The Food Access and Retail Expansion Fund supports innovative fresh food retail and food system enterprises that seek to improve access to healthy food in underserved areas through food retail.
Donor Name: Healthy Food Financing Initiative
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 10/14/2024
Size of the Grant: More than $1 million
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
This Request for Applications (RFA) is for the 2024-2025 HFFI Food Access and Retail Expansion Fund (HFFI FARE Fund). Over the next 5 years, the new program will offer $60 million in loans, grants, and technical assistance for the predevelopment, planning, and implementation of eligible projects aiming to increase food access, and strengthen, expand, and innovate within the food retail supply chain.
Funding could assist projects with a variety of aspects of project development, renovation, and/or expansion. Grants and loans are designed to be one-time investments of capital into a food retail or food enterprise project in order to address higher costs and initial barriers to entry in underserved rural and urban areas. Grant and loan funds should unlock additional sources of capital, catalyze project sustainability, meet financing gaps, and/or enable deeper impact or project reach. Technical Assistance (TA) will be available to support selected early-stage planning and predevelopment projects where resources would help build local capacity to develop a food retail outlet or food enterprise and would clarify or advance an eligible project.
Priority Areas
Priority will be given to projects planning business models that:

Will be located in Very Low-Income Communities
Will create or retain Quality Jobs for low-income residents in the community
Will support regional food systems and locally grown foods to the maximum extent possible
Will be accessible by public transit (in areas that are served by public transit)
Will involve women-owned or controlled businesses
Will involve Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)-owned or controlled businesses
Will be located in Rural Areas
Will be located in communities that have been underserved by HFFI investment, including other national, state, and/or local HFFI programs
If applying for a grant, are also applying for a loan and need the grant to make the project viable.

Project Considerations 
HFFI encourage applications that demonstrate:

Sustainability: Project applications that request assistance to facilitate the implementation of an economically sustainable project, i.e. not primarily dependent on uncommitted sources of revenue, after the grant period is over and/or the loan has been repaid.
Community Involvement: Project applications with diverse and relevant partnerships and collaborations where the project design and operation plan reflects the inclusion of stakeholder communities and targeted beneficiaries.
Innovation: Project applications that aim to test, scale, and/or demonstrate new, emerging, outside the box, creative and/or alternative approaches to addressing food retail access challenges.
Replicability: Project applications that include approaches to preserving or expanding access to food retail that might be replicated or scaled in other communities.
Project Readiness: Project applications that demonstrate a well-thought out, planned project that is ready for implementation but for the requested assistance.
Unlocking Capital Access: Project applications where requested funds would enable the applicant to access additional sources of capital to fund their project, including debt financing and/or other sources of public or private capital.

Funding Information
For the 2024-2025 funding cycle, at least $9,000,000 is available for implementation grants, at least $1,500,000 is available for technical assistance, and at least $16,000,000 is available for loans.
Eligibility Criteria
The FARE Fund will provide grants, loans, and technical assistance to eligible organizations in eligible Underserved Areas to implement a project that is designed to improve access to fresh, Healthy Food through food retail. The program will support projects aiming to strengthen, expand, and innovate within the food retail supply chain. The program could assist a variety of organizations, business models, and capital needs of ventures that process, distribute, aggregate, market, and sell healthy, fresh, and affordable foods to underserved communities and markets. Applicants may be a variety of different kinds of organizations or businesses, but applications should demonstrate how funding will support the creation, expansion, or retention of a food retail or food enterprise business model. Applicants must demonstrate how their proposed project will contribute to food access through the availability of Staple and Perishable Foods for retail sale.
Eligible Organizations:

For-profit business enterprises (including a corporation, limited liability company, sole proprietor, public benefit corporation)
Cooperatively owned businesses
Tax-exempt nonprofit corporations
Institutions of higher education
State and local governments and governmental agencies, authorities, commissions and food policy councils
Tribal governments and tribal governmental agencies, authorities, and food policy councils.

For more information, visit HFFI.

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