WWF works to sustain the natural world for the benefit of people and wildlife, collaborating with partners from local to global levels in nearly 100 countries.
The application for Food Waste Warriors mini-grants and large grants is now closed. We will aim to re-open this process in 2023.
Food Waste Warriors is a program for K-12 schools that provides grants, stipends, toolkits, and lesson plans to empower teachers and administrators in all schools to engage their students and take action on the issue of food waste.
Food waste is an issue teachers and students confront first-hand every day, and with the incredible demands already placed on teachers, our program seeks to both compensate them and equip them with flexible and fully customizable resources to turn cafeterias into classrooms—helping students to conduct food waste audits in their cafeterias, advocate on the issue of food waste, and identify creative ways to reduce it.
WWF's Food Waste Warriors program is anchored in the idea that measurement is our most powerful intervention for preventing and reducing food waste in school cafeterias and classrooms. As the saying goes, what gets measured gets managed. Our program creates a national database of food-waste cafeteria audits and brings together schools from across the country to share best practices on reducing food waste and developing waste-conscious communities.
How to Apply
There will be two types of grants available this year: (1) mini-grants for schools, school districts, or nonprofits; and (2) large grants for school districts, nonprofits, and for-profit organizations.
All applicants in any U.S. state or territory are eligible to apply for this year's grant cycle, though applicants working with schools or districts located in Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Maryland, and Washington D.C. will be prioritized to support our current food waste policy objectives.
(1) For prospective mini-grantees, please apply via the following application and be prepared to demonstrate how you will:
Conduct at least 3-5 student-led cafeteria waste audits and submit data to Food Waste Warrior database
Incorporate food waste education into their curriculum
Identify ways to raise awareness of the issue of food waste across their school and larger community—with a focus on doing so in underserved communities
Implement food waste interventions to reduce quantities of waste in their schools and repurpose any food that is not eaten. These interventions could include (but are not limited to) the following research-backed school waste interventions
Note: Applications will be prioritized that implement waste-audits and waste interventions in underserved communities (e.g., Title I and/or rural schools), though all schools are welcome and eligible to apply.
If you have any questions, you can reach out to our grant support team at [email protected]
Current Grantees
Getting started with the mini-grant program? This onboarding document has next steps for you to set up your accounts and start processing your payment.
If you are creating a Knack account for your school for the first time, please give WWF staff a few days to review your request. Once you have an account, you can log in at any time to input audit data.
