Across the US, there are communities facing disproportionate effects of air pollution. There are communities that lack access to clean drinking water. There are communities that bear an excessive burden created by the extreme heat the planet has experienced in recent years. Rather than appearing as blue or red, these communities span the political rainbow, as well as the entire map of the United States. They exist on the Texas border; they exist in rural Ohio; and they exist in lots of places in between. 2018, 2021, and 2023 all set records for global heat, and 2024 has now officially topped them all. Everywhere—from urban centers to rural areas—these real communities are navigating the life-and-death consequences that this increased heat can bring.

At the same time, historic amounts of federal funding—in the billions—were made available to those communities bearing disproportionate burdens in 2021 and 2022, including for water infrastructure in a way that hadn’t been done before. Despite this influx of funding, many of the traditional barriers to accessing that money remained in place for local communities and grassroots organizations.

River Network has been directing national dollars to local communities for 25 years, through many federal programs. In its latest role as a pass through partner, River Network launched the Rooting Resilience Urban and Community Forestry Program to continue bridging the gap between national programs and the people in communities that need these investments. Like the Wild & Scenic Stewardship Partners Program (WSSP) that River Network has run since 2019, Rooting Resilience set out to make federal funding and capacity building available to communities that have been overlooked for these types of investments.

Both Rooting Resilience and the WSSP exemplify River Network’s commitment as a bridge to meaningfully and intentionally lower the barriers to entry that first-time and small groups often face in winning federal dollars, despite their readiness to carry out projects that bring significant improvements to their communities. From making themselves available to prospective applicants prior to submission deadlines to reviewing budget line items in submitted applications with trust, openness, and awareness, staff members dedicated to both programs were deliberate at every stage of the project selection processes they created. As a result, exciting new projects and deserving groups now have access to federal support.

What has the community response been?

As staff for both the WSSP and the Rooting Resilience Programs make clear: community partners appreciate the steps River Network has taken to create more equitable and intentional grant application processes. Grace Fullmer, Philanthropy Manager and WSSP lead, says that the response from applicants has been almost wholly positive. “Thank you for making this seamless” is a message staff frequently hear when they ask for constructive feedback.

River Network’s Resilient Communities and Policy Associate, Campbell Simmons, echoes that message when it comes to River Network’s funding resources more broadly. Simmons says that signs point toward community support of the work River Network has been doing to lower barriers and increase access to federal funding: “We’ve heard largely positive feedback in response to the resources and learning sessions we’ve put (on). The vast majority of folks we’ve heard from share that they feel more equipped to apply for federal dollars after participating in the sessions. I have also heard through word of mouth that the resources are informative and helpful.”

What practical steps address barriers for applicants?

Rooting Resilience, which opened applications on September 24, 2024, took a number of practical steps to lower the barriers that first-time applicants or limited-capacity organizations typically face when applying for federal funding. River Network staff focused on the full scope of the funding distribution process, from providing informational assistance to prospective applicants prior to submission to creating submission requirements and application review guidelines that are intentionally responsive to the traditional roadblocks.

To start, members of the Rooting Resilience team held open-ended office hours prior to the application deadline. In order to make the office hours accessible for geographically dispersed groups, they were held virtually and conducted in both English and Spanish. Prospective applicants could ask specific questions related to their applications, and they were also welcome to bounce broad ideas and approaches off staff members to get their feedback and advice for shaping their approach.

In addition to office hours, Diana Toledo, River Network’s Senior Director of River Programs, says that outreach was explicit in encouraging submissions from first-time applicants and applicants who hadn’t been successful in applying for federal funding in the past, and it emphasized the “capacity building” aspect of the program. As Toledo made clear: “This isn’t just a funding program. It provides funding and capacity building. We have made a promise to support [applicants] throughout the implementation and execution of their projects, whether it is with technical aspects of their project or administrative needs of abiding by the agreements of the grant.” The team regularly asked: “What is the reach in the community?” and “How is this project really building support for urban forestry initiatives?” as they reviewed applications. This evaluation criteria allowed them to keep capacity building at the forefront of decision-making.

The team also employed intentional methods for reviewing applications in order to address some of the standard barriers organizations and individuals often face. A written grant application, for example, is a highly templated, specific format that often favors groups who have prior experience using it—or the funds to employ a professional grant writer. To respond to this reality, applications for Rooting Resilience could be submitted via video or phone interviews, as well as through the traditional written format. Questions were identical across submission types, but applicants could select the method that made the most sense for their capacity.

Rooting Resilience also used a thoughtful approach to counter one of the biggest barriers to funding access: compensation for community members’ time. As Toledo explained, oftentimes, those reviewing grant applications don’t have experience living or working in a community similar to those that are applying for funding, which means that some of the community-level financial and logistical barriers that project participants can face aren’t necessarily obvious to them. For example, childcare can present a significant logistical and financial hurdle for individuals who may be qualified or interested in participating in a project supported by a grant. To be responsive to realities like this, the Rooting Resilience team encouraged applicants to include compensating individuals in their budgetary breakdowns. Providing information about a community, acting as a liaison to a neighborhood, providing and acquiring childcare, attending community meetings—can all be meaningful contributions to the success of a community-led project, and they were all encouraged as line items in Rooting Resilience applications.

Finally, “match” requirements frequently present an obstacle to small-budget and first-time applicants’ success in winning federal funds. While organizations in higher-wealth or higher-resourced communities may be able to match dollars—or have the kind of existing relationships with donors and local funding institutions that make securing matches easier—this is often not the case for lower-resourced entities. In waiving a match requirement for applicants, the federal funding behind Rooting Resilience addressed a barrier that can be a non-starter for many groups.

For its part, the WSSP employed a number of intentional designs in its application and review process. Similar to Rooting Resilience, program staff on WSSP made themselves available to applicants for brainstorming and responding to questions prior to application submissions. In addition, rather than having a hard deadline, WSSP offered a rolling submission deadline so that proposals from qualified candidates could be reviewed throughout the year. Program staff were cognizant of the need to consider compensation for community members’ time and reviewed budgets accordingly.

Did these strategies meaningfully impact the applications received?

Whenever an organization implements changes to its outreach and approach in order to encourage new and different types of applicants, it’s relevant to ask: did it succeed in doing so? Did the approach developed in order to address traditional barriers to federal funding yield a competitive applicant pool that likely wouldn’t have been seen through another funding process? Toledo, who has been working in the space for more than two decades, said that the team did get to review a lot of applications they would not have typically seen. They saw applicants that “would not have applied to your typical funding, especially federal funding programs, representing much smaller organizations, much more neighborhood-focused.”

All of this intentional design resulted in a staggeringly positive statistic: 32% of successful Rooting Resilience applicants had never applied to or received federal funding before. As Toledo puts it: “That’s a big deal.” According to Stephanie Heidbreder, Director of Urban and Community Forestry, the Rooting Resilience Program received 166 applications and will fund 21 of the submitted projects. The team saw a variety of applicants, ranging from grassroots, community-based organizations to larger regional non-profits, as well as several Federally recognized Tribes and several non-profits working with state or Federally recognized Tribes.

The federal initiatives that created the funding set an explicit goal to invest in communities that have not before benefitted from similar investments in their tree canopy. As such, the diverse and deserving applicant pool—and the number of first-time federal funding winners—can all be seen as a huge success for the Rooting Resilience Program. Because the legislation creating the funding included a very well-defined geography within which grants have to be awarded, the fact that Rooting Resilience increased the number of applicants within that geography means that the right kinds of projects are being matched with the available funds. The process worked. And it was a positive experience for both applicant groups and River Network.

A shady moment by the waters of Lake Monona during the River Network staff retreat in Madison, Wisconsin, August 2024. Photo by Ayana Harscoet.

Benefits for all: today and in the future

As shared resources, trees and water—and their health—matter to us all. So when federal funds reach community groups for urban forestry or river stewardship needs, we all reap the benefits as a resource is improved, enhanced, or even created. Planting trees along pedestrian corridors for shade, increasing air quality and lowering noise pollution with the addition of trees to a space, developing urban orchards in areas that qualify as food deserts, planting trees to reduce flood risk—all are ways in which urban forestry projects can provide immediate and long-term benefits to communities, as well as those far beyond them.

And that map—the one of disproportionate environmental risk that doesn’t recognize red or blue—looks a little bit more balanced with each deserving project that programs like WSSP and Rooting Resilience are able to fund.

Interviews have been edited for clarity.