School Nutrition Grant Opportunity

This fall, the No Kid Hungry Oregon Campaign is offering a school nutrition grant opportunity to enable districts and schools to maximize the child nutrition programs and other emergency food programs to ensure children and families have access to healthy meals at school and at home.

No Kid Hungry knows that school districts play an essential role in ensuring student receive nutritious meals to learn, grow, and thrive to their full potential. These flexible grants will allow school districts across the state to respond to the growing needs and emerging opportunities to provide meals and resources to kids and families.

As school districts face significant challenges maintaining and expanding meal programs in this uncertain environment, funds are intended to support school districts in having the adaptability to meet the changing needs of students and families. We can help you cover the following expenses:

  • Meal service supplies and equipment needed to implement new models for serving breakfast, lunch, and afterschool meals and snacks including: grab and go carts, insulated coolers/warmers, packaging equipment and supplies, refrigerators, and retrofitting existing equipment to meet new needs
  • Costs of hiring additional staff positions or increasing hours for existing staff to meet increased demand as a result of COVID-19 or provide additional services like meal delivery
  • Transportation costs associated with meal delivery such as refrigerated trucks or fuel
  • New costs associated with COVID-19 preparedness like no-touch point of service machines, hand washing stations, PPE equipment and cleaning supplies
  • Non-reimbursable food costs for school food pantries, backpack programs or adult meals
  • Program outreach, enrollment assistance and marketing costs (including promoting SNAP, WIC and Pandemic-EBT programs and supporting enrollment)
  • Additional expenses as needed

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis and applicants will be notified no more than four weeks after submission date.

Apply today!

ELIGIBILITY PRIORITIES:

 Equity Priority:

The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated long-standing systemic health, social and economic inequities, disproportionately impacting racial and ethnic minority groups. To ensure we are supporting individuals and communities most impacted, we will prioritize grant funds to school districts serving majority minority communities, including immigrant populations. We will also provide funds to rural communities where schools face unique challenges in addressing hunger.

Economic and COVID-19 Impact:

Grant funds will also be provided to communities experiencing economic hardship and having existing or increasingly high COVID-19 infection rates. In determining economic impact, No Kid Hungry will review data points to include: free and reduced eligible students, unemployment rates, child food insecurity rates, and the social vulnerability index score[1].

Ability to Serve Kids Today and in the Future:

Taking into consideration equity, economic hardship and COVID-19 impact factors, funds will be prioritized to support school districts with a strong and sustainable plan for maximizing participation in the child nutrition programs and/or leveraging other programs to combat food insecurity such as emergency food programs and student and family outreach and enrollment. Applications should address both the immediate need for supporting students and alleviating hunger as well address long-term sustainability of programming.

APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS:

Applicants will be required to provide the following information:

  • District Food Service Director and Superintendent contact information
  • Historic district-wide enrollment and school meals participation for breakfast, lunch, and afterschool meals and snack from October 2019 and SY19-20
  • Information about your current and planned food and nutrition programs for SY20-21
  • Detailed description of grant funding program objectives
  • Detailed budget of anticipated use of funding

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS:

  • Log into or create an account for the No Kid Hungry Grants Portal at https://nokidhungrygrants.force.com/
  • To create a new account, click “New User”.
  • To begin your application after you have logged into the No Kid Hungry Grants Portal, click “Start a New Application” on your Grantee Dashboard located on the top left corner of your home page, below the No Kid Hungry logo.
  • Input the following access code to gain access to the application: SchoolNutrition2021. Click “Start Application” to begin.
  • Be sure to input all required answers and save frequently as you are inputting information. Complete the application when all information is entered by clicking on “Review Your Answers” and then “Submit Your Answer.”

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Send us an email at grantshelpdesk@strength.org and we’ll be able to assist you:

  • If you’re having trouble connecting to the portal with your username and password.
  • If you’ve encountered technical difficulties with online registration, login, or application access.
  • If you have questions about the application questions or application process.

Want to take a closer look at the application? CLICK HERE for a sample

We are available and eager to help. To talk more about the challenges facing your community and your technical assistance needs during the crisis, please contact Eleni Towns etowns@strength.org