Panta Rhea Foundation
OVERVIEW: The California-based Panta Rhea Foundation supports food systems, sustainable agriculture and climate change through the lenses of social, racial and Indigenous justice. A newer program works at the intersection of climate change and art.
IP TAKE: Panta Rhea recently revamped its grantmaking strategies, maintaining a strong interest in food systems, sustainable argriculture and climate change as they overlap with social justice, racial and Indigenous rights and the arts. The foundation mainly works in the Americas and the Caribbean, supporting several regranting organizations that, in turn, support local and grassroots groups. The Panta Rhea Foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals, but it does provide an email address for its grants administrator, Gerlie Collado. It also likes collaboration and providing ongoing support to “core grantees,” which means this is a good long-term funder to know.
PROFILE: The Panta Rhea Foundation was established in 2001 by businessman and investor Hans Schoepflin and his oldest daughter Patricia Wefald. It is based in La Jolla, California. The name Panta Rhea refers to a quotation from Heraclitus meaning “all things flow,” which “honors the eternally interconnected possibility and promise of individual, familial and collective transformation.” In 2015, the foundation began transitioning to a non-family majority board, although Hans’s youngest daughter Lisl Shoepflin continues to serve as board chair.
The Panta Rhea Foundation’s mission is to “catalyze a just and sustainable world through food sovereignty, community power building, and grassroots liberation around the globe.” This funder works in the overlapping areas of food systems, sustainable agriculture, global development, racial justice, civic engagement, climate change and the arts through its five current initiatives: the Flow Fund, Food Sovereignty, Global Roots, People Power and Resilience and Renewal.
Grants for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems
The Panta Rhea Foundation supports sustainable agriculture and food systems via its Food Sovereignty fund, which focuses on “biodiversity and climate stability while fostering human dignity and thriving communities in the United States and around the world.” The foundation defines food sovereignty as “the right of all to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods and a community’s right to define their own food and agriculture systems.”
Grantmaking focuses on scientific, practical and social concepts of agroecology, which concern the study and organization of food systems and an “understanding of farming as part of broader economic, political, and social dynamics.”
Issues of interest within this funding area include leadership development, equitable access to food and “challenging corporate power” of the food production and distribution industries.
In recent years, the fund has collaborated with “funder colleagues” including the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, the Regenerative Agriculture Foundation and the Health and Environmental Funders Network.
This fund does not make grants directly to grassroots or community-led groups, giving instead to “pooled funds” that, in turn, provide support to front line food and agricultural organizations. These include the Agroecology Fund, the Black Farmers Fund, HEAL Food Alliance and the National Black Food & Justice Alliance.
Grants for Climate Change and Global Development
Panta Rhea’s Global Roots fund aims to “strengthen political and cultural power” with deep acknowledgement of conservation and climate change as social justice issues. The fund currently focuses its grantmaking on “the Caribbean and Americas” specifically prioritizing communities that “steward the planet’s most bioculturally vibrant places” and those that bear the “unjust legacies of colonization and slavery.”
While grantmaking in this area ultimately aims to support local and grassroots movements and organizations, the foundation gives mainly to large- and medium-sized regranters that support smaller, front-line groups.
Grantees include the Socio-Environmental Funds of the Global South, the Clara Lionel Foundation, the Urgent Action Fund Latin America and Grassroots International.
Panta Rhea also supports climate change mitigation via its newest grantmaking program, the Flow Fund Initiative, which was established in 2022 to support connections “between creativity and movement building.”
The initiative’s goals include support for “arts-based strategies” for climate advocacy, the engagement of the visual and performing arts in climate movements and involving leaders from the areas arts and climate justice in grantmaking decisions.
An early grant supported the Raizes Collective, a California-based group that works in Sonoma County to “empower and mobilize community through the arts, culture and environmental education.”
Grants for Civic Engagement, Democracy, Racial Justice, Indigenous Rights and Journalism
The foundation’s People Power Fund focuses mainly on U.S. “communities most impacted by injustices,” where it supports “ grassroots mobilization, public policy advocacy, creative practice, and communications in pursuit of a just and sustainable world.”
The foundation names “Black, Indigenous, recent immigrant, and cross-racial movements” as areas of high priority for this fund.
As with Panta Rhea’s other funds, a significant portion of its giving here focuses on climate justice.
One grantee partner, the Texas-based Hive Fund for Climate and Justice, works throughout the South to support “groups that are building power to accelerate an equitable transition to cleaner, renewable energy and rein in dirty energy.”
Another recipient organization, the Solutions Project, works to “fund and amplify climate justice solutions created by Black, Indigenous, immigrant, women and communities of color building an equitable world.”
Grants for Arts and Culture
Panta Rhea’s newest initiative, the Flow Fund Initiative, was established in 2022 to support the “connection between creativity and movement building,” mainly in the area of climate change and climate change education.
The foundation has committed to running this initiative for two years and limits grantmaking to organizations based in and working in the U.S. In its initial year, the program funded five “flow funders” who are “individuals actively engaged in arts and climate justice in communities across the United States.”
These individuals served as intermediaries who “recommended grants based on their insights and goals of the initiative.”
Arts and culture grantees include California’s Raizes Collective, the Berkeley Art Center Association, the Detroit Is Different Community Group and Studio Two Three of Richmond, Virginia.
Other Grantmaking Opportunities:
This funder’s Resilience and Renewal program provides organizational, operational, financial and strategic support to Panta Rhea’s past and present grantee partners, representing the foundation’s commitment to ongoing involvement in the causes and organizations it champions.
Important Grant Details:
Panta Rhea’s grants range from $5,000 to $100,000, with only a few exceptions.
This funder works with large- to medium-sized regranters in its areas of interest.
Sustainable food systems, agriculture and climate change are its largest areas of interest, but grantmaking tends to support programs and projects in these areas that overlap with issues of equity and social justice.
For additional information about past grantees, see the foundation’s individual program pages or its recent tax filings.
This funder does not accept unsolicited proposals for funding, but grants administrator Gerlie Collado can be reached by email.
General inquiries may be directed to the foundation’s staff via email or telephone at (626) 866-9964.
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