Community Grants

Our Focus

Spirit in Action (SIA) recognizes that micro-grants alone may not be enough to bring a community out of poverty. That’s why SIA offers grants to grassroots organizations and community groups in developing countries for projects that draw on local knowledge and bring people together to improve their communities and the surrounding environment.

Often, our grants are the seed that gets a project going. We support specific village projects that will empower the community. Typical projects address food security (agriculture or animal husbandry projects) or training opportunities (bio-intensive gardening, small business training, reforestation, construction of solar ovens).

We work closely and directly with grant recipients, corresponding months or even years before awarding a grant and monitoring grant progress for two years after implementation. We accept grant requests from current correspondents, other nonprofit organizations with whom we network, and other people connected to SIA.

Our Approach

We believe it is important to work closely with the grantee as they develop and implement their project – listening to their ideas of how to improve their community. After 65 years of working with others to promote self-help projects, Del Anderson (SIA’s Founder) developed this call to action to help others:

Let us offer assistance in ways that have lasting value rather than temporary value.
Let us follow the lead of the local leaders. Let us serve in humility and train local trainers. They will then train the villagers who already trust them.
Let us promote these attitudes:
Start where you are.
Use what you already have.
Prove to yourself that you have ability and potential.
Let us honor and call forth the spiritual essence of those with whom we work, honoring all spiritual traditions and faiths.

Grant Project Highlights

Here are some exemplary SIA Community Grant projects from recent years. Working together people in these communities have created prosperity, systems of support and new opportunities for those in need.
Common Ground Chickens (Kitale, Kenya)