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Wisconsin K-12 student groups can apply to receive $300 to $700 for a project to reduce the carbon footprint of their school community.

Learn more about the program by clicking the links below.

A school and neighborhood trash clean-up event organized by environmental interns at Reflo.
Elementary School Learns About Sustainable Agriculture
Oconomowoc Tower Garden Team

Who Should Apply?

Any passionate and committed group of Wisconsin K-12 students!

This can include school clubs, classes, community groups, or any other group of students passionate about the environment and being part of the climate solution. While we especially encourage high school groups to apply, younger students with higher levels of staff support or a partnership with older students are also welcome to apply. 

$300-$700
Typical Mini-Grant Budget Range
$5,000
Total Annual Funding Available

How much money is available?

Mini-grant budgets range from $300-$700. 

KEEP has $5,000 of funding available for the 2024-2025 school year. Up to $3,000 of that funding will be awarded to fall applicants, depending on the number and quality of applicants, with the remaining amount available for spring applicants.

Renewable Redwings Sheboygan South Composting Project
NASA Experiment Glen Hills
Escuela Verde Reusable Containers

Get Inspired!

Project Ideas

KEEP welcomes any project proposal that has the potential to reduce the carbon footprint of a school community. Need some project inspiration? You can see the full list of previously funded Green Team Mini-Grant projects on our Green Team Mini-Grant Storymap and can read more ideas below:

Scope 1 – direct emission reductions

  • Projects to support biking to school
  • Anti-idling campaigns
  • Doing an energy audit of the school
  • Adding shade to reduce the heat load on the school

Scope 2 – electricity use reductions

  • LEDs
  • Lighting occupancy sensors or lighting dimmers
  • Smart power strips, timers, etc.
  • Solar chargers

Scope 3 – other or indirect greenhouse gas emission reductions

  • Food waste reduction, diversion, composting, vermiculture
  • Projects to support item reuse or repurposing
  • Reusable containers
  • Local food

Education

  • Solar array display
  • Energy education
  • Energy education software
  • Attending a sustainability conference
  • Materials for KidWind, Solar Olympics, etc.

Not all projects have an equally direct impact on carbon footprint reductions, so be prepared to defend your project choice with data!

How to apply

Connect with KEEP by submitting the Mini-Grant Idea Form. If you have any questions, attend an Info Session or email Heather Phelps at Heather.Phelps@uwsp.edu. The fall deadline for the Idea Form is October 25 of the current school year. If you aren’t able to apply by the fall deadline, the spring deadline is February 14.

After sharing your project idea, your team can begin to plan your Green Team Mini-Grant Application. Teams can preview the application questions.​

KEEP will visit your team virtually to meet with student team members and further refine the project idea.

We will discuss ways to make your idea stronger, including adding baseline measurements related to your project (e.g., waste, energy use, etc.). KEEP can help provide tools and technical assistance to establish a good baseline measurement.

We will also talk about how to build a project budget and how to consider the long-term impact of the project.

Based on the school visit with KEEP, students will refine their idea and submit a Mini-Grant Application. This must include a budget for how the requested money will be spent.

The fall application deadline is December 6. The spring deadline for Mini-Grant applications is March 21.

KEEP will evaluate the Mini-Grant Applications based on a rubric

When an application is approved, KEEP will notify your team lead and a check will be sent to your school. If an application is not approved, KEEP staff will provide feedback on how to submit a stronger application next time. 

Students teams that receive funding will carry out the project plan as proposed.

At the end of the school year, student teams will report back about their outcomes and what they accomplished.

Student teams and KEEP will celebrate and share project successes with other students and stakeholders across the state!

Dates & Deadlines

2024-2025

Fall Deadlines:
  • October 14 or 17Green Team Mini-Grant Info Session (Zoom)
  • October 25Idea Form – Fall Deadline 
  • December 6Application Form – Fall Deadline 
  • Late December to early January – Winners will be announced 
  • Early January – Money will be distributed 
    • Student groups who are approved for fall funding have from when they receive funds until May to work on their project
Spring Deadlines:
Deadlines for Both Groups:
  • May 9 – Draft of the final report due – for ALL groups
  • May 19 at 4 pm – Project Share-Out event via Zoom – ALL groups required to have at least one person attend or share a video with the group
  • May 30Final reports due – for ALL groups
Have more questions? Email Heather Phelps for more information on Green Teams support.

Key Resources


Frequently Asked Questions

In different years – yes. If someone from your school applied for a grant last year, you can apply again for a grant this year. Note that KEEP will give a higher priority to applications from schools that haven’t received much (or any) funding from KEEP before.

If you apply for a grant in the fall and are denied, you may try again in the spring. KEEP will be happy to give you suggestions on how to improve your grant application. KEEP will not fund multiple grants for the same school during the same school year.

The grants are only for projects that reduce the school’s carbon footprint, BUT there are a lot of ways to connect projects to a school’s carbon footprint. Be creative! A school garden doesn’t decrease your school’s carbon footprint as directly as turning off the lights does, but it can still make a difference. For example, will you eat the food you grow in the garden? Will you eat the food grown in the garden instead of food grown somewhere else and trucked in? What is the carbon footprint of that transportation which you will avoid?

KEEP can help you brainstorm ideas, but don’t forget that you’ll need to defend your arguments with CO2 emissions calculations, so if it’s something completely unrelated (e.g. building bat houses), it might be better to look for other sources of funding or think of a different project to do for the Mini-Grant.

This will be a very good topic to research before you write your grant application! The short answer is that it’s how much carbon dioxide (or other greenhouse gases like methane) go into the atmosphere because of your school. This can include direct CO2 emissions (like burning natural gas to heat your school) or indirect CO2 emissions (from the power plant that gives your school electricity or parents driving students to school) or even the manufacturing of things that your school uses.

Check out https://www.epa.gov/climateleadership/scope-1-and-scope-2-inventory-guidance for more information on the types of carbon emissions an organization can produce. KEEP is most interested in projects that reduce scope 1 emissions, then scope 2, and lastly scope 3 (upstream or downstream).

Not completely alone! All projects need at least one adult advisor (someone either at the school or part of a registered nonprofit you’re working with) to accept and manage the money. All projects need at least three students working together to apply (But the students don’t need to be in the same grade level, class, club, or any other official organization. You only need to decide to work together on this).

It depends. KEEP would like at least some data and conclusions about the project by the final report due date, but this doesn’t have to be completely “finished” data (for example, “300 carrot seedlings sprouted and we have 27 students who have volunteered to water them over the summer, but they won’t be fully grown and ready to eat in the cafeteria until next fall.”).  However, KEEP is concerned about projects that won’t even be started until the summer or next fall. In that case, KEEP recommends applying for the Mini-Grant the following fall, so there’s time to do the project during the same school year as you apply. If your school administration says that part of the project has to be done during the summer (for example installing new motion sensor switches), please talk to KEEP and we’ll decide on a case-by-case basis.

If your project requires doing something that someone in your school could say “No” to. Specifically:

  1. If you want to turn off computers at night, you need a letter of support from your school’s IT person that it’s okay for the computers to be fully off at night instead of asleep and waiting for updates.
  2. If you want to serve food you’ve grown at your school, you need a letter of support from your school nutrition staff saying that they are willing to serve it.  (Serving homegrown food in the cafeteria is legal, but not all cafeteria staff may be aware of that or comfortable with it. If you get objections, KEEP staff have resources that may help.)
  3. If you want to install something (LED bulbs, motion sensors switches, etc.), you need a letter of support from your school’s facilities staff that they approve the installation.  This should state whether facilities staff will do the installation themselves, or whether someone will need to be hired to do the installation, and if so, what that will cost and whether or not it will be paid for through Mini-Grant funds or some other funding source (in which case tell us what that is).
  4. If you have another idea and you’re unsure if it requires a letter of support, either ask KEEP, or just include the letter – it’s always better to have extra support than not enough support!

No. This is a grant for students. If none of the students in your group have email addresses that can accept outside emails, your teacher/advisor can do the emailing back and forth with KEEP. If necessary, your teacher/advisor can take what you’ve written and copy and paste it into the grant application form. And your teacher/advisor can always give you help and support as you figure out what to write (and so can KEEP!). But the actual text of the grant application should be written by students.

KEEP will decide this on a case-by-case basis. If you’re only a very small amount over, KEEP will still consider your grant application, but we may put it at a lower priority depending on how far it is over. If you need a lot more than $700 to do your project, KEEP will either ask you to rewrite your project to be within our budget, or suggest that you look for a different grant to apply for.

No. The project has to benefit one or more schools, and the students involved have to be WI K-12 students, but it’s okay if the group got together through a club/organization/program outside of school, and it’s okay to either pick one school to support with your Mini-Grant project or support several schools at the same time. If you want to do a really complicated project involving lots of schools, please talk to KEEP first.

Possibly. Please talk to KEEP to discuss the details and check whether we have money available.

Yes and no. KEEP cannot support a project by just adding money to a large fundraising pile.  However, KEEP can help with specific, “line item” costs related to the project. These have to be specific items or payments that you can write in your budget.

For example, KEEP likes projects related to educating students, so you could develop a project to put up a screen in your school to show how much electricity your solar panels are generating at a given moment. KEEP could help pay for the screen, the installation, and the software programming (plus we have free lessons and training for teachers so they can use this information in their classes!), but we aren’t able to put $700 towards a $60,000 solar array installation bill.

Yes, if you have a project advisor or someone else with available money who is comfortable doing so. However, we recommend that you wait to at least find out whether the project is approved or not, or you might end up not being able to be reimbursed if the project isn’t approved.

Check out these example Mini-Grant applications from previous student groups! Note that student information has been removed and the application questions have changed slightly since these applications.


Project partners