By Will Atwater
Letha Smith is an advocate in her Davidson community, running a small nonprofit organization working, in part, on environmental issues.
Smith’s plans include applying for tax-exempt status so her business can be recognized as a charitable organization and she can qualify for more grants and donations.
It’s a sizable hurdle for Smith to overcome at this stage in her organization’s lifespan, she said.
“I’m just kind of getting started and getting my feet wet. And since it’s still a one-woman show, I’m not trying to move real fast and get grant money because I don’t have the staff to pump anything out.” For now, Smith and her 1Stop Shop will continue partnering with established charitable organizations, such as CleanAIRE NC, to facilitate her advocacy work.
Applying for federal funding can be daunting for small groups that are looking for help to address environmental problems, such as air and water quality issues. It’s complicated.
There are many boxes to check, including being recognized as a charitable organization, grant writing experience, and, in some cases, matching funds, not to mention the level of paperwork required if funding is received.
Even an established charitable organization may pass on a federal grant opportunity because of the additional hoops required.
“The reporting needs for many of the federal programs are beyond the capacity of our current staff, so we’d need to hire just for grant administration,” said Liz Whiteman, executive director of Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture.
Now, help is on the way.
Late last year, the Biden Administration announced $600 million to fund environmental justice projects nationwide in 2024.
The initiative is part of the administration’s Investing in America Agenda, and it aims to “make it easier for small community-based organizations to access federal funds and improve the efficiency of the awards process to ensure communities that have long faced underinvestment can access the benefits of the largest climate investment in history,” according to the release.
How it will work
Under EPA’s Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmaking program, created by the Inflation Reduction Act, 11 regional grantmakers were selected to administer funds, including North Carolina-based Research Triangle Institute, which will serve North Carolina and other states in EPA Region 4 (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and six Tribal Nations).
Of the 11 grantmakers, 10 will receive $50 million, while RTI will receive $100 million and will act as a regional and national grantmaker, providing subgrants to communities in Region 4 and in other locations around the country. During a three-year period, the 11 grantmakers will issue thousands of subgrants to disadvantaged communities to fund environmental projects such as small local cleanups, local jobs reducing greenhouse gas emissions, air quality and asthma related projects and projects to address illegal dumping, the release states.
“[Our role] is to help familiarize the community organizations that have been excluded from the process [in the past] because they have limited resources, less experienced grant writers and things like that,” said James Harrington, co-director the Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center for Region 4. “[Grantmakers] are looking to us to help those organizations to learn the process so that they can get access to [grants].”
“For years, community advocates have been calling for federal support and resources to help address our country’s most pressing environmental justice concerns,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “We’re responding to these calls by removing barriers that have traditionally held communities and applicants back from accessing these historic investments in America.”
Separate roles, one mission
The Thriving Communities program houses two entities — the Grantmakers and the Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center — that will collaborate to facilitate the initiative.
“The technical assistance centers are about helping to build local capacity, [and] the Grantmakers program is really about getting money out the door faster to those local groups,” said Daniela Pineda, Thriving Communities’ project director. “We complement each other, but we have different missions.”
Pineda said the grants will not require matching funds.
Questions about the program can be emailed to tcgm@rti.org.
According to the release, Grantmakers will partner with EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights to issue subgrants to community-based nonprofit organizations and other eligible organizations representing disadvantaged communities. The 11 Grantmakers will design comprehensive application and submission processes, award environmental justice subgrants, implement tracking and reporting systems, and provide resources and support to communities.
Grant disbursements are expected by summer 2024.
The funds will be available through a tier system — tier one will provide $150,000 for assessment, tier two $250,000 for planning and tier three $350,000 for project development. Additionally, under tier one, $75,000 will be available to “capacity-constrained community based organizations through a noncompetitive process,” according to the release.
The Grantmakers program supports the the Biden Administration’s Justice40 Initiative, which aims to ensure that 40 percent “of certain federal investments flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburden by pollution.”
Spreading the news
RTI will partner in North Carolina with NC Central University (CARES Center) and the Southern Environmental Law Center to fulfill its role under the Thriving Communities program.
“The Southern Environmental Law Center has deep roots in the Southeast, so they are a key partner in Region 4 — five of the six states in which they work are in Region 4,” Pineda told NC Health News. “We [also] have NCCU that is really critical, not only in the network of HBCUs in the country, but also in North Carolina.”
“We already think about outreach to underserved communities across the Southeast,” said Chandra Taylor-Sawyer, SELC environmental justice initiative leader, in an interview. “Looking at this particular granting opportunity, we said, ‘Okay, there needs to be a real thoughtful effort to put in a lot of time and hours to plan for getting out to rural areas and making sure that those who are most underserved hear about this opportunity.’”
Omega Wilson, co-founder of the Mebane-based West End Revitalization Association, a community advocacy group, is cautiously optimistic about the Thriving Communities program. Having co-managed an organization that received its tax-exempt status in the 1990s, he has experienced many of the challenges that the Thriving Communities program is designed to address in order to better support small community-based organizations.
“Something like this has never happened before. This is big, big stuff for Black and brown community recognition.”
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