Funding

Deadline: April 20, 2023. The Zoonotic Disease Initiative is a grant program focused on wildlife disease prevention and preparedness. Authorized under the American Rescue Plan (2021, H.R. 1319, Section 6003.3), the Initiative will provide $9 million in available funding to states, Tribes and territories to strengthen early detection, rapid response and science-based management research to address wildlife disease outbreaks before they cross the barrier from animals to humans and become pandemics. The highest priority for the funding is to increase organizational readiness and ensure a network of state, Tribal and territorial wildlife managers across the nation are prepared for zoonotic disease outbreaks. Strengthening partner capacity for wildlife health monitoring will allow for the early detection of diseases. Learn more and apply here. Grants for Tribes are open through NOFO F23AS00139. For more information, please contact Anna-Marie York at anna-marie_york@fws.gov.

Deadline: March 23, 2023. The Community Wood Grant Program, launched in 2020, provides funding for grants to install thermally led community wood energy systems or to build innovative wood product manufacturing facilities. The Forest Service expects renewable wood energy systems installed under this program to use the most stringent control technologies. The program places extra emphasis on assisting sawmills in economically challenged areas to retool or add advanced technology. Read the funding announcement here.

Most recent deadline: 1/14/2021. The Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI) seeks to solve critical organic agriculture issues, priorities, or problems through the integration of research, education, and extension activities. The purpose of this program is to fund projects that will enhance the ability of producers and processors who have already adopted organic standards to grow and market high quality organic agricultural products. Priority concerns include biological, physical, and social sciences, including economics. The OREI is particularly interested in projects that emphasize research, education and outreach that assist farmers and ranchers with whole farm planning by delivering practical research-based information. Projects should plan to deliver applied production information to producers. Fieldwork must be done on certified organic land or on land in transition to organic certification, as appropriate to project goals and objectives.

Deadline passed. Deadline for 2022 unknown. The Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice in 2020 announced its new Tribal Resilience Initiative (TRI). Special consideration will be given to applications to support hiring of scholars (1) whose work addresses the severe water access challenges that face Native American and Indigenous communities, especially those facing Native American communities within Arizona; and (2) to scholars who have significant expertise or experience that relates to tribal customs and governance, and to traditional knowledge, and ways of approaching resilience challenges of Native American and Indigenous communities that respect both. The Haury Program will award up to ten one-time grants in Spring of 2021 to support the recruitment of scholars whose teaching, scholarship, or outreach centers on matters relevant to Native American and Indigenous resilience. Each one-time award will be for $18,000 to be used to support the position, or to support a research assistant for the awardee.

Deadline unknown for 2017. As a result of the Interstate Highway program that began in the 1950s, the U.S. had a well-developed network of routes —air, rail, and road— that linked every state and connected the country as never before. However, we see today that the infrastructure that brought massive expansion also divided neighborhoods. Residents were often cut off from newly formed social and economic centers and left with limited mobility and transportation options. The Ladders of Opportunity EVERY PLACE COUNTS DESIGN CHALLENGE seeks to raise awareness about bifurcated neighborhoods, identify innovative practices to reconnect communities, and inform the transportation life cycle. Community Teams led by local and tribal government officials will compete to receive on-site technical assistance in a 2-day design session with DOT and experts in the field . - See more at: https://www.transportation.gov/opportunity/challenge#sthash.KqzUUEEW.WIQ....

DOT is making available funding to develop innovative programs and activities in public transportation that address the human resources needs of public transportation operators, as well as build pathways to long-term careers in the public transportation industry. DOT is giving additional consideration to proposals that advance training related to maintenance of alternative energy, energy efficiency, or zero emission vehicles and facilities used in public transportation, as well as submissions that are geographically diverse, target areas with high rates of unemployment, and address current or projected workforce shortages in areas that require technical expertise.

Deadline Passed 11/27/2019. Deadline Unknown for 2020. Congress established the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) with Title IV of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (PDF, 40 KB) and reauthorized it in the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 Section 8629 (the Farm Bill). The purpose of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program is to encourage the collaborative, science-based ecosystem restoration of priority forest landscapes and:

• encourage ecological, economic, and social sustainability;
• leverage local resources with national and private resources;
• facilitate the reduction of wildfire management costs, including through re-establishing natural fire regimes and reducing the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire;
• demonstrate the degree to which various ecological restoration techniques achieve ecological and watershed health objectives; and,
• encourage utilization of forest restoration by-products to offset treatment costs, to benefit local rural economies, to and improve forest health.

Deadline: November 21, 2023. Most climate change studies to date have lacked integration between the study of organismal mechanisms involved in the response to changing climates and eco-evolutionary approaches. This solicitation calls for proposals that integrate the study of genomic, physiological, structural, developmental, neural, or behavioral mechanisms of organismal response to climate change (ORCC) with eco-evolutionary approaches to better manage the effects of a rapidly changing climate on earth’s living systems. Specific areas of emphasis include but are not limited to: integrating physiology and genomics into the next generation of species distribution models; mechanistic understanding of plastic responses to climate change; functional genomics of organismal response to climate change; the role biological interactions play in organismal responses to climate change; and improving our ability to predict how organisms will respond to climate change and the consequences these responses will have across biological scales.

Funding unknown for 2017. President Obama has challenged us all to help win the future by out-educating, out-innovating, and out-building our competitors in the 21st century. Know someone who is doing extraordinary things to make a difference in your community? Nominate them to be a Champion of Change. We’ll consider your nominations as we feature people who are bringing about change in their communities on the White House website to share their ideas on how to win the future.

Deadline passed as of April 20, 2017. Deadline for 2018 unknown. The initiative extends the foundation’s work beyond the school day, to provide children with access to fresh fruit and vegetables afterschool, on the weekends, during summer breaks and in other creative venues. The program provides $25,000 in grants to local community organizations and groups that share the United Fresh Start Foundation’s commitment to increasing kids’ access to fresh produce, helping them develop healthy habits to last a lifetime. Grants will support programs, events and/or activities that increase children’s access to fresh produce.

Deadline passed. Most recent deadline: April 8, 2022. The Farm Business Management and Benchmarking (FBMB) Competitive Grants Program provides funds for improving the farm management knowledge and skills of agricultural producers by maintaining and expanding a national, publicly available farm financial management database to support improved farm management. Learn more and apply here.

Application Window Closed. This program provides funding to assist in the development of essential community facilities in rural communities with extreme unemployment and severe economic depression. An essential community facility is one that provides an essential service to the local community, is needed for the orderly development of the community, serves a primarily rural area, and does not include private, commercial or business undertakings.

Grant deadline unknown for 2016. Communities are invited to apply for assistance from Local Foods, Local Places, a new program supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), and the Delta Regional Authority (DRA) to help create more livable places by promoting local foods. Priorities given to communities within Appalachia and surrounding regions, see application for more details.

Deadline: March 31, 2023. Provides guaranteed loan financing and grant funding to agricultural producers and rural small businesses for renewable energy systems or to make energy efficiency improvements. This program helps increase American energy independence by increasing the private sector supply of renewable energy and decreasing the demand for energy through energy efficiency improvements. Over time, these investments can also help lower the cost of energy for small businesses and agricultural producers.