Community Choice Voting 2025

Seward Co-op owners and customers are invited to select four of twelve 2025 SEED recipients.

Each year, a staff-led grant committee takes great care to evaluate all applications and determining the following years’ SEED recipients. The committee also nominates eight organizations to be considered by community members, all of which will receive a $1,000 grant through the Seward Community Fund, whether or not they are ultimately selected as a SEED recipient. The top four winners of those organizations become Community Choice SEED recipients.

In 2025 there will be eight recipients, four of which have been selected by a Seward Co-op staff-led committee, and four which will be selected by our community through a Community Choice vote. Four months will be dedicated to Seward Co-op’s needs-based program, which assists households with financial need purchase their groceries. These four months will be spread out over the course of the year.

Learn about the Community Choice finalists below, and cast your vote for your top four organizations by Sunday, Oct. 13. Then, join us at our Annual Owner Meeting on Monday, Oct. 28 as we announce the 2025 grant recipients, including the results of the SEED Community Choice vote and Board of Directors Election.

Community Choice SEED Candidate Organizations

Below are short descriptions of the eight SEED organizations nominated by staff for consideration by community members, listed in alphabetical order. You can learn more about each by clicking on the name of the organization. A new window will open to the organization’s website.

Cosmos Montessori School
Cosmos Montessori School is a community based, Spanish dual language, Montessori program serving children in Pre-K through 5th grade.

SEED funds would be used in two ways:
1. To hire BIPOC community members to provide culturally relevant enrichment experiences for our students including cooking traditional foods, cultural dance (i.e. baile folklórico), art, music, yoga, storytelling, gardening, etc.
2. To purchase materials used for these cultural enrichment activities: musical instruments, cooking supplies, art materials, dance attire, yoga mats, garden supplies, etc.

Dream of Wild Health
Dream of Wild Health is celebrating 25 years of working to restore health and wellbeing within the Twin Cities Native American community!

SEED funds will support our Youth Education and Leadership programs, which provide culturally-based lessons for Native youth to learn about regenerative organic gardening, healthy foods preparation and nutrition, and Native cultural traditions while gaining employment and leadership skills.

Friends of the Mississippi River
Friends of the Mississippi River engages people to protect, restore, and enhance the Mississippi River and its watershed in the Twin Cities region.

SEED funds will be used to engage local residents in habitat restoration and stewardship activities.

Kilimo Minnesota
Kilimo Minnesota is an organic incubator farm with a mission to empower emerging farmers of African descent, socially and economically. Kilimo is a space for healing, learning, and building community for black farmers in Minnesota.

SEED funds will be used to hire our part-time TAs for more hours allowing us to continue providing support to the growing number of farmer members we serve.

Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association
Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association (PPNA) is a community-centered nonprofit that operates a Renter Support Fund, which provides low-barrier access to rental assistance to cost-burdened renters across Minneapolis.

SEED funds will be used to provide direct cash-assistance to select cost-burdened renters in Minneapolis through PPNA’s Renter Support Fund.

RECLAIM
RECLAIM provides financially accessible, specialized mental health care to queer and trans youth ages 12-25 and their families.

SEED funds will offset therapy fees that clients can’t pay to help ensure that financial challenges don’t prevent youth from accessing care.

Southside Foodshare
Southside Foodshare is a mutual aid project that cooks and delivers wholesome meals to our unhoused neighbors in South Minneapolis four days a week, with respect and dignity. Southside Food Share is all volunteer and donation based.

SEED funds will be used to purchase fresh and/or healthy food, water, compostable delivery containers/ to-go supplies, and monthly rent. Since this project is all volunteer run and donation based, all funds go to food, supplies, and rent for our space to operate out of.

Twin Cities Food Justice
TC Food Justice is a volunteer-driven nonprofit organization working to reduce food waste and hunger in the Twin Cities by moving abundance to places of need throughout the food system. We partner with co-ops, markets, bakeries and farmers to redistribute fresh, unsalable food to hunger relief organizations, community kitchens and food-insecure populations. Since 2016, TCFJ has rescued more than a million pounds of high quality food, keeping it out of landfills and reducing food waste and resulting methane greenhouse gas emissions. With support from more than 200 volunteers, we’ve delivered this food to partners who directly support food-insecure individuals and families throughout the Metro area.

SEED funds will support TC Food Justice’s general operating costs.