Blog

In 2020, the Austin Fresh funder collaborative was launched, with a five-year commitment to fund a minimum of $1,000,000 each year to organizations in Austin who are working to increase access to healthy affordable food, support community gardens and local food production, grow food enterprises, and protect and strengthen food assistance programs. Last year, we embarked on an evaluation process to help us understand the early impact of Austin Fresh and learn about recommendations for improvement. As funders, we and our colleagues at the other participating foundations wanted to understand better how we could improve and best serve Austin.

Based on the evaluation, we are pleased to announce that Austin Fresh will continue for another five years. Additionally, we would like to thank the Austin Fresh grantees and community partners, including Austin Coming Together, who participated in the evaluation—your feedback helps us iterate and improve. You can read the evaluation report on the Austin Fresh webpage. For this year, we’ll be implementing a handful of changes and will continue rolling out more changes as we move forward.

Here are important details for 2025:

• RFP and Applications—you can review the revised RFP and list of application questions here and here
• Info Sessions—like last year, we’ll offer two info sessions, hosted by our community partner Austin Coming Together:
  • August 5, 4:00 p.m.—Online Info session as part of the monthly Austin Eats meeting.
  • August 13, 5:30 p.m.—In-person info session to workshop ideas. Held at the ACT office, 5049 W. Harrison St.
• To attend the information sessions, please register here. For questions about the registration, contact Grace Cooper (gcooper at austincomingtogether.org)
• Important Dates—The online application system will open on Monday, August 4, with a Call for Ideas, which will be due by Tuesday, September 2, 11:59 p.m.