What
FFDI is playing an anchor role for the broader food and farm movement. This collaborative effort was born out of a shared recognition that our food and farm system must be fundamentally reshaped to address climate change and embody sustainability and equity.
The movement working toward this vision is broad, diverse, and deeply committed, but too often under-resourced and stretched thin. The organizations doing the most vital work on the ground lack the long-term stability, policy capacity, and coordination infrastructure they need to build and wield power effectively.
Background
This initiative began as a joint effort to strengthen grassroots organizations’ engagement in the 2023 Farm Bill process. FFDI has since evolved into a coordinated, multi-partner initiative to build enduring movement infrastructure for policy change: connecting advocacy, organizing, and capacity-building. At the heart of this work is a belief that organizational health is movement health. Thriving, well-resourced organizations, especially BIPOC-led and grassroots base-building groups, are essential for sustaining leadership, influencing policy, and building collective power over time.
The initiative’s shared goals are:
- Grow grassroots and BIPOC-led organizations’ influence in federal and state policy, and
- Strengthen organizational health, policy and organizing capacity, and leadership development across the movement.
FFDI Projects and Initiatives
To meet FFDI’s goals and support movement-wide response strategies that are already underway, FFDI deploys funds to:
- help grassroots organizations mobilize on timely organizing and advocacy needs,
- conduct longer-term power-building to strengthen the voices of BIPOC-led and base-building organizations in key states/regions, and
- support movement skill-building on advocacy, organizing, and organizational safety for the long term through trainings, convenings, and communities of practice.
Some examples of FFDI’s current offerings include:
Short-Term Advocacy Support through Farm Bill Rapid Response Fund
FFDI administers mobilizing mini-grants (up to $10,000) on a periodic annual cycle to help grassroots organizations engage in strategic quick-response organizing and advocacy opportunities. Funds are governed under a participatory decision making structure and awards are open to member organizations of these coalitions:
- HEAL (Health, Environment, Agriculture, Labor) Food Alliance
- National Family Farm Coalition
- National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition
- Native Farm Bill Coalition
- Rural Coalition
In 2026, the Farm Bill Rapid Response Fund awarded over $530,000 in grants to nearly 70 organizations pursuing targeted and timely grassroots policy advocacy projects across the United States.
Medium-Term Policy Advocacy
FFDI makes targeted, multi-year investments in power building to help farmer-led organizations scale up their organizing and advocacy infrastructure. Funding decisions are informed by nationwide power mapping and in consultation with trusted in-state leaders.
Long-Term Community Organizing
The Grassroots Farm Policy Community distributes capacity-building dollars and hands-on technical support to BIPOC-serving, under-resourced organizations stepping into policy advocacy work. Funds are governed under a participatory decision making structure.
Cross-Cutting Support
We are developing spaces for communities of practice & coordinated skill building – cross-coalition national-scale efforts to build skills, share tactics and learnings, and convene to align vision and strategy.
Funding
FFDI is made possible by philanthropic support from the Waverley Street Foundation
