Deadline: 11-Aug-21
The Outreach and Restoration Grant Program is a partnership between the Chesapeake Bay Trust and Charles County, the City of Annapolis, the City of Baltimore Department of Public Works, the City of Gaithersburg, the City of Salisbury, Harford County, Howard County, and the Maryland Department of Transportation Maryland Port Administration.
This funding opportunity aims to engage a diverse range of organizations, both with community-related missions and environmental-focused missions, to facilitate projects that enhance communities, involve residents, and improve natural resources.
This program was established to provide accessible funds to organizations and agencies to implement community-led and -inspired stewardship efforts that increase public understanding of environmental challenges and solutions; implement demonstration-scale, community-based, on-the-ground restoration projects; and expand the base of public support necessary to advance the restoration of Maryland’s bays, tributaries, and other natural resources.
All projects should meet one or both of the following goals:
- Engage members of a specific audience in community and environmental issues through knowledge building or behavior change efforts at multiple stages of the project.
- Accomplish on-the-ground restoration that will result in improvements in the health of a Maryland natural resource, either through water quality improvement or habitat enhancement.
Funding Information
This grant program welcomes applications for projects in the state of Maryland. Applicants can request funds from one of the following tracks.
- Track 1: Outreach/Knowledge Building Projects (up to $30,000)
- Track 2: Behavior Change Projects (up to $50,000)
- Track 3: Restoration Projects (up to $50,000)
- Track 4: Outreach and Restoration Projects (up to $75,000)
Eligible Projects
- Track 1: Outreach/Knowledge Building Projects – Knowledge building projects must measurably increase public knowledge and engagement as it relates to the challenges and solutions to restore Maryland’s natural resources: local green spaces from urban to rural, parks, streams, rivers, and bays. Projects should seek to increase knowledge within a priority audience, which can be described as a specific population of focus that is a clearly defined sub-segment of the general public, on a topic in which a basic level of knowledge has not yet been established. Example projects include, but are not limited to:
- Workforce development and jobs training programs;
- Workshops promoting best practices for restoration and protection of natural resources;
- Community science programs that support the collection of air quality, water quality, or other natural resource data which will then be used to measurably increase knowledge among other audiences;
- Environmental knowledge-building events;
- “Train the trainer” programs;
- Programming that connects human-health benefits and natural resource engagement and education;
- Activities such as stream clean ups and storm drain stenciling coupled with education efforts; and/or
- Environmental art installations designed to increase awareness of environmental, especially waterrelated, issues.
- Track 2: Behavior Change Projects – Behavior change projects must measurably promote behavior change as it relates to the challenges and solutions to restore Maryland’s natural resources: local green spaces from urban to rural, parks, streams, rivers, and bays. Projects should target a specific desired change in behavior within a priority audience i.e., (what do you want people to do differently?) and must be based on an understanding of audience knowledge, attitudes, and practices; this understanding should be derived from audience research and engagement of audience representatives in the design of the program. Example projects include, but are not limited to:
- Social marketing plan development including barrier and benefit research, positioning statement, marketing mix, evaluation plan development, and project implementation planning;
- Piloting and implementation of previously developed social marketing plans; and Empirical research designed to answer key questions relating to behavior change challenges that impact water quality. Research applications must seek to meaningfully share the outcomes of proposed research with regional practitioners.
- Track 3: Restoration Projects – Restoration projects must engage people in on-the-ground community-based projects that benefit both the community and the quality of one or more natural resources (e.g., water quality, tree canopy, and habitat). Example projects include, but are not limited to:
- Tree planting projects for urban, suburban, or rural areas;
- Streamside forest buffers;
- Stormwater best management practices (BMPs) such rain gardens, bioretention, living shorelines, and rain barrels;
- Reclaiming vacant lots to install site appropriate stormwater BMPs;
- Wetland creation, restoration, and enhancement;
- Installation of agriculture best management practices, including wetlands, buffers, and excluding livestock from streams; and
- Small-scale stream restoration and fish passage projects.
- Track 4: Outreach and Restoration Projects – Outreach and restoration projects must combine elements from Track 1 and Track 3 above to achieve increased meaningful and measurable outcomes.
Eligibility Criteria
Funding partners welcome requests from the following organizations:
- 501(c)3 Private Nonprofit Organizations
- Faith-based Organizations
- Community and Homeowners Associations
- Service, Youth, and Civic Groups
- Municipal, County, Regional, State, Federal Public Agencies
- Soil/Water Conservation Districts & Resource Conservation and Development Councils
- Forestry Boards
- Public and Independent Higher Educational Institutions
For more information, visit https://cbtrust.org/grants/outreach-and-restoration/