You’re committed to making your environmental improvement project happen. You’ve tapped into DEP grant programs, but realize you need more funding. What next?
Broaden the scope of your state government grant hunting. Many Pennsylvania state agencies offer grants to nonprofit organizations, businesses, and farms for a range of purposes. Here are a few to explore that may help you make your environmental improvement project happen. Some might be partnered with a DEP grant, and others might be a better option for you.
You can find more state government grant programs once you log into the Pennsylvania Electronic Single Application grants portal.
Department of Conservation and Natural Resources: The Community Conservation Partnership Program offers grants for a variety of environmental and other outdoor projects—building a park, rehabilitating a park, planting a streambank buffer to reduce water pollution, acquiring land for green space, and others.
Get there: Go to the DCNR grants website and click the green button at top that says “Community Conservation Partnership Program.”
Department of Agriculture: The Conservation Excellence Grant Program offers farmers funding to put in place a variety of best management practices to reduce nutrient and sediment runoff pollution in local streams, with priority given to projects in Pennsylvania’s share of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Stream animal crossings, cover crops, manure management facilities, streambank plantings, and more are funded. CEG is just one program; the Department of Agriculture offers many other grant programs as well, supporting everything from dirt and gravel roads to urban agriculture.
- Get there: See Conservation Excellence Grant Program and more Dept. of Agriculture grant programs
Fish and Boat Commission: Over 15 grant programs support projects to improve aquatic habitat, evaluate and protect coldwater streams, assist fisheries-related businesses in the Great Lakes that were negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and more.
- Get there: See Fish and Boat grants
Department of Community and Economic Development: DCED has dozens of grant, loan, and rebate programs, including several that fund environmental improvement projects — high-performance buildings, abandoned mine drainage cleanup, greenways, trails, recreation, energy efficiency, and more.
- Get there: Go to DCED Programs and Funding, where you can browse or search among many options.