Regenerative
Richards Regenerative needed funding to help pay for the raw commodity and processing costs required to turn their cattle into its value-added form. The goal was to get nutrient-dense, grass-fed, and regenerative beef products into school cafeterias across California through the Beef 2 Institution Program. Richards Regenerative helps to run this program in partnership with other ranchers, processors, and nonprofits. It was clear that the Value-Added Producer Grant was the right grant for their needs.
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Before applying for any grant, applicants must read and understand the RFP (Request for Proposals) to ensure they qualify, are competitive, and can meet grant requirements. This document lays out the requirements and limitations of the grant along with the guidelines for the application. It sounds simple in theory, but this information is usually “as clear as mud” to the untrained eye. While the grant allowed for individual producers to apply, it was not immediately apparent how to frame the work Richards Regenerative was doing as an individual producer within a multifaceted value chain. This might be familiar to other regenerative brands who know the many hands it takes to raise, ship, harvest, process, package, and distribute products.
Together, we navigated the requirements and coordinated with the funder to clarify the confusion, finding a way that allowed Richards Regenerative to apply using their ranching business as the applicant entity, but with a proposal that supported the entire value chain. Not only that, we were also able to work together to clarify the commodity’s journey, making visual aids and defining the boundaries of the supply chain.
Through this process, we also nailed down what budget items were able to be covered by federal funds and were able to apply for funding that covered half of the marketing costs for the Beef 2 Institution Program.
Grant programs like the Value-Added Producer Grant and the other grants mentioned above can cover key costs that impact CPG brands such as marketing, branding, packaging, and processing. There are also grant opportunities for food systems partnerships like shared kitchen hubs – if you know of other CPG brands in your area, you might be able to work together, sharing the cost of grant services and reaping the benefits collectively!
To Sum It Up…
Regenerative brands need the financial assistance to level the playing field – creating value for their extra work and the cost of doing things unconventionally. At this pivotal social and environmental moment, brands that invest in the future of our planet and communities through regenerative CPG have opportunities to catch the eye of both private and public funders with similar visions. We know who these funders are and where to look for them. With in-depth funding and grants knowledge, we can help you access capital and create avenues for lasting funding success.
I’m Elaina Michael 👋, Founder and CEO of Refontê Ventures. Our dedicated team works with clients across the nation and beyond to help accelerate funding for regenerative agriculture.
Interested in partnering with us?
If you have laid some groundwork already and have the budget to hire grant writing services click here to apply for our Funding Development Accelerator.
Are you a small brand or an independent producer overwhelmed with the thought of seeking funding and in need of a roadmap? Not sure where to start and could benefit from relevant resources and connections? Book a consultation with us here.
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Editor's Note: The views expressed in this article are the author's alone and do not necessarily represent those of the ReGen Brands platform or team.