The Marin chapter is pleased to offer individuals and organizations limited funding through our Micro Grant program, intended to close funding gaps and assist with projects that advance our mission. The application process requires a one-page letter. Deadline for applying is in December each year. Recipients will be announced in February. Application instructions are available HERE.
Our Micro Grant Recipients for 2026
Study of Castilleja Behavior
Castilleja
San Francisco State University graduate student Terian Koscik will be conducting research on Castilleja (paintbrushes) growing in Marin County as part of the Jacobs Lab at California Academy of Sciences. She will be researching how parasitic behavior varies among members of the coastal California Castilleja complex, a group of red-flowered perennial species that presents interesting challenges for studying plant evolution and systematics. This grant will be used to purchase lab equipment to test for the presence and location of alkaloids which are obtained from hosts, and may vary in how they are distributed throughout plant tissue and among species within
Marin RCD Plant ID Field Day
Marin RCD field survey
With these funds, Marin Resouce Conservation District staff will plan and host a field day at one or more local ranches to provide hands-on learning opportunities in native plant identification and ecology. The field day will focus both on relic grasslands as well as past seeding projects in order to evaluate the success of restoration techniques. This knowledge will inform our ability to set and pursue grazing management goals in Marin County, allowing land stewards to better protect and care for native biodiversity alongside traditional conservation goals.
La Pasada Median Native Habitat Restoration Project
Median strip before
Support for a community-led effort of The Marin Median Project group to transform a highly visible roadside median in Santa Venetia into a thriving native plant habitat. This project offers a unique opportunity to restore an underutilized traffic island into a pollinator-rich California native garden that supports hummingbirds, monarch butterflies, and other local wildlife, while also serving as a model that can inspire similar restorations throughout Santa Venetia and, ultimately, across San Rafael. The Micro Grant will directly fund plants, compost, mulch, irrigation materials, and signage, covering essential portions of the first median restoration.
Jepson Herbarium and Golden Gate National Parks
Tennessee Valley
Tennessee Valley is a beloved and highly-visited local watershed of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Its plant communities range from limited-distribution maritime chaparral, to intact patches of prairie and forblands, to riparian habitat, to highly-invaded scrub and aquatic vegetation to non-native forest. Although many Bay Area botanists have collected in Tennessee Valley, there is no authoritative flora and there are many undersurveyed areas of the watershed. A combined team from Golden Gate National Parks and Jepson Herbarium will visit these areas to make representative collections of interest to land managers and to tell the story of the watershed’s plant communities. We will collect approximately 200 plant vouchers, with these vouchers ultimately deposited at UC/JEPS and California Academy of Sciences.
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