Wallace HUFED Center Webinar
On August 19, Wallace Center's National Good Food Network monthly webinar series featured the work of the HUFED Center. Hear from the project manager on HUFED's goals and strategy, meet two of our grantees, and find out about the upcoming RFP process. The webinar was recorded and is now posted online.
Click here to view the webinar recording online, download the slides, and more.

And be sure to sign up for project updates to stay up to date on this and other project news.

Latest Wallace HUFED Center News
The Year One grant process is now complete. Check back here for updates on the Year Two grant process.

overview of the wallace hufed center

Welcome to the Healthy Urban Food Enterprise Development Center at the Wallace Center at Winrock International. The HUFED Center, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s  National Institute for Food and Agriculture (formerly Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service or CSREES), will support greater  access to healthy affordable food in communities across the country. HUFED is unique in that it will provide grants and technical assistance for enterprise development and focus on getting more healthy food—including local food—into communities who have limited access.

The Wallace Center supports entrepreneurs and communities as they build a new, 21st century food system that is healthier for people, the environment, and the economy. HUFED will build on Wallace’s expertise in economic development through local food enterprises (read more about our Community Food Enterprise project), and will work with the National Good Food Network, a partnership of nonprofits, for-profits, researchers, government, funders, and practitioners dedicated to “scaling-up” the aggregation and distribution of local food (read more about the National Good Food Network).

hufed Center objectives

The specific goals of the Wallace HUFED Center are to:

1. Develop more socially and economically equitable access to high quality, affordable, and fresh foods in communities with healthy food deficits;
2. Support small- and mid-sized producer incomes and economic sustainability;
3. Promote and support market-based enterprises with the best chance for long-term success in addressing the structural deficits in the food distribution system; and
4. Determine successful and less-successful project strategies so as to enable effective adaptation or replication in similar communities nationwide.

Our main objectives center on grantmaking and technical assistance activities that address four major supply and retail bottlenecks, which limit low income consumer access to affordable healthy food:

1. Reduce the supply chain bottleneck in the aggregation and processing of healthy, and locally produced food (whether fresh or processed in some way).
2. Increase the flow of healthy, fresh, and local food being distributed by resellers, wholesalers, and private marketing channels (e.g. supermarket warehouses; school food service providers).
3. Increase the number of retail sites (conventional or alternative, niche or other innovative approaches to retail) with healthy food available in underserved areas.
4. Increase the availability of healthy food options within existing retail sites.
   

HUFED center updates

May 12, 2010
The Wallace HUFED Center has completed its review process and has selected 13 award finalists for Year One of the Healthy Urban Food Enterprise Development (HUFED) Center. These awards are currently under review for final approval by USDA and we expect to have final approvals by June 1, 2010.  Upon notification of approval, we will  make an official announcement of our selected grantees, along with descriptions of their enterprises and proposed projects. This announcement will be posted online at www.wallacecenter.org/hufed.

In selecting these finalists, we were particularly impressed with a) the strength of their proposed enterprise within the guidelines we provided; b) their innovation and ability to bring innovative solutions to the national agenda around food access; c) their ability to hit the ground running and deliver results within the life of the grant; and d) their contribution to the overall diversity of the grant portfolio (in terms of communities served, geography, size of enterprise, and other grant selection criteria), which will collectively support broader impacts and contribute to the development of successful strategies and replicable models.

These 13 finalists were selected from an initial pool of 538 Letters of Interest, 47 of whom were invited to submit full proposals. The sheer volume of applications we received made for a very competitive process, and clearly demonstrates the need to continue and grow funding for enterprises doing this important work; at the same time, the strength, diversity, and innovation of the proposals received reflects the extraordinary potential impact of enterprises dedicated to increasing the supply of and access to Good Food. Once grantee projects are in full swing, we will begin a deeper process of analysis and reflection on the larger pool of 538 applications we received, and what lessons, innovations, and strategies for improving food access and enterprise development they provide for all of our work. We’ll continue to share this learning as the Wallace HUFED Center evolves; stay in touch via www.wallacecenter.org/hufed or sign up for HUFED Updates.

Finally, we look forward to refining and improving our grant application and review process for Year Two; we welcome your feedback and suggestions at HUFED@winrock.org.

March 25, 2010 - Initial Review of 538 LOIs Complete; 46 Invited to Submit Full Proposal
Wallace Healthy Urban Food Enterprise Development (HUFED) Center is pleased to announce completion of the review process for 538 Letters of Interest (LOIs) received from nearly all 50 states.  It was inspiring to receive so many strong and innovative concepts that both illustrate the need and possible solutions.  Working with our review panel, 46 enterprises/projects that illustrate market-based solutions to food access issues and the capacity to make tremendous impact were selected. These 46 have been asked to submit a full proposal for consideration for funding.  Our schedule anticipates their submission of a full proposal by April 19, 2010. 

As anticipated, we have received many more strong concepts than we can possibly fund at this time. The rationale for our two step process (solicitation of LOIs, followed by invited full proposals) was to encourage innovation and concept submissions but not ask each applicant to invest in developing a full proposal when we knew response would be strong and ultimately a small number would be funded.  From the smaller group of selected LOIs, the odds of securing funding are much higher and should justify more effort and time put into proposal preparation.  As a result, there were many strong enterprise projects submitted and unfortunately we were not able to invite proposals from all of them.  We would like to thank all of those who submitted an LOI and encourage them to continue to pursue their enterprise. 

Briefly, our review was based upon: organizational capacity; clarity of vision and proposed strategy; extent to which the enterprise addressesed the core HUFED goals and objectives; strong and appropriate partnerships as needed; a clear and logical set of activities, impacts, and measures; and, a plan for documenting and communicating lessons learned.  We also strove for diversity among organization type, among project strategies or approaches and a good representation of:  US regions; urban/rural; diverse demographics; business type; and audience targeted.  

We encourage those who were not selected to stay connected, sign up for the HUFED mailing list, and stay tuned for future funding opportunities.  This is the first year HUFED Center is offering grants and we anticipate future requests for proposals and other opportunities for learning and networking. 

Those who were invited to submit a proposal will need to submit their full proposal to us by April 19, 2010 by 4pm Eastern time. Final award decisions will be complete by May 7, 2010. We will post the names and project information on award recipients when they are finalized.

Estimated Timeline 

NOTIFICATIONS

If you would like to receive email notifications when this site is updated or when we release the Grant Guidelines, please sign up for HUFED project updates.

QUESTIONS/CONTACT

MORE INFORMATION FROM USDA