We launched ETC Impact in 2020 because we know that the Eat the Change™ mission is bigger than any one sector. Nonprofit organizations – both those working at a national level and those operating on the ground in local communities – play a vital role in sparking change by promoting, innovating, and democratizing access to climate-friendly foods.

In conjunction with the early days of Eat the Change™, our first move was to make two model grants in spring 2020 to organizations that embody our core values and represent the kind of projects we intend to support. The first was a $5,000 grant to A Well-Fed World to support the work of Tracye McQuirter, MPH, an award-winning public health nutritionist, author, speaker, and vegan educator. Tracye launched the 10,000 Black Vegan Women Movement in 2020. The second was a $5,000 grant to Project Drawdown, a research organization that reviews, analyzes, and identifies the most viable global climate solutions and shares those findings with the world.

Following those model grants, we received more than 120 applications for our inaugural cycle in the summer of 2020, and ultimately selected a phenomenal group of 32 Changemaker organizations – 21 working in individual communities and 11 at the national level – as grant recipients. We look forward to building on the impact we made in our first year by expanding our support and enlisting additional partners to support our Changemakers in 2021.