Through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) seeks to co-invest with partners to implement projects that provide solutions to conservation challenges thereby measurably improving the resource concerns they seek to address.
Donor Name: Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 07/02/2024
Size of the Grant: More than $1 million
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
RCPP promotes collaboration with partners, stakeholders, and various communities, which is paramount to achieving equity in NRCS programs and services. The RCPP follows a partner-driven approach to conservation that funds solutions to natural resource challenges on agricultural land. The following are the three key principles of RCPP.
- Impact
- RCPP proposals must include effective and compelling solutions that address one or more natural resource concern to help solve natural resource challenges. Partners are responsible for evaluating a project’s impact and results.
- Partner Contributions
- Partners are responsible for identifying any combination of cash and in-kind value-added contributions to leverage NRCS’s RCPP investments. Partner contributions are evaluated based on their share of overall project costs and the value of qualified expertise that they add to achieving project goals and objectives.
- Partnerships and Management
- Partners must have the experience, expertise, and capacity necessary to manage the partnership and project, provide outreach to producers, and quantify the environmental impacts, and when possible, economic, and social outcomes of an RCPP project. The RCPP ranking criteria give priority consideration to applicants that meaningfully engage historically underserved (HU) farmers and ranchers.
Funding Information
- NRCS will award up to $1.5 billion.
- Award Ceiling: $25,000,000
- Award Floor: $250,000
Eligibility Criteria
Entities that are classified as one of the following organizational types can serve as an eligible RCPP partner:
- an agricultural or silvicultural producer association or other group of producers;
- a state or unit of local government;
- an Indian tribe;
- a farmer cooperative;
- a water district, irrigation district, acequia, rural water district or association, or other organization with specific water delivery authority to agricultural producers;
- a municipal water or wastewater treatment entity;
- an institution of higher education;
- an organization, or entity with an established history of working cooperatively with producers on agricultural land (as determined by NRCS) to address:
- local conservation priorities related to agricultural production, wildlife habitat development, or nonindustrial private forest land management; or
- critical watershed-scale soil erosion, water quality, sediment reduction, or other natural resource issues;
- an entity, such as an Indian tribe, state government, local government, or a non-overnmental organization, that has a farmland or grassland protection program that purchases agricultural land easements, as defined in 7 CFR § 1468.3; or
- a conservation district.
Proposals are accepted from all 50 States, the Caribbean Area (Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands), and U.S. territories in the Pacific Island Areas (Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands).
For more information, visit Grants.gov.