Environmental Grant Program is sponsored by Marisla Foundation. The Environmental Grant Program focuses on marine resources conservation, emphasizing the protection of biodiversity in regions like California, Northwest Mexico, Hawaii, and the Western Pacific.

How to get a grant from the Marisla Foundation | Inside Philanthropy OVERVIEW: Marisla invests in human services and the environment. Past environmental grantmaking includes projects that preserve rainforests, restrict human and wildlife exposure to toxic chemicals, and protect habitats in the American West, Latin America, and southeast Asia.

Human services grantmaking prioritizes Southern California women’s physical, mental, and financial health, and focuses on domestic violence, homelessness, substance abuse, and vocational training. IP TAKE: Marisla is a tightly focused private foundation with an application process and little appetite for outreach that doesn’t deeply align with its mission.

The upside: it accepts proposals quarterly through an online system and doesn’t require an LOI. The catch, by its own admission, is stiff competition—hundreds of proposals, few awards, and currently limited new grantmaking as it recalibrates giving. This is a funder where precision beats polish.

Human services proposals should center women in crisis in Orange County or Los Angeles, especially around housing, addiction recovery, domestic violence, and workforce pathways. Environmental work needs to land squarely in marine/coastal biodiversity within Marisla’s geographies or in targeted efforts on toxic chemicals. If you can’t describe your fit in a sentence using the funder’s own language, it’s likely not a viable prospect.

Marisla uses an online-only system with an eligibility quiz, caps indirect costs at 15%, discourages multiple submissions, and typically considers just one request per organization each year. The expectation is a disciplined, tightly argued proposal that stands on its own. Recent 990 data show a funder still moving significant dollars—about $51.

9 million in revenue and $48. 1 million in charitable disbursements in 2024, alongside roughly 194 grants. The takeaway: Marisla is active, but not broadly open to new relationships.

The strongest approach is a right-sized request that reads as a direct extension of its existing priorities—not a stretch. Grants for Environmental and Marine Conservation Marisla’s environmental program largely supports activities that “promote the conservation of biological diversity and advance sustainable ecosystem management. ” It emphasizes marine conservation in western North America, Chile, and the Western Pacific.

It also funds work addressing health and environmental threats caused by toxic chemicals. Marisla further says it can recommend Environment Program funds to some international projects through donor-advised fund partners.

Environmental funding is the broader public-facing entry point because its geography extends beyond Southern California and includes international work via donor-advised fund partners, while Human Services is tightly restricted to LA/Orange County. But that does not mean Environment is easier; Marisla explicitly says it funds only a small number of proposals and is currently funding few new grantees.

California receives a significant portion of Marisla’s grantmaking, but the foundation funds organizations across the globe. One past grantee, the Resources Legacy Fund, works to preserve the state’s oceans and to implement the Marine Life Protection Act. Marisla funds established organizations, such as the Nature Conservancy and the Resources Legacy Fund, which each receive millions annually for their conservation work.

Smaller grantees include the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, the Rogue River and Friends of the Los Angeles River for local restoration work. Marisla’s grants to smaller organizations range from $20,000 to $100,000 if their work takes place across Marisla’s areas of geographic focus. On occasion, Marisla funds international projects.

The Pacific nation of Palau received a $25,000 Marisla grant for the Palau Conservation Society’s work in the island’s Ngerikiil River watershed. The Chilean nonprofit Centro Ecoceanos received a $25,000 grant to protect lakes and rivers in Chile. Grants for Housing, Community Development, Women and Girls Marisla’s human services funding has a local geographical focus, in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

This program supports women in crisis, with emphasis on their physical, emotional and mental health, and financial wellbeing. The website says grants support stable housing, addiction treatment, services for adult and child domestic violence survivors, and vocational training. Geography is limited to Orange County and Los Angeles, California.

Marisla also states that Human Services grants are made through the Orange County Community Foundation. To win a grant here, proposals should center women in crisis and connect directly to one or more of Marisla’s named priorities: stable housing, addiction treatment, domestic violence recovery, or vocational training, with work clearly based in Los Angeles or Orange County. The foundation’s average grant size is about $100,000.

In 2024, this funder made 194 grants, a $75,000 median grant, and a $10,000 to $9. 9 million range for tax year 2024. The foundation accepts unsolicited grant applications; however, it only has the capacity to fund a small number of requests out of the hundreds of proposals it receives each year.

Special interests funding is available by invitation only. Marisla appreciates a straightforward and concise approach to its applications. The foundation only accepts online applications within four two-month windows with deadlines in January, April, July and October.

Grantseekers must first take an eligibility quiz and can expect application decisions within four months after the deadline. Guidelines and Online Application