Welcome Community First Grant Team Members Class of 2024 – 2025!
We’re so excited for the upcoming 2024-2025 Community First Grant year. Bookmark this page to find resources and monthly updates to support your engagement with your partners and fellow Team Members.
Questions? Reach out to the WC team at foundation@wholefoods.com.
Monthly Webinar or Email Update Topics
Each month the Whole Cities Team will host a webinar or send a quick email to support CFG Team Members throughout the grant year. If you cannot join a live webinar, we will post a recording below so you’ll still be able to watch it!
Note, all topics are subject to change!
September Webinar > Start Strong
Watch a recording of our recent webinar to learn how to help your Community First Grant partnership bloom this year and how to motivate other Team Members to get involved during our Start Strong webinar.
Resources
Explore resources that will help you engage your fellow TMs and info to learn more about WC. If you ever need a new resource, just let our team know and we’ll try to help you create it!
Download Team Member Volunteer Sign Up Sheet – Post this BOH to help get TM volunteers to support your community partner.
Download Community Partner Volunteer Sign Up Sheet – Post this one-pager on behalf of your community partner to spread awareness for their volunteer event.
Download the Community First Principles Poster – Post this BOH to share with TMs about Whole Cities approach to our work.
Download a CFG email signature template to showcase your participation in the CFG program. If you have an existing email signature, download this CFG badge to add to it.
Listen to WC stories on Spotify or watch a variety of videos on YouTube to learn more about our work.
Check out our FAQ to learn more about holding a Whole Cities CFG Volunteer Event through the WFM Community Connections Program.
WFM Community Connections
Earlier this year, WFM launched Community Connections and while this sounds similar to the Community First Grant, it is a separate program. The Community First Grant is a program supported by Whole Cities, a project of the WFM Foundation, where TM’s nominate organizations that are working to improve food access in local communities for a Community First Grant. TM’s that nominated an organization to receive a Whole Cities CFG and are selected are expected to volunteer at least quarterly with their partner. This time is voluntary and unpaid.
Whole Foods Community Connections is a program supported by Whole Foods Market and not supported directly by WFM Foundation or Whole Cities. The goal of this program is to support team building events at each location. This can vary from visiting a local supplier, a recycling/composting provider, or volunteering at a local non-profit. Each location is budgeted to allow for these events and account for TM labor as a paid volunteer event.
While these are 2 separate programs, the programs can compliment each other. A CFG TM may use a Community Connection event to satisfy the quarterly volunteer requirement, which then would allow for TM’s to be paid for volunteering. If you are interested in hosting a Community Connections event to support your volunteer requirement for your CFG partner – and of course confirming with your partner they are interested and staffed to host a larger volunteer event – talk to your STL to get their approval and have them submit an event request. All parameters for Community Connections must be met to receive approval. If for whatever reason, your volunteer event is not approved by your STL or does not meet all the parameters for a Community Connections event, you are still expected to volunteer in that quarter with your nominated partner and your time and the time of any TM volunteer will be unpaid. Also, please keep in mind, each location can have 3 Community Connection events per year, but Team Members are expected to volunteer with their Community First Grant at least once a quarter, for 4 quarters.
