America's Healthy Food Financing Initiative Local and Regional Healthy Food Financing Partnerships Program (HFFI Partnerships Program)

Anne Misak
help@investinginfood.com
215.574.5862

The HFFI Partnerships Program is offering funding to build the capacity of locally and regionally focused Healthy Food Financing Partnerships to provide financial and technical assistance to eligible healthy food retailers and post-harvest food retail supply chain enterprises.

Funding may be requested for capacity building and credit enhancement activities.

Proposed capacity building activities include, but are not limited to:

• Personnel, fringe, and/or contractual expenses to administer the program
• Surveying local communities to identify food access gaps/challenges and assets
• Analyzing data to identify food access gaps and develop financial products to serve food retail and food enterprises in eligible areas
• Seeking additional partners for the initiative
• Identifying a local lender to provide financial assistance through a loan fund
• Supporting projects that are applying for assistance through HFFI or other healthy food retail loan or grant programs
• Providing technical assistance to eligible food retail and food enterprises within the proposed service area
• Business development, outreach, and promotion to food retail and food enterprises in the service area
• Site visits, travel, presentations, and other events, meetings, and marketing strategies for promotion, outreach, business development, and portfolio administration related to the project
• Creation and distribution of marketing and/or outreach materials and strategies
• Creation and distribution of program materials, applications, forms, software, and other program administrative costs
• Staff training
• Contractual work necessary to launch or grow the food financing program, such as legal counsel to review loan or grant documents, creation of a legal opinion for lending authorization, or accounting support

Eligible credit enhancement activities include, but are not limited to:

• The establishment and use of flexible credit requirements for lending activity to eligible projects
• Buying down interest rates from applicants' existing loan policies and products to better meet market demand
• Adapting lending policies
• Establishing a dedicated loan loss reserve or guarantee pool to offset increased risk of lending to eligible projects
• Establishing a pool of funds to offset risk of lending to eligible projects that may not meet traditional collateral requirements
• Subsidizing closing costs
• Providing grants to eligible projects to cover operating costs, planning, equipment purchases, or other relevant activities

Priority points will be given to:

• Communities and regions that have been underserved by HFFI and other state/local investments
• Rural areas
• Projects that will support regional food systems and locally grown foods
• Projects that include or involve diverse participants representing the relevant demographics, sectors, geographies, and communities being served by the partnership
• Projects that create or retain quality jobs for low- income residents in the community

Eligible applicants:

• Regional, state, and local public-private partnerships that are organized to improve access to fresh, healthy foods and provide financial and technical assistance to eligible projects
• Public-private partnerships containing at least 2 entities, one of which must be a public entity such as a local, state, or tribal government, authority, or agency. The other partner(s) may be entities such as nonprofit organizations, private businesses, foundations and funders' collaboratives, community development financial institutions, credit unions, community development organizations, food policy councils, food systems and food access organizations, among others.

Applicants must demonstrate how their proposed partnership currently does or will contribute to healthy food access through the availability of an assortment of both staple and perishable foods for retail sale at SNAP authorized retailers in rural and other eligible areas.

Eligibility check form

Award range: Capacity Building grants will be between $200,000 - $1,000,000, and Credit Enhancement grants will be between $500,000 - $3,000,000.
Project period: Up to 3 years
Estimated number of awards: 7-12
Estimated total program funding: $20,000,000

A link to the application instructions is available on the program website.

Submit completed applications through the online application portal.

Applicant webinar
(Registration required)
July 21, 2026
1:00 p.m. Eastern