About

The CS Fund was created in 1981 by Maryanne Mott and Herman Warsh, who together endowed the Warsh-Mott Legacy in 1985. CS Fund and Warsh-Mott Legacy (CSF and WML) are private family foundations that share common program areas, staff, and boards of directors. Proposals to the two foundations are considered collectively, and grants are made by both entities. The boards of directors of CSF and WML also make recommendations to the donor-advised TOP Fund at the Marin Community Foundation.

CSF and WML’s grantmaking is forward thinking and evolves over time, yet is guided by a commitment to consistent, long-term support. Some organizations have received funding from the foundations for three decades. CSF and WML recognize the importance of general support and multi-year grants in building institutional strength and longevity and provide such support when appropriate. Project-restricted grants are also made in order to advance specific foundation objectives.

Program Areas

CSF and WML currently have three grantmaking focuses:

• Fighting False Solutions
• Food Sovereignty
• Rights and Governance

Fighting False Solutions

While technologies now being developed and commercialized may result in useful applications, they can also have serious negative social, environmental, economic and political impacts. 

Emerging technologies must therefore be subject to precautionary assessment, regulation and oversight – especially those that are fast tracked and marketed as “techno-fixes” or “green” panaceas to climate change and other crises, as they are often false solutions that perpetuate harmful systems.

CS Fund focuses on three emerging and converging technologies.

• Geoengineering - Intentional, large-scale climate manipulation through a range of methods, including Carbon Dioxide Removal and Solar Radiation Management.
• Synthetic Biology - The design, manufacture and release of artificially created DNA, including gene drives that force genetically engineered traits through populations for either conservation or agricultural purposes.
• Nanotechnology - The creation and commodification of tiny bits of matter (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter), especially in consumer products, which presents novel toxicity risks to human health and the environment.

Food Sovereignty

Food sovereignty emphasizes the right of people to define their own localized, culturally appropriate, and ecologically sound food and agriculture systems. Food sovereignty is deeply connected to global struggles for a more socially just and sustainable world and integrates some of the most critical issues facing humanity into a clear mandate for action.

CSF and WML’s Food Sovereignty program area is grounded in traditional agricultural knowledge and agroecological practices. The foundations’ grantmaking focuses on three cornerstones of agrobiodiversity and food system resilience:

• Preserving native and heirloom seeds
• Building healthy and fertile soils
• Protecting and restoring the populations and diversity of native pollinators

This program makes most of its grants to organizations working in the Global South.

Rights & Governance

CSF and WML’s Rights and Governance program area is dedicated to restoring and protecting the tenets articulated in the US Constitution.

We are especially focused on the areas of:

• Dissent – Protecting and advancing the rights to free speech and assembly.
• Open Government – Making the federal government more transparent, effective, and accountable.
• Rule of Law – Ensuring that US national security policies respect constitutional rights, domestic laws, and international treaties.
• The Constitution and the Courts – Building a progressive legal movement to counter conservative and corporate influence.

In the realm of international governance, CSF and WML have also long funded in the area of:

• Trade – Making the rules of global commerce more democratic, just, and sustainable.

NOTE: Not-for-profit organisations who have not been invited to apply by a programme officer can submit unsolicited requests for funding through our letter of enquiry process. If an organisation believes that strong alignment exists with Oak Foundation’s funding priorities, we encourage it to submit an unsolicited letter of enquiry. We will then invite applications for a grant only if we also find alignment with our funding priorities and if there is available budget.

Oak Foundation Grant

Overview

We have a responsibility to take care of our planet for future generations. We have a lot of work to do: we face a climate emergency, our natural life support systems are collapsing, and inequality is tearing at our social fabric. We have just ten years to reduce climate pollution by half and arrest the damage caused by using fossil fuels indiscriminately, bulldozing our forests, pouring plastics into our oceans, and trading endangered species into extinction.

There is still time to act. The actions we take today can revive the planet’s health for the future. Philanthropy, civil society, business, and political leaders are starting to come together to define a shared vision to repair the damage we have done to our home. We can build from the bottom up to ensure that our solutions are inclusive, fair, and lasting. And, we can ignite hope and catalyse change that restores our connection to nature and heals our planet’s health.­­

In response to the lessons learned from the recent evaluations of our successes and failures, from the wisdom of our partners, and from the teachings of the Covid-19 pandemic, our five-year strategy (2021-2026) focuses on safeguarding our future by restoring our connection to nature, and changing the ways we feed and fuel our world.

Our three systems

The new strategy has evolved from a sectoral approach, which focused on climate, marine, and wildlife trade and conservation, to a global systems transformation approach. We have chosen to focus on three systems that present the greatest transformative opportunities: Energy, Food, and Natural Security. Each of these systems is vital to our future as a human species and the global commons upon which we all depend. You can find out more about each system below.

• Energy: Changing how we fuel our world

Our pace in reducing dependence on fossil fuels has been unacceptably slow but the trend toward clean power is accelerating in exciting ways.

Recognising the need to cut fossil fuel use in half by 2030 and to zero by 2050, we will support organisations and diverse movements working to accelerate this transition. In doing so, we will engage at the intersection of race, equity, gender rights, and climate justice. We will also support widespread efforts to change the cultural narrative about the acceptability of fossil fuels.

In the energy system, our work will focus on six areas: oil, gas, plastics and petrochemicals, clean power, transport, and sustainable cities. We will fund efforts to catalyse the deployment of clean energy technologies, supporting the transition away from coal, oil, and gas. We will continue to support our partners’ work in Europe, India, China, Southeast Asia, and Brazil. We will complement our funding efforts with dedicated campaigns to end offshore oil and gas exploration and rapidly reduce pollution from aviation to systematically reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. And, we will enable efforts to eliminate the mountains of unnecessary single-use plastic products and reduce demand for, and oversupply of, virgin plastic.

• Food: Changing how we feed our world

Under our new strategy we will support efforts to ensure that food is harvested, processed, distributed, eaten, and disposed of in a way that promotes health, biodiversity, human rights, and animal welfare, all while staying within the boundaries of our planet’s life support systems.

Our strategy involves engaging in four areas to bring about a just, equitable, and sustainable food system: we must rebalance meat consumption, transform the wild food supply chain, and promote a real blue economy in which seafood is allowed to recover and be harvested sustainably, ensuring the food security of coastal and Indigenous communities. We will work toward increasing fisheries transparency and reducing labour rights abuses, particularly in the nations with the biggest fishing fleets and the murkiest practices.

• Natural Security: Changing how we live with nature

Wild places, such as savannas and forests, are a form of natural security for both the wildlife and human beings that call them home. Wild places drive the Earth’s systems of regeneration. They keep life safer from pandemics and allow for the process of adaptation and evolution of life on Earth to continue. Our work and grant-making will focus on the connectivity between people and their wild places.

We will support the rich biodiversity of “living landscapes” in Southern Africa and Southeast Asia. Living landscapes is the term we use to describe a conservation approach that supports productive, resilient rural networks of people who are able to deter over-exploitation, while safeguarding wildlife and wild places. Our work in living landscapes also considers nature’s borders, such as river basins, and supports symbiotic relationships whereby community development, employment, and livelihoods can be provided while biodiversity can also thrive.

Our funding principles

In all of our work, we are committed to social justice. To this end, we pursue rights-based approaches, gender equality, and partnership with the organisations we fund. We seek to support innovation, visionary leaders and organisations. We seek to be inclusive, flexible, and to learn from different points of view. We believe that the best grant-making reflects both careful due diligence and the willingness to take risks.

We encourage our partners to work together – we believe that together we are stronger. We fund initiatives that:

• target the root causes of problems;
• are replicable either within a sector or across geographical locations;
• include plans for long-term sustainability, such as co-funding;
• strive to collaborate with like-minded organisations;
• demonstrate good financial and organisational management; and
• value the participation of people (including children) and communities.

Funding

The average award: they range between USD 25,000 to USD 10 million.

We believe in providing long-term support to our partners to help create long-lasting change. We also believe that our partners benefit from having diverse funding sources to promote resiliency and to achieve the impact they desire. Therefore, we generally fund no more than 50 per cent of any project budget or 20 per cent of organisational budgets. Requests to fund higher levels should be discussed with the programme officer.

The Rapid Ocean Conservation (ROC) Grants Program is a project of the Waitt Foundation. ROC Grants provide small grants with a quick turnaround time for solutions to emerging conservation issues. This complements the Waitt Foundation’s existing major grants program and is responsive to conservation opportunities, supports higher-risk ideas at a low financial cost, and engages with small, local NGOs on a global scale.

Grants will fund projects related to the Waitt Foundation mission of supporting sustainable fishing and marine protected areas (MPAs). This includes sub-themes of:

• Scientific Research – Includes natural science or social science projects. For example, collecting baseline data before coastal development or MPA establishment, or studying fishery effects of a natural (e.g. tsunami) or man-made (e.g. oil spill) disaster.
• Policy – Includes opportunistic projects around unique public policy windows, such as preparation of policy analysis and support of experts’ efforts to inform decision makers on upcoming government actions. For example, a cost-benefit analysis of proposed fishing regulations, or travel expenses for a delegation of scientists to educate elected officials.
• Management – Includes enforcement and infrastructure support. For example, stop-gap funding to increase enforcement capacity in light of a sudden uptick in illegal dynamite fishing, or training personnel to enforce new regulations about to go into effect.
• Communications – Includes raising public awareness and engaging stakeholders, including advertising by a 501(c)3 group around a public policy moment. For example, a PR blitz (e.g. billboards or radio adds) to educate the public in advance of government action on an ocean conservation measure, or training local people to become citizen scientists or enforcement tipsters.

Note: There are two elements of the environment program. This page details information for the "Environmental Health" program area.  See details for "Marine Resources Conservation" here. 

Marisla was established in 1986 as a private, non-operating charitable institution. 

Environment Program - Environmental Health

The Environment Program concentrates on activities that promote the conservation of biological diversity and advance sustainable ecosystem management. The Environment Program also supports the search for solutions to health and environmental threats caused by toxic chemicals.

Overview

The Honda USA Foundation supports society in the areas of Education, Environment, Mobility and Traffic Safety by strategically collaborating with like-minded organizations to drive sustainable change in marginalized communities throughout the nation where Honda operations are located.

Please carefully review the Honda USA Foundation pillar award category descriptions below.

The Honda USA Foundation Environment Pillar Award

Awards will be given to programs that educate youth and communities on how to build a sustainable future through environmental education and conservation initiatives, with an emphasis on water, air, and land.

Applications may include but are not limited to education and conservation programs that restore marine ecosystems, reduce air pollution and safeguard land in its natural form.

The Honda USA Foundation Mobility Pillar Award

Awards will be given to programs that provide the joy of mobility by removing barriers and expanding access for youth with disabilities and/or critical illnesses.

Applications may include but are not limited to therapeutic or recreational camps, comprehensive care programs and/or programs that provide modifications and/or accommodations for youth with limited mobility.

The Honda USA Foundation Traffic Safety Pillar Award

Awards will be given to programs that ensure youth feel safe on and off the road through awareness programs that promote bicycle, automobile, motorsports and/or pedestrian safety.

Applications should include traffic safety programs for youth (ages 0 through pre-driver’s permit), such as providing child restraint systems, bike helmets, and/or awareness programs that promote bike, motorsports, car and/or pedestrian safety.

We are one of the world’s premiere Waterlife Outfitters. Helping others recreate on and around the water is our passion, our joy and our mission. We are, therefore, committed to supporting and promoting healthy and vibrant marine habitats and sustainable fisheries, as well as to connecting future generations to the water through our youth recreation and education initiatives.

BlueFuture Grants

West Marine offers one BlueFuture grant cycle each year that benefits nonprofit organizations dedicated to youth waterlife recreation and education. Our grants provide much-needed funds so these valuable, community-based organizations may provide scholarships, purchase new equipment, maintain staff, add programs and do so much more.

Mission

The mission of the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation is to advance society through the performing arts, conservation of the world’s oceans, and alleviation of poverty.  For grants related to the performing arts and social impact, please see here. The foundation was created in 2011 to honor Paul M. Angell, and strives to embody the legacy of his compassion, ingenuity and industriousness.

Conservation

The Foundation’s Conservation grant making focuses primarily upon issues of ocean conservation. Priorities within Conservation are:

• Supporting the creation of Marine Protected Areas
• Encouraging sustainable fisheries management
• Eliminating illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing
• Conserving the world’s shark and ray species
• Limiting plastics pollution and other ocean debris
• Preserving coral species and ecosystems

Types of Support

• General Operating
  • This is the most flexible type of grant. Funds may be applied in any manner in which the organization sees fit, subject to its mission.
• Program/Project Grants
  • These grants are targeted to a specific program or goal. Applicants must submit a program budget and narrative to support their applications.
• Education
  • Education grants support programs which disseminate information crucial to the organization’s mission. They may include, but are not necessarily limited to: lectures, demonstrations, workshops, guided tours, exhibitions, and distribution of printed or online materials.

Grant requests for other types of ocean-related conservation efforts may be considered on a limited basis.

About Bonnell Cove Foundation

Bonnell Cove Foundation supports not-for-profit organizations in North America in the areas of safety at sea and the environment of the sea. The Bonnell Cove Foundatioin is a 501(c)(3) organization. It was organized in 1989 by the Cruising Club of America. Initial funding for the Foundation came from the sale of a tract of waterfront land on Block Island, Rhode Island to the Block Island Land Conservancy. George P.P. Bonnell, a charter member and former Commodore of the Club, bequeathed the land to the Club in 1959. Club members provide additional funding. There is no paid staff.

The Board of Trustees meets twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall, to consider applications. As a general matter, the Foundation awards grants of up to $10,000 for specific projects or particular needs of a qualifying non-profit. In rare cases, the Foundation will grant funds to a particular organization in successive years.

In recent years the Bonnell Cove Foundation has funded essential elements of school and museum youth programs, environmental research, habitat restoration, medical research, search and rescue products, overboard rescue techniques and boating education.

Grants Relating to Safety At Sea

The Foundation encourages grant applications supporting projects which complement the safe operation of boats, both sail and power. Innovative projects resulting in the development of cost effective personal safety equipment, modified operational and training protocols, and methods to increase crew awareness of the need for continued attention to safety are of particular interest.

Grants Relating to the Environment of the Sea

The Foundation seeks grant applications in support of projects intended to increase our understanding of the factors affecting the marine environment both natural and man-made and the best ways to minimize adverse impacts associated with small boat operations. Such efforts might include technologies facilitating "green boats", efforts to conserve coastal and estuarine land, and educational efforts directed at improved stewardship of our oceans and navigable lakes.

11th Hour Racing's Grantmaking Strategy11th Hour Racing fosters systemic change to restore ocean health — our vision for the future includes cleaner, healthier waterways through strong local stewardship and collective action around the world.As the climate crisis intensifies, so does the impact on ocean health. We need a global paradigm shift, from an extractive economy that depletes our natural resources to a sustainable economy that uses resources wisely and protects our ocean. We work to facilitate this transition by supporting local solutions to global problems, led by community organizations and industry leaders. By supporting local pilot programs that model best practices of sustainability, restore coastal ecosystems, and advance ocean stewardship, our grantees are creating systemic change to restore ocean health. We are working toward a future of cleaner, healthier waterways through strong local stewardship and collective action around the world.Focus Areas11th Hour Racing seeks proposals that align with one or more of our focus areas:

• Ocean Literacy & Stewardship – increase the understanding and appreciation of the importance of healthy oceans and waterways to communities through experiential learning, citizen science, and powerful story-telling
• Clean Technologies & Best Practices – advance practices and technologies in coastal communities and the marine industry that reduce waste, prevent plastic pollution, improve water quality, and assess new circular solutions
• Ecosystem Restoration – improve water quality, bolster coastal resilience, and sequester carbon through coastal habitat restoration

Further examples of potential projects include but are not limited to:Ocean Literacy & Stewardship: Outreach and educational initiatives for any age focused on improving knowledge of ocean health issues and best practices. Emphasis will be given to projects focused on youth-led initiatives, citizen science, and experiential education. Programs specializing in increasing stewardship, access, and ocean literacy in underserved, urban communities are of particular interest. Does not include: curriculum development; or general funding for educational programming.Clean Technologies & Best Practices: Efforts that advance emerging methods and/or technologies that reduce the environmental footprint of coastal communities, sailing-related activities, and the maritime industry. Activities may include improving coastal community practices regarding plastic pollution prevention or food waste such as composting; environmentally responsible vessel disposal methods or construction materials; sailmaking or boatbuilding material alternatives or processes. Does not include: policy development; proven technologies (such as conventional solar photovoltaic), community beach or offshore clean-ups of marine debris, or advertising.Ecosystem Restoration: Using coastal habitats like mangroves, salt marsh, and seagrass to sequester carbon (commonly referred to as Blue Carbon), using oysters and vertical farming to improve coastal water quality or innovative approaches to restoring coral health. Does not include: coastal infrastructure projects, conservation easements, or land acquisition.Evaluation CriteriaProject submissions are evaluated based on the following criteria:

• Environmental impact: the magnitude of the project’s environmental benefits
• Capacity and Organizational Expertise: organizational capacity and qualifications necessary to implement the proposed project
• Innovation and Creativity: how unique the project is or the methodology used
• Feasibility of implementation: technological, financial, and political factors that may influence the success of the project

Strong consideration will be given to: projects that involve collaborations and stakeholder engagement; model best practices; can demonstrate measurable outcomes in a one-year timeframe, and share successes broadly. For anything we fund, and especially demonstration projects or place-based work, we would like to see opportunities for broader impact through replicating or scaling.