Dear [firstname],
I am excited to share upcoming grants and federal funding opportunities for local governments, universities, community organizations, businesses, and individuals.
You can find up-to-date information on open federal grants here. This spreadsheet will be updated throughout the month and includes a wide variety of grants related to agriculture, community development, disaster prevention and relief, food and nutrition, transportation, and much more. The grants can be easily sorted and filtered by category to help find grants related to specific needs.
Additionally, you can find an extensive list of funding opportunities for local governments updated regularly by the Colorado Department of Local Affairs here. This user-friendly dashboard includes federal and state funding opportunities and can be filtered by category, program, award type, awarding agency, and eligible applicants.
Upcoming Grants:
This month, there are some major federal grants open around funding for rural communities, transportation, and fire and disaster mitigation. Below are some of the available federal funding opportunities, listed in order by category and deadline.
Rural:
The Department of Energy has an open Energy Improvements in Rural or Remote Areas grant to fund energy efficiency and system improvements in rural areas. Applicants should submit a concept paper by February 27, 2025 and a complete application by August 28, 2025. Interested parties can find technical assistance resources specific to this grant here.
The United States Department of Agriculture has an open High Energy Cost grant program for local governments, nonprofits, and for-profit businesses in rural communities experiencing extremely high home energy costs to improve energy infrastructure. The deadline to apply is February 28, 2025.
The Department of Transportation has opened the Rural and Tribal Assistance Pilot Program, a non-competitive grant program without a local match requirement for rural communities to provide technical, financial, and legal support for a transportation project. The grant is designed to be easier to apply to for smaller communities and can be used to hire staff to carry out a project or to hire a grant writer to apply for another transportation grant. The grant is awarded to all applicants who meet eligibility requirements on a first-come, first-served basis when applications open on March 4, 2025.
The Department of Health and Human Services has an open Rural Residency Planning and Development grant program for rural hospitals, rural community ambulatory patient care centers, and medical schools to develop rural residency programs for medical students. Applicants should apply by April 10, 2025.
Fire and Disaster Management:
Colorado's Bureau of Land Management office has an open Fuels Management and Community Fire Assistance grant, which provides funding for local and county governments, nonprofits, and special districts to carry out hazardous fuel reduction projects in high wildfire-risk areas. Interested parties should apply by February 17, 2025.
The Department of the Interior has a Wildland Fire Slip-on Tanker Units grant program which supports wildland firefighters by providing funding to acquire slip-on tanker units that can easily transform vehicles into fire engines. The deadline to apply for state and local governments or independent school districts is February 26, 2025.
The U.S. Forest Service has a Community Wildfire Defense grant program with funding to develop Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP) and implement new wildfire mitigation projects. Communities with high wildfire risk, who are low income, or who have been impacted by a severe disaster within the last 10 years will be prioritized. The deadline to apply is February 29, 2025, and applicants are strongly encouraged to develop proposals in consultation with state or Forest Service regional cooperative fire contacts listed in the Notices of Funding Opportunity.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has the open Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program, which provides funding for local governments to invest in projects around hazard risk mitigation and preparing for disasters like flooding and wildfire. The deadline to apply is April 18, 2025, and interested parties can also request free technical assistance for the BRIC program here.
FEMA also has an open Flood Mitigation Assistance grant program for local and county governments to carry out risk and damage mitigation projects around flooding. Applicants should apply by April 18, 2025.
Transportation:
The Department of Transportation has an open Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative and Cost-saving Transportation (PROTECT) grant (deadline of February 24, 2025), which provides funding to enhance the resilience of existing infrastructure.
Behavioral Health:
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is opening its grant program application for the Children’s Mental Health Initiative. The funding is intended to expand mental health resources for young people up to age 21. Interested local governments should apply by February 14, 2025.
The Health Resources and Services Administration has an open
Addiction Medicine Fellowship Program for institutes of higher education and nonprofits to sponsor a fellow in addiction medicine. The deadline to apply is February 28, 2025.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is opening its grant program application for the Rural Emergency Medical Services Program. This grant will provide money to recruit and train new EMS personnel with a focus on tackling substance use disorders. Interested rural emergency medical service agencies should apply by March 20, 2025.
Water:
The Bureau of Land Management’s Colorado Aquatic Resources Program will provide funding to help protect and restore riparian and wetland areas, aquatic habitats, and water resources. Interested entities should apply by February 28, 2025.
The Department of the Interior’s WaterSMART Environmental Water Resources Project is accepting applications from interested states, tribes, irrigation and water districts, or non-profit organizations that seek funding for water conservation and efficiency projects. The deadline is March 11, 2025.
The Department of the Interior is accepting applications for the Large-Scale Water Recycling Project, which will provide funding for the planning, design, and construction of large-scale water recycling projects. Sponsors of water recycling projects with a total project cost of greater than $500,000,000 are eligible to apply by April 7, 2025.
Energy:
The Department of Energy has the open Renew America's Schools program, which provides funding for renewable energy and energy efficiency improvement projects by K-12 school districts. The deadline to apply is April 3, 2025.
Arts, Culture, and the Humanities:
The National Endowment for the Arts has several open grant programs, including the Grants for Art Projects (GAP) program (deadline of February 13, 2025), the Research Grants program (deadline of March 24, 2025), and the Challenge America program (deadline of April 24, 2025). Each provides funding for nonprofits and local governments to carry out arts projects, with the GAP and Challenge America programs designed to be more accessible to apply to for smaller organizations.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services has an open Museum Assessment Program designed to help small and medium-sized institutions carry out internal assessment and program improvement activities. The deadline to apply is February 15, 2025.
Technical Assistance:
Something I often hear when meeting with local governments and organizations is that they are interested in taking advantage of federal funding opportunities but simply do not have the capacity to submit a competitive application. Thankfully, you don't have to go through this process alone. My office has compiled a list of resources provided by state and federal government agencies designed to help grant applicants here.
I often hear from groups who find a grant that interests them but aren’t sure when the grant application will reopen or feel the deadline is too soon for them to write a competitive application. To help groups plan for upcoming grants, my office has compiled a list of past opening and closing dates for major grants here.
Federal Grants Bootcamp:
The Health Resources and Services Administration is holding a free in-depth virtual bootcamp on applying for federal grants from February 3 - 7, 2025 for community-based organizations and universities. Interested parties can apply here.
Energy:
The Department of Energy provides a technical assistance program called Clean Energy to Communities Learning Cohorts for local governments, nonprofits, and electric utilities to form partnerships, have access to experts, and receive guidance on clean energy projects. Interested applicants can apply here.
The Colorado Department of Agriculture will provide free technical assistance for Colorado rural businesses and agricultural producers for the USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) program, including free assistance with technical reports and feasibility studies. REAP funding supports energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.
Application Tip of the Month:
For any federal grant you are applying to, ensure that you have active Grants.gov and SAM.gov accounts and an active Unique Entity Identifier (UEI). These are the platforms through which applicants apply for federal grants, and their account set-up can be a lengthy process. Additionally, SAM.gov will sometimes deactivate a UEI if it has not been active in the past year. Make sure everything on your account is ready to go well before the day you plan to submit your application and before the application deadline. If there is an issue with your account, it may take several days to resolve.
Reminders from last month's newsletter:
You can always find a full list of the resources and grants (some of which are still open) from previous grant newsletters on my website here.
If you know someone who would like to be added to my monthly grants newsletter, they can sign up for the newsletter here.
If you would like to request a letter of support from my office, please email co07grants@mail.house.gov. Please allow at least one week of processing time and include your application materials and a draft letter of support. Letter of support requests within a week of the deadline may not be able to be processed in time.
Please reach out with any questions, letters of support requests, or if you would like my office to keep an eye out for federal funding in specific areas.
Thanks for reading,
