Small Grants Facility
A first grant is the hardest one to get
Most funders ask for an audited financial statement, a governance structure and a track record before they will consider an application. A community group that has been clearing a river on weekends for two years has none of those things, and cannot get them without money first. The Small Grants Facility exists to fill this gap.
Nature Connect administers the facility on behalf of the Table Mountain Fund. Catalytic funding, skills training (stakeholder management, social media and grant writing), mentorship and technical support are given together, so that an organisation finishes its grant year able to raise money on its own strength.
Applications rose from 30 in 2024 to 74 in 2026. The Table Mountain Fund has renewed the facility for a further five years. The small grants facility operates and supports beneficiaries only within the boundaries of the City of Cape Town.
We continue to support community environmental projects, running administration training and providing catalytic funding to start-up NGOs and CBOs. We hope by these means to create a springboard for their efforts.
Dr Anthony Roberts, Chief Executive Officer
Every organisation we have funded
2026
Bos Kinnes
Building the first dedicated environmental club house for youth in Ocean View, alongside indigenous and food gardening and recycling-for-food exchanges.
Clean Coast SA
Restoring and protecting Monwabisi Beach through clean-ups, recycling and school-based education.
Envirolove
Guided hikes, museum visits and reflective workshops for local youth. Their motto is there is more beyond this place.
Mayine e Afrika Foundation
Runs with SANParks and the SANParks Honorary Rangers, connecting youth to the Cape Floristic Region and to green careers.
Steenberg Adventure Squad
Youth-led, turning neglected green spaces and home gardens into indigenous landscapes through workshops and planting events.
Vrygrond Peace Garden
Weekly sessions for parents and young children growing an indigenous garden together, creating a safe public space.
2025
Ocean Pledge
Trains young learners to speak publicly and confidently about ocean conservation, through the Voice of the Ocean Ambassadors course.
Jonk Strandlopers
Connects inland communities to the ocean, showing how what happens upstream on a river reaches the sea.
Branch Out
Youth conservation adventures, giving young people hands-on ways to get into nature and contribute to protecting it.
McGregor Youth Eco-Club
Runs with Friends of Vrolijkheid, engaging young people in McGregor to build a lasting connection with the nature around them.
Wildflower Stepping Stones
Creates indigenous stepping stones of vegetation for pollinators, birds and other wildlife inside the suburbs.
2024
Green Hearts
A community team led by a local resident, working with volunteers and youth to green the area, teach propagation and run nature-based excursions.
ARKYS Outreach
Long-term upskilling and education for youth. Their Chacma Champions project takes young people into local ecosystems and the baboon troops living alongside them.
Community Women Action
An intergenerational programme pairing unemployed youth with senior mentors on Cape Flats Sand Fynbos rehabilitation, reserve excursions and income-generating training.
Mosselbank River Conservation Team
Developing their younger members, the Wetland Wonderers, taking them beyond Fisantekraal to the environmental highlights of Cape Town. A returning grantee, first funded in 2017.
2019 to 2021
Earthchild Eco-Explorers
Grade 7 learners from eight schools across the Cape Flats, on guided hikes and eco-adventures across the Western Cape.
Friends of Zeekoevlei and Rondevlei
A local project team maintaining litter traps and clearing alien invasive vegetation, working towards restoring Zeekoevlei’s ecological integrity.
Friends of Tokai Park
An Adopt-a-Plot project, a week-long nature festival and excursions for fifteen school groups, addressing alien vegetation in the park.
Lessons in Conservation
Environmental education lessons, excursions and outdoor holiday programmes for young people in Cape Town.
Oceano Reddentes
A natural building system using eco bricks, alongside beach clean-ups and research into the plastic waste collected.
Renew the Elsieskraal River
Litter traps, clean-ups and planting days along the Elsieskraal canal in Pinelands, reducing what reaches the ocean.
Argonaut Science
A small South African company running marine science workshops and field trips for young people and their teachers, teaching the ecology of the coast and putting marine biology forward as a career.
Wynberg Girls’ High Enviro Club
School learners running a vegetable and fynbos garden and eco-bricking at Capricorn Primary School, using the grounds themselves as the teaching material. Funded for a second year.
Envirolove Youth Project
A returning grantee, funded again in 2026 for guided hikes, museum visits and reflective workshops for local youth.
Klipheuwel Community-based Environmental Programme
Run by the Regenerative Neighbourhood Development Agency, taking young people from Klipheuwel onto the Mosselbank River for clean-up campaigns and lessons on why the water matters.
Save a Fishie
Beach clean-ups, school programmes and community workshops on plastic waste and water, bringing young people into looking after the coastline and waterways closest to them.
2018 and 2019
The Honeybun Foundation
A classroom, vegetable gardens and permaculture lessons for a small informal settlement in Southfield.
Green Anglicans
Youth and Sunday school groups acting on single-use plastic, water wastage and indigenous planting, with resources linking faith and nature.
Lwandle Hiking Club
Secondary school learners on lessons linked to the CAPS curriculum in Life Sciences and Geography, paired with hikes and day trips.
Communitree
Fynbos Connects Us, six gardens forming stepping stones along the Black and Liesbeek Rivers, built with the Bonteheuwel Walking Ladies.
Clean Our Hoods
Clean-up days and environmental activities in Mfuleni and Vrygrond.
Jam’ Eyyatul Qurra
A Zero-waste to Landfill initiative at a school in Schaapkraal, Philippi.
Wynberg Girls’ High Enviro Club
The Rethink the Bag campaign against plastic shopping bags, and eco-bricks as a way to repurpose non-biodegradable waste.
Village Heights Eco-Buddies
Around 25 young people from Lavender Hill on conservation excursions, with lessons on waste, water-saving and indigenous plants.
The Future Kids
Founded by Rocco Da Silva in 2018. The club meets monthly on Strand beach, and Interwaste sorts and recycles what they collect.
2017 and 2018
Ingcungcu Sunbird Restoration
A migration corridor for nectar-feeding birds across the Cape Flats, linking Table Mountain National Park to the Boland mountains through nectar gardens planted at schools.
Centre for Conservation Education
LIMPET, long-term intertidal monitoring run as citizen science, feeding biodiversity data into a database used by reserve managers and researchers.
Living Labs
Young people building working relationships with local river ecosystems, contributing long-term data on changes in river health.
Mosselbank River Maintenance
A community team of local volunteers rehabilitating the Mosselbank River corridor at Greenville Garden City.
Children of the Land
Project Indigenousness, introducing primary school children to the indigenous flora of the Cape Floristic Region through outdoor classrooms, nurseries and seed banks.
Thelma Susan Block Dumas Institute
Skills-based and biodiversity training at Edith Stephens Nature Reserve, preparing participants to enter tertiary education.
Youth Angling Academy
Youth from under-resourced communities learning about the ocean and sustainable fishing, and developing leadership skills alongside it.
