The EPA’s Community Change Grants Program (CCGP) is a $2 billion initiative established under the Inflation Reduction Act for community-driven environmental and climate-justice projects in disadvantaged communities. CCGP’s innovative structure requires community-based organizations (CBOs) to be central players in the federal grant application and prioritizes clearly articulated community benefits even beyond the grant reporting guidelines. Although this program remains in limbo, the applications our organization advised on offer enduring insights for municipalities competing for grants of all types.
We directly supported six CCGP applications and supported dozens more through office hours, webinars and other resources. Based on our experiences, in-depth interviews with applicants and survey responses, we recently published a learnings report drawing on insights from more than 50 stakeholders, including several whose grant applications met with success.
We found that across agencies and programs, grant reviewers are increasingly expecting to see authentic, cross-sector collaboration, which can only come from genuine partnerships. The most competitive proposals are built on relationships that emphasize CBOs’ deep knowledge of their communities along with their ability to understand its struggles and engage with its citizens. The CCGP application process taught us that it is never too early to begin building issue- and project-specific coalitions; these partnerships can be complex and are often new to both local governments and grassroots organizations.
Several of the applications we supported were a partnership between a community organization and an institution like a local government or university. These applications took on average between six and nine months to complete. However, for community groups that had previously partnered with a local government or university, the application development timeline dropped to three to six months, giving the application a better opportunity to be selected considering the rolling deadline.
We asked respondents to rank from most to least important the factors in seeking a grant partner. The depth of the existing relationship with a potential partner outranked both technical expertise and federal grant experience. This means that local governments investing in relationships with community-based organizations are not only building goodwill in the community, they’re also building a pipeline of impactful and innovative potential projects.
The most enduring CCGP applications, those that produced coalitions and partnerships that will live on regardless of the future of the federal program, were those that created a balanced mix of organizational strengths: Municipalities’ organizational might was balanced by CBOs’ deep knowledge of and relationships with the communities that would be served by the proposed projects. Grant coalitions we supported have spurred working groups that are continuing to apply for additional grant opportunities, enhancing one another's capacity and ability to further local initiatives to drive economic mobility.
Crucially, these shifts cost local governments little to nothing. Municipal partners can appoint dedicated point people for CBOs to share project needs or ideas, bring seemingly disparate stakeholders together and join project conversations without driving the agenda. Local governments choosing to center CBOs in grant applications and keep an open dialogue on potential grant opportunities aren’t just positioning themselves to write competitive proposals, they’re investing in capacity-building to meet community needs.
The CCGP process has shown us that projects that lean heavily on collaboration and deep partnerships with CBOs stand out in crowded application fields. Perhaps most importantly, local governments and their communities reap long-term benefits when they invest in strengthening the local nonprofit infrastructure. And regardless of what is being funded or by whom, strengthening partnerships improves our readiness for future opportunity, whatever it may be.
Liza Crichton is the federal resources coordinator of the Southern Economic Advancement Project, a nonpartisan initiative dedicated to advancing economic policies that build an equitable, resilient and prosperous South.
Governing’s opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing’s editors or management.
