Dear Colleagues,
The California Strategic Growth Council (SGC) is pleased to announce the availability of funding for Round 1 of the Regional Climate Collaboratives (RCC) Program through this Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA).
This new capacity-building grant program funds community-rooted and cross-sectoral partners to develop the processes, plans, and projects that will drive and sustain climate action. The goal of the program is to strengthen local coordination, leadership, knowledge, skills, and expertise with a particular focus on increasing access to funding resources for project planning and implementation within under-resourced communities. Multiple partners will form a collaborative and submit a single application based on a shared vision.
RCC is part of the state's Climate Budget (Senate Bill 170), which funds ambitious measures to build climate adaptation and resilience through planning, research, capacity building, restoration, and sustainable infrastructure. Senate Bill (SB) 1072 (Leyva, Chapter 377, Statutes of 2018)1 established the RCC Program at the California Strategic Growth Council to create new and support existing Regional Climate Collaboratives (Collaboratives) across the state that will assist under-resourced communities in accessing funding for climate change mitigation and adaptation projects. The legislation acknowledges that under-resourced communities often lack capacity and face challenges accessing State funding to address community priorities and recognizes the necessity of providing technical assistance resources to ensure every community has the same opportunity to achieve their climate and equity goals. As a capacity-building grant program, RCC enables cross-sectoral partners to deepen relationships and strengthen local coordination, leadership, knowledge, skills, and access to critical resources to drive and sustain climate action.
All RCC Program activities must build the capacity of selected under-resourced communities within a region to secure funding for climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience projects. Regardless of selected strategies and activities, Applicants must ensure they address each of the following program objectives:
• Develop Actionable Plans and Projects: Activities conducted by Applicants will lead to the development (or update) of local plans as well as climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience projects that can be implemented if project funding is secured. Grant activities will build the local network capacity necessary for Collaborative members to develop competitive grant proposals.
• Build Social Infrastructure: Applicants must demonstrate how the proposed activities will build enduring and trusting relationships across members of the Collaborative, residents, and other stakeholder groups, and how the grant will support better regional coordination on the development and implementation of climate-related projects and applications.
• Center Community Engagement & Decision Making: Applicants must work with community members and stakeholders through direct engagement. Applicants must involve residents and key stakeholders from selected under-resourced communities within the Applicant's region in all phases of project implementation, with a focus on populations that have historically been excluded from decision making and implementation processes. Applicants must also use proven methods of engagement to facilitate direct participation of community residents, including ensuring translation of meetings and materials, scheduling meetings at times and locations that are convenient to community members, and engaging community members in information gathering as well as outreach.
• Develop Equity-centered Processes: Applicants must demonstrate how the proposed activities will develop or improve local processes for under-resourced community residents, community-based organizations, and Tribes to co-lead decisions made about climate change related priorities and projects at the local and/or regional level.
In this first round, SGC has $8.35 million available for grant awards. Applicants have flexibility in requesting their funding amount within the range of $500,000-$1,750,000.
Required Pre-Proposals must be submitted no later than 5:00 p.m. PT on Friday, July 15, 2022. Final Grant Applications must be submitted no later than 5:00 p.m. PT on Friday, October 7, 2022. Awards announced at the SGC Public Meeting scheduled on December 15, 2022.
If interested, please consider attending the program's application workshops & networking sessions scheduled on June 8-10: (Register: https://sgc.ca.gov/news/2022/05-12.html)
For more information, please see: https://sgc.ca.gov/news/2022/05-12.html
Thank you.
Kathleen Nolan, Director, ANR Office of Contracts & Grants (OCG)