Grants Awarded
Taste the Local Difference – $25,000
Fresh Food Connections: Wholesale Readiness
This grant supports a pilot project designed to expand Michigan's local food infrastructure by helping mid-sized, often BIPOC-owned farms in the greater Flint region transition from direct-to-consumer markets into wholesale channels. By pairing individualized readiness assessments with marketing tools, producer stipends, and facilitated connections to institutional buyers, the project builds the supply-side capacity necessary for emerging regional food hubs and wholesale distributors to reliably source Michigan-grown products. This initiative directly supports Americana's Ag/FS priority to strengthen local food economies through improved market access and distribution. By targeting farms historically excluded from wholesale markets and partnering with Flint Fresh's aggregation and logistics backbone, the project helps fill a critical gap in Michigan's regional food value chain, with potential for replication statewide.
Keep Growing Detroit – $25,000
Rooted in Sovereignty
Keep Growing Detroit (KGD) will use this grant to strengthen the social infrastructure that underpins Detroit's large and diverse urban agriculture network. Through a year of interconnected programming-including seasonal grower gatherings, intergenerational storytelling and cultural workshops, hands-on education, and citywide events-KGD aims to deepen the relationships, shared knowledge, and cultural continuity that sustain community-led food production. The program anticipates engaging hundreds of gardens and farms, positioning Detroiters not only as food producers but as stewards of food traditions and mutual support networks. The project aligns with Americana's Ag/FS priority by nurturing the social systems required for a resilient, community-driven local food ecosystem by strengthening cultural connections and grower-to-grower collaboration.Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance – $25,000
Protecting the Wild Heart of Saugatuck
This grant supports scientific modeling and visual evidence needed to uphold prior state and federal decisions denying permits to a proposed private marina development that threatens critical dune systems, groundwater-fed wetlands, and Tribal cultural landscapes at the mouth of the Kalamazoo River. MI-EGLE and the US Army Corps of Engineers denied the marina permits in 2024 on the basis of ecological harm, navigational safety, and impacts to a Traditional Cultural Property of the Potawatomi. The developer appealed the denials. The grant aligns with Americana's Natural Resources priority because it safeguards a highly sensitive Lake Michigan watershed, protects rare habitats central to regional water quality, and continues Americana's long support of SDCA's successful efforts to oppose the marina development from 2009 to 2019.
Central Lake Superior Watershed Partners – $25,000
Merging TEK and Green Infrastructure with Coastal Tribal Communities
In this project, Superior Watershed Partnership (SWP) and three Tribal communities in the Upper Peninsula-Keweenaw Bay, Bay Mills, and Hannahville-will design and install culturally informed green infrastructure that improves water quality and protects vulnerable coastal habitats. The project combines Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), youth conservation corps labor, and before/after ecological monitoring to restore habitat, reduce stormwater impacts, and build long-term community stewardship. The project aligns closely with Americana's Natural Resources priority by delivering tangible, place-based restoration in high-risk Great Lakes watersheds while centering community leadership, Indigenous knowledge, and intergenerational engagement. SWP may replicate the project across additional Tribal and coastal communities.
Huron River Watershed Council – $25,000
Catalyzing Green Stormwater Infrastructure
This grant supports the expansion of green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) in three southeast Michigan communities-Ypsilanti, Belleville, and Van Buren Township-that have been identified as having the watershed's highest flood vulnerability and greatest environmental justice concerns. In this project, HRWC will pair public listening sessions with the development of 2-3 site-specific GSI concept designs and the installation of household rain gardens to build community ownership of nature-based stormwater solutions in places historically underserved by GSI investment. The grant aligns with Americana's Natural Resources program priority by supporting community-led, replicable watershed protection efforts that reduce polluted runoff, improve water quality in the Huron River (and ultimately Lake Erie), and strengthen local capacity for long-term stormwater resilience. The focus on vulnerable communities-where environmental and socioeconomic burdens intersect-aligns closely with the Foundation's commitment to equitable, watershed-scale impact.
Detroit Black Community Food Security Network – $25,000
Building Toward Zero Waste at the Detroit Food Commons
DBCFSN will use this grant to support community-centered food waste composting operations at the Detroit People's Food Co-op (DPFC), a member-owned grocery store cooperative in Detroit's North End neighborhood. DBCFSN believes that food waste composting is a critical component of a closed loop food economy, "where a majority of the economical, political, cultural, social and ecological capital can be recycled back into the community to generate transformative change." DBCFSN will apply the grant to engage a compost manager to coordinate food waste diversion from DPFC to composting systems at D-Town Farm, DBCFSN's 7-acre farm in Rouge Park.
Keweenaw Land Trust – $25,000
Volunteer Capacity Initiative: Laying the Groundwork for Lasting Impact
This grant will support the Volunteer Capacity Initiative at the Keweenaw Land Trust. The project will transform KLT's long tradition of volunteerism into a robust, well-supported program that trains and retains local stewards of the nearly 10 miles of Lake Superior shoreline that KLT protects. By building systems for recruitment, onboarding, and recognition, KLT will expand its volunteer base, enhance shoreline and watershed protection, and strengthen the long-term health of Lake Superior.
Flint Social Club – $25,000
The People's Mart
With this grant, Flint Social Club will install critical infrastructure in "The People's Mart," a community-powered food hub that will create markets, storage capacity, and processing infrastructure for small- and mid-sized Michigan growers, food processors, and emerging food entrepreneurs, especially those from BIPOC, immigrant, and low-income communities. The Food Hub also will help urban consumers in Flint - particularly in historically redlined and food-insecure neighborhoods - access affordable, healthy, and culturally appropriate food.
Telfair Museums – $15,000
Roots in the Rushes: African American Basketry of the Lowcountry
This grant will support a planned exhibition at the Telfair Museums in Savannah, GA that will focus on the bulrush basket craft tradition historically practiced by communities of enslaved individuals from West Africa that blended features of their heritage with European American cultural traits and eventually became known as the Gullah Geechee. The exhibition will explore the intricate history of this type of basketmaking in the region. Related programming will help contemporary audiences connect with this important and often overlooked craft tradition, including highlighting the artists who are preserving this art form today.
GVSU – WGVU Public Media – $25,000
Frontier to Freedom: Wilderness, Revolution, and Michigan Statehood
This grant will support the production of a documentary with the working title "Frontier to Freedom: Wilderness, Revolution, and Michigan Statehood," which is being filmed in recognition of the U.S. semiquincentennial. The documentary will explore the rich and often overlooked history of Michigan, tracing its evolution from a vast, untamed wilderness inhabited by Indigenous peoples to its emergence as the 26th U.S. state in 1837. Expert interviews, archival imagery, animated maps, and visuals of Michigan's beautiful landscapes will be used to describe and illustrate the region's formative years, its strategic significance during the American Revolution, and the complex socio-political forces that shaped Michigan's path to statehood. Americana's grant will support a particular focus on how the treatment of Indigenous communities in Michigan directly misaligned with the goals of freedom and self-determination that early Americans were espousing.
Historic Deerfield, Inc. – $25,000
Luce/Americana Curatorial Fellowship
With this grant, Historic Deerfield will create a one-year fellowship position (the Luce/Americana Curatorial Fellow) to research, share, and publish new scholarship on early 19th-century New England women artists. These artists often defied expectations, overcame serious obstacles with determination, and challenged gender roles to create artworks of significant value and importance. The fellow will focus on Historic Deerfield's collection of nearly 2000 objects of fine art and will generate greater understanding of the role of New England women in the arts of the 19th century.
Craft in America, Inc. – $25,000
American Handwork, a publication in conjunction with Handwork 2026
Americana awarded this grant to Craft in America to support a publication (American Handwork) that will trace the trajectory of American craft to reveal America's collective heritage. The book will focus on 100 defining objects of material culture from pre-contact, Colonial America, and the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, from a multitude of disciplines and with a focus on overlooked and under-recognized makers, to document the intersection of craft, American history, design, art, and decorative arts. The publication is part of a collaborative effort (Handwork 2026) that will showcase the importance of the handmade and celebrate the diversity of craft that defines America.
Citizens for a Safe and Clean Lake Superior – $25,000
Educating and Advocating for Wetland Protections in Marquette County - Phase 2
This grant will support the second phase of a targeted program to strengthen wetland protections in Powell, Marquette, and Chocolay townships in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, along the shores of Lake Superior. In the first phase of the project, Citizens for a Safe and Clean Lake Superior (CSCLS) engaged local residents in the need for wetland protections, reviewed local wetland protections, and began conversations with townships on the need for policy reform. In this second year, CSCLS will complete the project by maintaining the community's increased awareness and ramping up engagement with local decision makers to convince them to adopt CSCLS's policy recommendations. In addition, CSCLS will use a portion of the grant to expand a new program designed to incentivize landowners to protect wetlands on their properties through conservation easements.
Grow Jackson – $20,000
Food Hub Planning Project
This grant will enable Grow Jackson to complete a plan and strategy for developing a regional food hub in Jackson County to strengthen the local food economy and fill a critical infrastructure gap in South Central Michigan. The planned food hub will include a year-round farm stop (a locally sourced, consignment-based grocery store), kitchen space for light processing and packaging of wholesale products, community space for events and educational programming, and on-site space for the Jackson farmer's market. The hub will support farmers, food producers, and consumers in Jackson County by creating new markets, reducing barriers to food access, and fostering economic opportunities, and will strengthen the statewide food system by linking with food hubs in Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo, Detroit, and Grand Rapids.
Crosshatch Center for Art & Ecology – $25,000
Strengthening Small-scale Livestock Producers in Northwest Lower Michigan
Crosshatch Center for Art & Ecology will use this grant to support a pilot initiative designed to strengthen small-scale livestock farming systems in Northwest Lower Michigan. The initiative will create a business-to-business collaborative of livestock farmers that will work to identify and overcome barriers to small-scale livestock production, such as missing or inadequate infrastructure and processing capacity, lack of direct-to-consumer and wholesale market opportunities, the need for mentoring and peer learning, and the sharing of knowledge and information related to climate-smart pasture and livestock management practices. The ultimate goal of the project is to create more resilient supply chains and livestock farms that successfully mitigate economic and environmental risks in their business practices.
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