Grant Opportunity – Wine and Culinary Tourism Promotion

This grant is funded by Oregon wine license plates and is earmarked for projects that promote Oregon wine and food to the traveling public. You can get a better idea of projects this grant supports by looking at the list of past grant recipients.

Project activities may include, but are not limited to, any of the following that will help launch NEW efforts, initiatives to attract both American and international travelers:

• Educational activities to grow local capacity and leadership such as attendance to conferences, educational seminars or professional meetings to further leaders’ understanding and involvement with Oregon’s wine tourism industry
• Niche market tourism development activities such as: organizing specialized trainings or workshops to support the continued development or growth of the wine or culinary market, conducting local familiarization tours, or regional study tours
• Development of new local and regional maps intended for culinary market development or tourism promotion
• Visitor way-finding signage plans or the implementation of an existing plan for signage production and/or installation
• Event creation or promotion that is positioned to attract a high volume of new visitors to an area
• Strategic collaborative culinary marketing initiatives that build off the Travel Oregon brand and are executed in conjunction with established local, regional and state Destination Marketing Organizations
• Development of culinary tourism content for an area to be used in conjunction with on-going/existing local, regional and state marketing initiatives

The application process has several steps that starts with submitting a Letter of Inquiry, which is a short summary of your project proposal. This letter is due on May 2. If your project is selected, you are sent a full application.

The first step you need to take to submit a Letter of Inquiry is download the Grant Project Feedback Form. You will need to fill this out and send a copy by email to two people, which includes the local Chamber and the Southern Oregon Visitor Association (SOVA).

• Illinois Valley Chamber Sonny Moore  541 592-3326
• Southern Oregon Visitor Association Carolyn Hill 541 890-7842

The purpose of this feedback form is to assure that there are not similar projects being proposed elsewhere in the southern Oregon region. These forms should be returned to you within a week and will need to be attached to the next step in the application process, the online application form (Grant Project Idea Worksheet)

The Grant Project Idea Worksheet is sent directly to the Travel Oregon staff in Salem where they determine which projects will be invited to submit a full application for funding. Near the bottom, they will ask you to attach the Grant Project Feedback Forms. The DMO (local destination marketing organization) is the feedback form from the Chamber. The RDMO (regional destination marketing organization) is the form returned to you from SOVA.

The Grant Project Idea Worksheet functions as the Letter of Inquiry so once you have submitted this, you are finished with the first step in the grant process. Now you wait to see if they invite you to submit a full application.

Closing date: May 2 (Letter of Inquiry)

Grant size: Not specified

More info: see application guidelines