Grants for Botanical Gardens
Whether you’re a zoo, museum, or community center, botanical gardens can be a great addition to your institution and local environment. Not only are they beautiful and aesthetically pleasurable to walk through, they’re a great benefit to the wellbeing and health of your visitors and members.
Public funding organizations understand the value of botanical gardens, and there are a number of grants that you can apply for to receive funding for your own botanical garden.
Below we’ll look at everything you need to know about applying for grants for botanical gardens.
The importance of Public Garden on the Community
Why are botanical gardens important? Let’s look at some of the key benefits that a public botanical garden can bring to your organization and local community.
- Education
- Botanical gardens present cultural and nonprofit institutions with a unique opportunity to educate their members and visitors. When teaming up with a local school, for example, you can bring on botanists to educate students and visitors about plant biology and taxonomy. When students can apply what they learn in text books to real life examples, they can see the real value of what they’re learning in a fun and engaging way. Having a botanist on hand is also great for your regular guests to hold presentations and plant-life workshops.
- Conservation
- A lot of organizations that offer grants for botanical gardens are also conducting research about plant-life and conservation. Informing your guests about the important research these groups are doing and the efforts they’re making toward conservation will not only underscore the importance of your botanical gardens, it can encourage guests to donate to your cause. You can highlight conservation best practices, efficiency in conservation, biodiversity standards, and the short/long-term impacts of conservation.
- Community gardens
- If you’re a nonprofit raising funds for a local cause, gardens and botanical gardens have real immediate impacts for your local community. Community gardens increase access to fresh foods, create volunteering opportunities for interested members of your community, improve nutrition habits through education efforts, and provide opportunities for exercise in garden maintenance.
- Reshaping your community
- Botanical gardens are great additions to any community. They are pleasing to look at, offer nutritional and fitness value, and contribute to the overall aesthetic and appeal of any neighborhood. For a lot of inner city and impoverished areas, these gardens are an important contribution to the overall health and wellbeing of the people living in and around the community.
Public and private funds for gardens
When looking for grants for your botanical garden, there are generally two routes: public and private funds.
Public grants:
Public grants come from federal agencies, which tend to have a lot of resources. Some advantages of public grants are that they tend to pay for all of your costs and needs, and there are a wide range of grants available for different types of projects and efforts. Public grants also tend to be more hands on, helping organizations with the planning and execution of their gardens.
Some of the issues with public grants is that they tend to come with a lot of red tape. Organizations have to apply through lengthy application forms and meet a number of requirements and criteria before funding can be approved. It’s also slightly more difficult, though not impossible, to receive public funding if you’re a smaller institution. Public funding tends to prioritize larger institutions with a proven track record.
Private Grants:
Private funding on the other hand, have a much simpler application process, which leads to a quicker turnaround for funding. Generally speaking, these are less competitive than public grants, which will increase your chances of receiving funding.
Some of the downsides of private funding is that, although the process is more simple, grants will offer less money. It’s also more difficult to get hands-on help and personal developmental aid.
Other ways to receive funding for your botanical garden is through earning the funds on your own through selling tickets or holding local fundraisers. For cultural institutions or nonprofits, this means having an advanced ticketing and donor management system, like ACME Ticketing, that will allow you to sell tickets online, market your cause, and generate traffic to your website.
Grant resources
Here are a few botanical garden grant resources that you can start applying for today.
- American Academy of Dermatology Shade Structure Grant, which offers up to $8,000 to schools and nonprofits for outdoor shade structures that can provide additional shading to your garden.
- Annie’s Grants for Gardens is dedicated to connecting gardens to kids. Annie’s grant typically teams up with schools and educational institutions, and it offers up to $5,000 of support.
- Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Education Grants also aim to support youth and education. They’re also very hands-on in working with schools to gain the necessary skills to make informed decisions and turn efforts to action.
- The Museum Assessment Program has been helping to fund museums since 1981, and will aid museums in both funding and one-on-one support to meet their goals and needs. They award up to $6,000 to museums.
ACME can make fundraising simple
ACME’s advanced ticketing technology, seamless management system, and sleek design will make it easy for guests to donate to your cause and become a member of your community.
Cloud-based ticketing, offline ticketing, and membership marketing are just a few ways you can engage donors and gain the funding you need for your next botanical garden or project.
Try the ACME demo to see how you can generate funds for your organization today.