2025 Community Match Fund Annual Report
Sustainable CT's Community Match Fund is an innovative crowdgranting program building more sustainable, healthy, and vibrant communities across Connecticut. Learn more in the 2025 Annual Report.
Sustainable CT, in partnership with Patronicity, launched the Community Match Fund to support changemakers across Connecticut with a dream of creating a more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable community.
Through this program, local crowdfunding campaigns are matched dollar-for-dollar to help turn community-driven ideas into reality–whether that means creating a pollinator garden, launching a community composting initiative, supporting local arts and culture programming, planting trees, developing biking and walking greenways, or other locally-led sustainability projects.
Since its inception, the program has supported 391 projects across 82 unique communities in Connecticut, providing over $2.3 million in matching grants.
How Community Match Fund Works
The Community Match Fund supports projects that have a free and public benefit, align with the Sustainable CT action roadmap, take place in a Sustainable CT registered town, and are led by individual residents, nonprofits, community groups, municipalities, schools, or libraries.
Unlike traditional funding programs, Sustainable CT’s Community Match Fund is focused on decreasing the hurdles community leaders often face when applying for grants. The Community Match Fund has no traditional grant application, no deadlines, no lengthy review period, and minimal reporting requirements. Projects are assessed and approved based on simple and objective eligibility criteria, irrespective of the person or group proposing the project. The program is structured to support and amplify grassroots efforts that strive to transform their community, neighborhood, and town for the better.
- Changemakers identify an opportunity for growth or change in their community and meet with the team at Sustainable CT to discuss their project idea.
- Patronicity administers the Community Match Fund program and provides an easy-to-use crowdfunding platform with one-on-one project coaching, helping communities develop a strategy to reach their fundraising goals and engage their community.
- Community members buy in and support projects with their dollars. Crowdfunding democratizes access to capital, allowing local residents and organizations to create the change they want to see in their community.
- If an approved crowdfunding project reaches its goal, the project receives a matching grant from Sustainable CT of up to $6,000 to further the project’s impact on the community.
Explore how Connecticut changemakers are transforming Connecticut communities in the 2025 Community Match Fund Annual Report.
