On 27th July 2010 the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF) announced that 448 not-for-profit and charitable organizations in Ontario will receive funding and one of them is Small Change Fund! The Ontario Trillium Foundation has given Small Change Fund a significant grant for capacity building over the next two years. We have received multi-year funding in the amount of $289,900 over two years to hire staff, create a strategic plan, start an internship program, and contribute to Ontario environmental groups with small grants. This support from Trillium will help us enormously to build our capacity and support grassroots action across the province. Thank you to the Trillium Foundation for their vote of confidence and this generous grant. We’re starting something big!

Ruth Richardson, Small Change Fund co-founder, and Becky Thomas, Small Change Fund volunteer, write about the Nadleh Whut’en, Nak’azdli, and Takla Lake First Nations’ fight to stop Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Project. The newest of the projects profiled on smallchangefund.org, “The Carrier Sekani Fight to Stop the Enbridge Gateway Project” aims to voice their opposition to the project and convince other to join them. Their main concern? Pollution and irreversible environmental contamination. “It’s really not a question of if there’s going to be a spill,” says Tara Marsden, former Director of Pipelines with B.C.’s Carrier Sekani Tribal Council, “it’s when and where.” Check out the full article here.

Lauren Baker, Small Change Fund advisor and director of Sustain Ontario, bakes up some good food ideas for local, sustainable food systems. She’s gathered her top 10 recommendations from the grassroots sustainable food movement including: supporting producers of locally consumed fruit, vegetables, and meats; harvesting the whole value of ecological goods and services from agriculture; implementing school food programs and embedding food literacy in school curricula; and supporting community food centres. Check out her blog here where you can find all top 10 good food ideas plus a link to the full report.

Jerome Ringo is an oil-rigger turned activist. From Louisiana, Ringo’s career has taken him from the world of big oil to community organizing to being the first African American in history to chair a major conservation organization. Earlier this week he was in Toronto, at a lunch hosted by the Laidlaw Foundation, to talk about the Gulf oil spill. “It’s way worse than you see it on TV,” he said. “You can’t smell the oil on TV. You can’t taste the oil on TV.”

His message was sobering, depressing at times even. But his real message is one of hope. He argues that we have an opportunity unlike any other to push for energy, transportation, and climate legislation at an accelerated rate. Ringo’s answer is to reactivate activism. Big complex problems can require big complex solutions but not necessarily, not always. He spoke about his journey through the writings of Martin Luther King Jr. discovering his roots in community organizing. “The civil rights movement was won one community at a time.”

Talking to a bunch of Torontonians, he was quick to emphasize that this isn’t just an American issue. “Canada has its own Gulf of Mexico. You have the oil sands. Just most Canadians aren’t aware of its impact because you haven’t seen a catastrophic event yet.” Catastrophic event or no, Canadians are becoming aware of its impact, particularly at the local level where change starts. Groups like those profiled on Small Change Fund are working for grassroots change one community at a time. Legislative change and audacious solutions are as important here in Canada as they are in the United States but we mustn’t forget the power of small change and grassroots action to challenge the world of big oil.

To see the full article on Now Public click here.

In the spring, Small Change Fund held our very first Kitchen Party! We celebrated in Toronto with friends, including supporters, board members, volunteers and project participants. We had a fabulous time with members of the Small Change Fund community, including some amazing grassroots leaders.

We’re excited to have kitchen parties roll out across the country from coast to coast to coast! If you are interested in hosting a party in support of Small Change Fund, contact Dani for resources to help you get started.

Last week was Net Change 2010, a week-long event dedicated to exploring the intersection between social technology and social change. Powered by MaRS Discovery Centre in downtown Toronto, it was a magnet for anyone working in the space of online change-making for good. The Small Change Fund team absorbed a huge amount of information at Net Change, and we thought we’d share our 8 big take-aways from the conference in an article on NowPublic. Check it out!

Small Change Fund has been featured in wireless provider Wind Mobile‘s magazine about to hit the stands this week. Thank you to Wind for showcasing the work of Small Change Fund, Well of Change, and giveadamn.ca and to Small Change Fund’s friend Anil Patel from Timeraiser for introducing us to Wind Mobile. Check out Wind’s magazine here – the theme of the issue is Everyday Heroes and Anil has written a fantastic article “All in Good Time: Everyday heroes make a world of difference.” As he says, “It’s proof that if you can help people get and stay involved in the community you can do an incredible amount of good.” Here here.

In May I attended the IFIP conference in Tofino, British Columbia. It was a fantastic gathering that gave me all sorts of food for thought. You can check out my blog here to find out about some of the lessons I brought home with me. Or you can click here and see some amazing photos of the days we spent in this very special place. Evelyn Arce, the beautiful and capable Executive Director of IFIP, just sent them along with this message:

“To me, this was an extra special conference; the celebration of IFIP reaching the 10 year milestone, the  Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations community were very generous in spirit to open up their community to us and hosting a Salmon bake and giving us a traditional welcome unto their territory.  The wildlife was amazing and witnessing bald eagles playing in the beach and having the opportunity to soak in the natural hot springs and see whales from a distance was incredible.  After the conference, I had the privilege of speaking with the manager of Tin Wis resort, he shared that IFIP’s conference helped to bring the revenues of the resort to the highest level in 10 years and  how they are supporting projects such as revitalization of their language. We strive to “walk the talk” and continue our vision of transforming Indigenous Philanthropy into the next decade and we need people like you to help us in this journey.”

Thanks to IFIP for all their work and may you enjoy it vicariously through the images and words passed along by those lucky enough to have been able to attend.

Small Change Fund is a proud member of the Canadian Environmental Grantmakers Network (CEGN). Recently, CEGN interviewed Mary for their newsletter to members. Below is the interview that CEGN circulated to members on May 31.

Continue reading >

You contributed your feedback and we listened!

Thank you to everyone who let us know how we could make smallchangefund.org better. We have now launched a massive refresh of our homepage and added more functionality to our entire site. The improved site is not only more visually appealing, it makes it easy to find projects, read our newsletter, and peruse our blog.

Smallchangefund.org now more effectively serves the needs of donors, project participants and all users. Thank you to Gallivan Media for your fabulous work!

Small Change Fund has just returned from the International Funders for Indigenous Peoples‘ (IFIP) conference in Tofino, BC. Ruth was invited to  the conference to moderate a panel entitled “Building Indigenous and Environmental Partnerships: Community Voices from Russia and Canada.” The session included a great panel with four amazing women – Gladys Netro, Ekaterina Eveseeva, Ginger Gibson, and Galina Angarova – talking about how their communities are responding to natural resource extraction in the Arctic.

The conference  was inspiring, humbling, energizing, and powerful. There was a world of people there committed to securing the rights of indigenous people, their land, culture, and histories. The stories from Panama, Kenya, Borneo, Siberia, Peru, Greenland, United States, Guatemala, Canada, New Zealand, and other places familiar and unfamiliar were deeply enriching.

Highlights of IFIP included: being welcomed to Tla-o-qui-aht Nation territory by elder Levi Martin on Tin Wis Beach looking out over the pacific ocean; viewing RAVEN‘s movie Blue Gold on the fight to save Fish Lake, a powerful and inspiring smallchangefund(ed) project; listening in as Chief Al Lameman of Beaver Lake Cree emphasized the challenge of fighting Alberta’s Tar Sands; and learning from Linda Different Cloud about restorative ecology and bringing back traditional plants to her reservation.

What a privilege to have joined the gathering, thank you to IFIP for inviting us to participate.

To learn more about big and small lessons learned at IFIP check out Ruth’s blog post.

LUSH Handmade Cosmetics is fully supporting four stellar Small Change Fund projects through the Charity Pot Program. We are honoured to be partnered with LUSH, a company who believes in making effective products from fresh, organic fruit and vegetables, the finest essential oils and safe synthetics. LUSH makes products fresh by hand using little or no preservative or packaging, using only vegetarian ingredients. LUSH buys ingredients only from companies that do not commission tests on animals and in testing our products on humans.

100% of the retail price (minus taxes) of LUSH Charity Pot hand and body cream goes directly to worthy causes. LUSH has sold 18,647 pots so far in North America. With the proceeds, LUSH donates to carefully selected charities around the world that support animal rights, environmental protection and humanitarian concerns. The LUSH Charity Pot program has fully supported the following Small Change Fund projects: Protecting Lake Windermere’s Rare and Beautiful Habitat, Protecting Yukon’s Peel Watershed: A Global Legacy, Engaging Fishermen to Advance Near-Shore Marine Protection in Nova Scotia, Keep the Restigouche Wild.

Thank you to LUSH for your support!

Cross-posted from our partner Global Greengrants.

When 13 year-old Jordan Ofek began planning his bar mitzvah, he drafted a list of invitees, sketched out a script for an original short film he would show at the celebration, and then called Greengrants to say he had chosen us to receive gifts on his behalf. As he became a bar mitzvah on February 6th, donations rolled in from supportive friends and family. By the end of the month, Jordan had inspired over $11,000 in gifts to Greengrants in his honor.

We were so inspired by this selfless act that we wanted to share his story with you.

A seventh grader at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in New York City, Jordan discovered Greengrants through a class presentation on various nonprofits. He said he was struck by the local focus of our grantmaking, and felt it was “a very meaningful way to accomplish worthwhile environmental goals while ensuring that communities are involved and local needs are met.” Certainly, the thousands of dollars he funneled to Greengrants are already having a tremendous impact around the world.

Besides supporting environmental justice internationally, Jordan also gives back to his local community. He volunteers once a week on a literacy project at a public school in the city and also at a neighborhood soup kitchen. When he finally takes time for himself, he is interested in filmmaking, loves math and fantasy books, and enjoys running cross country and track on his school teams. Jordan has a younger brother and sister, and a dog named Holly.

Greengrants is grateful for Jordan’s generosity and the generosity of all those who made gifts on his behalf. As one enthusiastic donor remarked, “We think your choice of bar mitzvah gift speaks wonders about the Jewish adult you have become!”

Congratulations, Jordan, and thank you!

Good news!

With the help of generous donors through Small Change Fund, the Save Fish Lake film project has been completed.  The Tsihqot’in people of Williams Lake B. C. created a film that gives a moving voice and face to their fight to save Teztan Biny (Fish Lake), a traditional fishing and food-gathering site. If approved, a proposed mining project would drain the lake and fill the site with acid waste rock, destroying it for the local community.

Blue Gold: The Tsilhquot’in Fight for Teztan Biny (Fish Lake) tells of the long and rich cultural history that the Xeni Gwet’in First Nations have with Fish Lake and how the area not only holds great spiritual significance and is an important meeting place where cultural knowledge and traditions are passed from one generation to the next, but is also a rich source of trout, berries and other natural resources.

This moving film was created in order to convey the ecological and cultural importance of Fish Lake during the Environmental Assessment Public hearings for the proposed mine project that will be held in the up-and-coming months.

As Susan Smitten, of RAVEN (Respecting Aboriginal Values & Environmental Needs), says “We’re getting amazingly positive feedback on the film. It’s wonderful.  People are writing letters, planning campaigns, it’s awesome.  Exactly what we hoped would happen. Thank you again for all your help and support – honestly, this project is that much better because of your involvement!”

Small Change Fund is pleased to have helped facilitate this community project that will hopefully become a powerful tool to help raise awareness of Aboriginal land rights issues and national fish habitat and fresh water concerns. Thank you to all our supporters who are Helping to Save Fish Lake from Acid Waste!

Check out Blue Gold here.

Written by Shannon Lem

The Online Pioneers for Good platform provides an overview of young and dynamic online organizations. Members have one thing in common: they are online front runners in creating a better world.

Online Pioneers for Good are working to establish a vivid global network of online front runners creating a better world. They believe that bundling forces will result in fruitful knowledge exchange, productive cooperation and effective global campaigns.

We are pleased that they have chosen Small Change Fund as a front runner on their site!

Chet is guest editor of Alliance Magazine on the power of small grants! Chet Tchozewski, president of Global Greengrants Fund, is the guest editor for this Alliance special feature. With the global financial situation under the spotlight, many organizations are having to rethink their grantmaking strategies. What place will small grants have in future funding plans? Whay may seem like a drop in the ocean now can have long-term effects that may go way beyond the original scope of the grant, says Tchozewski.

The feature includes contributions from individuals and organizations around the world with experience of making small grants. These include Wangari Maathai, Marion Rockefeller Weber, Jacqueline Delia-Brémond and Nonette Royo. Both Ezra Mbogori and Stephen Pittam focus on small grants and social justice. Other articles look at Mama Cash’s recent move away from small grants and Global Fund for Children’s new approach to measuring impact.

Read the issue here.

Terry Odendahl, CEO of Global Greengrants, shares her thoughts on the post-Copenhagen funding landscape: “Internationally, the Global Greengrants Fund is working to bring the voices of the least empowered—indigenous and forest peoples, poor people, rural people, and women—to the global climate change table. Through the establishment of our new Climate Fund, we were involved in sponsoring delegates through the Indigenous Environment Network, Land is Life, and Oil Watch, as well as from our Central America and West Africa Boards. Greengrants is a small player, dedicated to the effectiveness of small grants. It’s time for other foundations to step up and give at least 1 percent to climate. Every small and large effort can make a difference.” Read the full article here.

Join Grassy Narrows Asubpeeschoseewagong Anishinabek in Toronto as they demand justice for their people and protection for the water, air, and forests that give life to us all.

Public Talk: Tuesday 6 April at 6:30 p.m. at the Steel Workers Hall, 25 Cecil Street (south of College, east of Spadina).

River Run – Creative March and Rally: Wednesday 7 April at Noon at Grange Park (Beverley Street south of Dundas Street, behind the AGO).

Together participants will form a wild river that will flow to Queen’s park on World Health Day in solidarity to protect water, defend the earth, and uphold Indigenous self-determination, culture, and spirituality. Indigenous people are invited to wear regalia.  Others are invited to wear blue, or dress as a favourite wild creature.

For more information contact  riverrun2010@gmail.com

Samaritan Magazine features Small Change Fund in their online mag! Kevin Young, a regular contributor to Samaritan, gets the spotlight in showcasing Small Change Fund’s unique online micro-philanthropy site. Says Young “This idea, the democratizing of philanthropy using the web, is extraordinarily compelling… Potential donors viewing the various projects see not only a description of their goals and the amount of money required for meeting them, but the amount raised to date. Their financial targets are so clearly attainable.  It’s a tacit invitation for donors to become personally involved by raising awareness amongst their peers in an effort to ensure their chosen charity’s progress.”

Samaritanmag.com is a non-frivolous online magazine that covers the good deeds and efforts of Samaritans — individuals, charities, non-governmental organizations, small businesses and corporations. Samaritan is the creation of Toronto’s Karen Bliss, a woman with a fantastic job as a music journalist who is ready to give back through her connections, skills and efforts. The aim of Samaritanmag.com is to provide others with the information, incentive and impetus to do the same. Samaritan takes advantage of the well-established trend of giving and caring, which shows the public at a heightened level of concern and awareness about the world around them.

The Recommended Peel Watershed Plan is strong on conservation thanks to you! The overwhelming support of people for major protection in the Peel gave the planning commission the social license to produce a strong conservation plan.

Your continued support for Peel remains vital as the Parties negotiate the final plan. Please continue to support Protecting the Peel. Give now to Protecting the Peel Watershed: A Global Legacy and Protecting our Ancestral Lands in the Peel Watershed and make a difference in the Yukon today!

On December 2, 2009, the Peel Watershed Planning Commission released their Recommended Plan for the Peel Watershed. The Recommended Plan calls for protection of 80% of the watershed. This is a huge step forward for conservation in the region, giving Yukon people a strong basis for demanding that the Yukon government maintain the Peel as a globally significant pristine area. The Recommended Plan will now undergo consultations between the Yukon and affected First Nation governments. The Tr’ondek Hwech’in and Na-Cho Nyak Dun First Nations are calling for full protection of the entire watershed, and Yukon government needs to hear that the public supports them.

Until the final plan is agreed to, a moratorium on mineral staking in the Peel needs to be implemented.  The Planning Commission has recommended a moratorium, and it is within the Yukon Government’s power to do this.

Highlights of the Peel Watershed Recommended Plan:

• Special Management Area (SMA) status is recommended for 80% of the Peel Watershed under a variety of protection designations. This includes the Snake, Bonnet Plume, Wind, and Hart River watersheds. No surface access would be permitted in these SMA’s without a plan amendment.

• Several other culturally and ecologically important areas such as the Turner Lake wetlands are recommended for full protection.

• Existing mineral claims would continue to exist, even in protected areas, but exploration would be limited to air access.

Thank you to the Peel Watershed Planning Commission for their hard work and commitment to fulfilling the vision of sustainable development that is articulated in the Umbrella Final Agreement.

Small Change Fund is a new way to make big change. Small Change Fund is a unique online gathering place for Canadians who want to help make change, in Canada and abroad. We offer a virtual meet-up for people with dreams, people with dollars, and people with know-how.

We make giving simple.
Call it bottom-up investment, grassroots grant-making, place-based funding, micro-philanthropy. Whatever its name, it’s a new way of giving. We open up the giving process so you can have a hand in solving the problems you care about most. You read, you choose, you give. You can give money, you can give time, you can give support. It’s that simple.

We put you in touch.
Did you know that less than 1% percent of Canadian giving goes to grassroots groups and only a fraction of that goes to support environmental and international causes? As the only Canadian organization of its kind, Small Change Fund puts you in touch with people on the ground, people who are best able to figure out and fix the problems in their communities.

We multiply your gifts.
Small gifts can equal big change. Your support – whether time, money, or encouragement – combines with that of other supporters across the country to create enormous change in communities. We multiply your gifts so that whatever the size, you are encouraging others to give and are combining your support with others for big impact.

We back you up.
Small Change Fund has the backing of advisors from coast to coast to coast. They bring decades of social and environmental expertise to the projects you see on our site – local scientists and activists, leaders of small networks, journalists, photographers, and national environmental leaders – they are the heart of Small Change Fund. They help you make good decisions, connect you to projects in their communities, and lend you their wisdom, experience, and expertise.

We create community.
When you join Small Change Fund, you become a member of the Small Change Fund  community. We take care of the practical stuff so you can focus on the fun stuff, like making friends with people who share your values. And the Small Change Fund community isn’t confined to our borders. Our community is the global village. Because we also work with the Global Greengrants Alliance of Funds – an alliance that supports grassroots projects around the world – Small Change Fund is at once local and global.

Start something big with small change. Visit us at www.smallchangefund.org!

Great news! After a hard-fought struggle, Global Greengrants grantee, Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI), just won its fight to say “no” to a mining exploration company that has finally given up its staked claims to land near the KI community in Northern Ontario in exchange for a financial settlement with the province. Last year KI’s chief and five councilors were jailed for refusing to allow platinum mining exploration that would threaten the health and livelihood of their Indigenous community, 200 km from the nearest road in the Boreal Forest of Northern Ontario – North America’s largest wild forest. This became one of the highest profile Indigenous land rights and environmental justice struggles in Canada.

Greengrants has supported Ontario First Nation communities through ten grants totaling $44,400 over the last five years.

KI was one of the campaigns supported by Greengrants for $5,000 grant in 2008. Another great example of what a small grant can achieve!

Small Change Fund’s partner, and founder and President of Global Greengrants Fund, Chet Tchozewski, is featured in Yale’s Environment 360. As Chet gears up to attend the COP15 meetings in December, check out what he believes to be crucial, yet realistic goals for addressing climate change. What do you expect from Copenhagen? Read the article in environment 360.

Global Greengrants Fund, Small Change Fund’s international partner, hosts a call on Indigenous rights. Indigenous peoples around the world are holders of incredibly valuable environmental knowledge. Their very identity is linked to the land they have inhabited for generations—land that too often is threatened by oil and gas development, mega-dams, climate change, and other socio-environmental issues. The unfortunate reality is that many indigenous peoples often lack the legal rights to protect their resources from corporate and government development. This is not only the case in high profile locations such as the Amazon and the Congo, but also in the very remote northern regions of Canada and Russia.

On 18 November 2009, supporters from around the world participated in an amazing conference call to hear directly from those on the ground in the Far North – Ekaterina Evseyeva whose work focuses on the impact of oil and gas pipelines in Russia, and Judy Da Silva, who is a member of the Grassy Narrows First Nation in Northern Ontario. Listen to the call on the Greengrants website.

Ruth Richardson, Co-Founder of Small Change Fund, blogs about a new model for grassroots change-making.

She asks, “Who’s going to do it? Who’s going to fund solutions to our most pressing social and environmental challenges?” It’s a good question based on one asked by Phil Buchanan, President of the Center for Effective Philanthropy. Who’s going to provide the investments in critical social change given the stark realities of the economic downturn, of governments looking to foundations to support essential services, of foundations looking to the private sector to fund innovation, of the private sector scrambling to cope with the shifts in their financial forecasts?

Her answer? We are. All of us. Read the blog at White + Hirji.

Tracy Glynn, Small Change Fund Advisor, highlights the dangers of aerial spraying. On September 4, people working in the woods of northern New Brunswick, including more than 50 women planting trees, were doused with chemicals from a helicopter spraying the public forest to kill the hardwoods for a softwood plantation.

“A man reported fish kills along a stream here after the last spraying. It is not normal to do that to the forest. We can’t prove we are sick because of the spraying but cancer and pesticides have been linked. People are starting to question why do so many people in our community, in northern New Brunswick, have cancer, and rare cancers,” says a local resident. Read the full article at The Dominion.

Nina-Marie Lister, Small Change Fund board member, is profiled in Design Observer. In her article Water/Front she talks about our relationship to water. “Almost all major cities embrace the water: Rome was founded on the banks of the Tiber, Paris is bisected by the Seine, London by the Thames; Los Angeles sits on the edge of the Pacific, Hong Kong straddles the Pearl River Delta. And almost all urban waterfronts are bound up with the dynamic, messy history and complex legacy of industrialization.”

But with a message of hope, she shows us that for the millions who live, work and play at the water’s edge, there is a new approach to waterfront design that offers the prospect of a renewed, more resilient relationship, in subtle but powerful communication with the waters that sustain us. Read her article in The Design Observer.

On 30 October 2009 Small Change Fund attended All My Relations: 2009 Gathering. Organized by the Circle on Aboriginal Grant-making, All My Relations brought together engaged donors, First Nations’ community leaders, and international speakers to discuss the challenges facing Aboriginal communities – especially around issues of land and youth – and to build the future of the Circle.

Stay tuned for materials from the gathering.

Greengrants’ West Africa Advisor and friend of Small Change Fund, Nnimmo Bassey, named Hero of the Environment in 2009 by TIME Magazine! Congratulations Nnimmo!!!

It wasn’t an oil spill that made Bassey an environmentalist. It was a massacre — the 1990 assault by Nigeria’s armed forces on the village of Umuechem, where residents of the oil-rich Niger Delta had accused the Shell Petroleum Development Company of environmental degradation and economic neglect. In two days of violence, 80 people died and nearly 500 houses were destroyed. “We woke up from a sleep and … everything was collapsing around us,” says Bassey, 51, head of Environmental Rights Action, the Nigerian chapter of Friends of the Earth.

The deaths convinced Bassey and his colleagues that they needed to broaden their efforts. “We realized that if people don’t have a safe environment to live in, then they don’t have literally any other rights,” he says.

Read the article from Time Magazine.

Greengrants’ biennial Global Advisor Retreat brought together environmental justice leaders from around the world amid Boulder’s beautiful Chautauqua landscape. For five days in September, Small Change Fund and other Global Greengrants Alliance members shared their remarkable stories, effective strategies for change, and positive thoughts for a promising future.

View some photos on the Global Greengrants Fund Facebook page.