By now, you may have heard about the recent passing of the monumental Inflation Reduction Act, but are you ready to act on it?
Davey is proud of our efforts alongside American Forests, Urban Drawdown Initiative, Trust for Public Land, Urban Sustainability Directors Network, and Waxman Strategies to help create a national initiative called Trees for Community Recovery, which was monumental in advocating to get over $1.5 billion in additional funding to the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) for urban and community forestry.
What To Know
While the passing is final, there is still much to work out. It is anticipated that most of the funding will be available through competitive grants in the near future. The $1.5B is spread out over the next 10 years. It’s fair to assume that there will be elevated funding of more than $100M per year for community forests.
What To Do
Be prepared. The key to winning a competitive forest service grant is to have your project and team ready to go before the grants are announced. Once the grants are announced, your team will need to spend time crafting the proposal, determining the final budget, projecting timeframes, quantifying metrics, and understanding reporting/match requirements.
There are a few things that can be done to create a successfully funded project. Here are a few tips and tricks.
Four Tips for Successful Grant Planning
- Go big - Now is the time to go big and think about large-scale projects that need additional funds.
- Plan with equity in mind - Tree equity is critical and will no doubt be a theme of the grants.
- Assemble a team of meaningful partnerships - Create a strong team of partners that can execute. We recommend including a strong nonprofit that can assist with items like grant administration, workforce development, communication, and more.
- Set realistic goals - Don’t compress the timeframe, promise too much, do too much research, or trim the budget. If your project isn’t grounded in reality, it won’t get funded.
While this can all seem intimidating, Davey is here to help. Davey experts have been part of dozens of large federally funded grant projects going back to the Obama American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Learn more about DRG’s grant writing services and reach out to the team for assistance getting your forestry application ready.
Josh Behounek is a business development manager with Davey Resource Group with decades of experience in urban forestry.
