Great grant news

What’s the buzz?

We’ll be Making (even more) Trash Bloom in 2022, thanks to some awesome new grant funding!

We’ve had some exciting wins in the last month of 2021! Several new grants, as well as renewed funding, will propel an expansion of our programs in the new year.

We’re taking our popular Making Trash Bloom initiative to a new site in Rappahannock County, thanks to funding from the PATH Foundation and Northern Piedmont Community Foundation. Making Trash Bloom will also scale up in Shenandoah County, where support from local sponsor Regulus Group will enable us to plant directly on a trash cell for the first time.

Making Trash Bloom is a local project now, but growing up quickly. We are extremely proud to announce an $80,000 grant from the Ittleson Foundation, seed capital to begin scaling Making Trash Bloom to a nationwide program! Ittleson is a national environmental funder with a unique “venture capital” approach. Their mentorship/funding hybrid helps small eco-orgs with innovative projects branch out fast. Previous Ittleson grantees, including our pollinator protection heroes the Xerces Society, have harvested some great results from this incubator.

Also in December, Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality awarded a grant - for the second year in a row - enabling us to partner with the City of Winchester on environmental programming. Last year’s support funded the Composting for the Clueless program, which reached participants as far away as Singapore! This year we’ll be targeting the reduction of single use plastics: stay tuned.

It’s worth noting that these grants provide funding for specific projects and programs. We still rely on your continued support via membership contributions in order to keep the lights on. Consider becoming an annual or monthly member today, or make a one-time donation in the amount of your choosing. We appreciate your generosity, and so does the planet!