Environmental Health & Justice Grants

Learn more about the Environmental Health & Justice Grants Portal on this FAQs page.

Frequently Asked Questions about the Grants Portal

Q:  What’s the Environmental Health & Justice Grants portal?

A:   This portal, developed in partnership with the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA), gives HEFN members access to information about grants made by EGA and HEFN members related to environmental health and environmental justice.  EGA members also may access this data through the EGA website.

Q:  Where does the data come from?

A:   The grants data in this portal comes from EGA’s Tracking the Field (TTF) database.  EGA tracks its members’ environmental giving through its TTF research initiative, drawing on foundations’ 990 filings, grantor and grantee websites.  Through its HEFN partnership, EGA has added HEFN members’ environmental health and justice-related grants to the TTF database as well.  

Q:  Why are HEFN and EGA partnering in this project?

A:   Both networks have members making grants related to environmental health and justice.  We’re partnering to improve our collective understanding of this critical giving area, and to help funders find each other as potential partners for more impactful investments.  HEFN also will use this grants data to track progress towards its goal of expanding giving in environmental health and justice.

Q:  How are grants coded in the database?

A:  EGA uses its own taxonomy to code grants in the TTF database.  Each grant gets a code for primary and secondary issues, strategy, region, impact area, and audience.   Because environmental health issues are so intersectional, and because grant descriptions in publicly available information varies a lot, many environmental health-related grants may have gotten other primary and secondary issue codes (like “energy” and “water”).  

New in 2018:  EGA and HEFN have added ten new taxonomy codes making it easier to track and search for more grants related to environmental health.  The  expanded HEFN taxonomy includes 5 “issue” codes to find grants related to specific environmental health and justice issues, as well as 5 “audience” codes to find grants aimed at supporting specific populations that often are highly impacted by environmental health and justice problems.  

View the whole EGA HEFN Taxonomy 2018.

Q:  How much of the TTF grants data on EGA and HEFN members is in the portal?

A:   The HEFN portal allows HEFN members to see all of the 2015 and 2016 grants in the TTF database made by EGA or HEFN members that were coded as related to environmental health, toxics, environmental justice, or indigenous populations/communities issues and/or with the expanded HEFN issue taxonomy.  

Q: How many years of grants data are included?

A:  At present, the HEFN portal provides access to 2015 and 2019 grants data.  The portal will be updated in fall 2022 to include 2020 grants data.  

Q:  How can I explore data in the portal?

A:   You may search by entering a grantor (funder),  grantee name, or year. Or use any of the pull-down options in the other search fields.  A “Keywords” search box enables you to look for grants by searching for keywords in the grant descriptions. To search for a phrase, please put the whole phrase in quotation marks in the “Keywords” search box.

Q:  What if I have questions or issues with my foundation’s grants data?

A:   HEFN and EGA welcome your help in improving the data as a resource.  Please contact Franny Chiles Canfield to discuss, improve, or add your foundation’s grants data listings.

Q:  How do I get more information about environmental health and justice grants than I can find using the portal search?

A:  The EGA research team can do customized searches and analysis of TTF data for EGA and HEFN members, usually for a research fee dependent on the nature of the request; contact Franny Chiles Canfield.  HEFN staff have more information about environmental health and justice philanthropy beyond grants data; contact hefn@hefn.org.

Q:  Who can see this information?

A:   The information is password-protected, accessible only to HEFN members logged into the HEFN website and only to EGA members logged into EGA’s website.

Q: Can I share this information?

A:  The Environmental Health & Justice Grants information is restricted for members-only use.