The Gerber Foundation provides funding for national programs having a significant impact on issues facing infants and young children, from prebirth to age 3.

The Foundation's mission focuses on infants and young children. Accordingly, priority is given to projects that improve infant and young children nutrition, care and development from the first year before birth to three years of age. Projects should support a specific nutrition or health intervention and have defined outcome parameters.

In all of our grantmaking, the Foundation is particularly interested in fresh approaches to solving problems in our defined program areas, approaches that, if proven successful, can generate long-term support from other sources, research and interventions that promote the health and well-being of infants up to the age of three, and approaches and activities that lead to systemic change.

Generally, competitive requests will be focused on particular projects in furtherance of the Foundation's mission and goal of supporting nutrition or health-related interventions to improve infant health and development. Foundation grants are not typically ongoing. Supported projects should have beginnings and endings, reasonable periods during which measurable progress or outcomes are accomplished. The impact of Foundation funding should be detailed, so that the infusion of new or outside funding can be seen to have some positive influence on the progress or outcome of the project. 

The Foundation gives priority to projects of national or regional impact. Projects should be sufficiently focused to make a felt difference in the field of interest.

While we endeavor to maintain a high degree of flexibility in our programming, we do observe several practical limitations. We do not make grants or loans to individuals. Outside the West Michigan area, we do not support capital campaigns, operating support, national child welfare programs, or international based programs. We also do not support exclusive food or baby products giveaway programs.