Funding Opportunities

The 2024 BENEFIT FOA will invest up to $30M (subject to appropriations) across four topic areas:

Topic 1: Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning and Water Heating Technologies with improved materials, components, equipment design, and engineering, lower cost manufacturing processes, and easier installation.
Topic 2: Innovative, Replicable, and Low-Cost Roof and Attic Retrofits Technologies for affordable and scalable roof and attic retrofits that improve energy efficiency and address air and water infiltration.
Topic 3: Building Resilience and Capacity Constraints Novel approaches to maintain essential loads during blackouts and add power capacity to buildings without the need for major infrastructure upgrades; localized thermal management systems and thermally resilient building envelopes to provide cooling and overheating protection against extreme heat events.
Topic 4: Commercial Lighting Retrofit Advancements Low-cost, high-quality retrofit solutions for lagging sectors in energy-efficient lighting adoption (schools, certain commercial buildings). DOE is compiling a Teaming Partner List to facilitate the formation of project teams for this FOA.

The Teaming Partner List allows organizations that may wish to participate on a project to express their interest to other applicants and explore potential partnerships. Please see the Teaming List section of the FOA document for more information.

ALL HAZARDS ENERGY RESILIENCE: The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to advance tools and technologies specifically designed to reduce risks to energy delivery infrastructure from all hazards including cybersecurity, physical security, and climate effects. This effort will lead to next generation tools and technologies not available today that will become widely adopted throughout the energy sector to reduce an incident disruption to energy delivery.

This program is designed to assist Native American tribes in improving core library services for their communities. Reflecting IMLS’s agency-level goals of championing lifelong learning, strengthening community engagement, and advancing collections stewardship and access, the goals for this program are to:

Improve services for learning and accessing information in a variety of formats to support needs for education, workforce development, economic and business development, health information, critical thinking skills, digital literacy skills, and financial literacy, and other types of literacy skills.

Enhance the skills of the current library workforce and leadership through training, continuing education, and opportunities for professional development.

The 21st Century Museum Professionals (21MP) grant program advances the growth and development of a diverse workforce of museum professionals. The 21MP program supports projects that offer professional development to the current museum workforce; employ strategies to train and recruit future museum professionals; and support evaluation efforts to identify and share effective practices.

IMLS recognizes the important role of strong local and regional networks as an essential tool for providing peer to peer learning, training and mentoring opportunities. The 21MP program encourages applications from museum associations, museum studies programs at institutions of higher education, and museums that serve as key parts of the professional learning and training environment.

Urban forests provide trees for people, where they live, work, and play. These natural resources, on public and private property, contribute to quality of life, support community development, green infrastructure, and provide a wealth of benefits to cities and towns. The USDA Forest Service Urban & Community Forestry (U&CF) Program is the only dedicated urban forest program in the federal government. It is a technical, financial, and educational assistance program that delivers nature-based solutions to more than 84 percent of Americans. The program works to restore, sustain, and manage more than 140 million acres of urban and community forest lands for the benefit of communities across the United States and its Territories. Healthy urban & community forests and green infrastructure are not only critical to all our nation’s forests, but research and studies have also shown that our urban and community forests are essential to the economic, environmental, physical, and mental well-being of our citizens.

According to the National Ten Year Urban and Community Forestry Action Plan (2016-2026), (Action Plan) urban and community stewardship has made progress over the last decade to address the health of urban and community forests. For example, sixty (60%) percent of cities are utilizing new and emerging tools to assist propagation, planting, management, maintenance, and stewardship.

The Department seeks to fund projects under the RAISE program that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector; incorporate evidence-based climate resilience measures and features; avoid adverse environmental impacts to air or water quality, wetlands, and endangered species; and address the disproportionate negative environmental impacts of transportation on disadvantaged communities, consistent with Executive Order 14008, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad (86 FR 7619).

For organizations, funding priorities are to:

Assist with the production and presentation of significant programs about architecture and the designed environment in order to promote dialogue, raise awareness, and develop new and wider audiences.
Support them in their effort to take risks in programming and create opportunities for experimentation.
Recognize the vital role they play in providing individuals with a public forum in which to present their work.
Help them to realize projects that would otherwise not be possible without Graham Foundation support.

The Community Connect provides financial assistance to eligible applicants that will provide broadband service in rural, economically-challenged communities where service does not exist.

This Notice of Funding Opportunity announces the availability of funds and solicits applications from eligible entities to develop projects for hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) reclamation and innovative destruction technologies. Section 60109 of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provided the EPA with $15 million for competitive grants for “reclaim and innovative destruction technologies” consistent with subsections (a) through (i) and subsection (k) of section 103 division S of Public Law 116-260 (42 U.S.C. 7675) (also known as the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act). Enacted in 2020, the American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act authorizes the EPA to address climate-damaging greenhouse gases (GHGs) called HFCs by: phasing down their production and consumption, maximizing reclamation and minimizing releases from equipment, and facilitating the transition to next-generation technologies through sector-based restrictions on HFCs. HFCs are potent GHGs commonly used in refrigeration and air conditioning equipment, as well as foams and many other applications. A global phasedown of HFCs is expected to avoid up to 0.5°C of global warming by 2100. There are hundreds of possible HFC compounds. The 18 HFCs listed as regulated substances by the AIM Act are some of the most commonly used HFCs and have high impacts as measured by the quantity emitted multiplied by their respective global warming potentials (GWPs). For more information on the AIM Act and its implementing regulations, please visit https://www.epa.gov/climate-hfcs-reduction.

The purpose of this notice is to solicit financial assistance applications that will build capacity in States with coral reef ecosystems (defined as the states of Florida and Hawaii; territories of American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands; or any other territory or possession of the United States or separate sovereign in free association with the United States that contains a coral reef ecosystem) by strengthening local nongovernmental organizations’ and/or other interested stakeholder groups’ ability to participate in future coral reef stewardship partnerships, as outlined in the reauthorized Coral Reef Conservation Act, 16 U.S.C. 6401-15 (the Act). Projects funded through this competition must address one of two priorities:

PRIORITY 1: Local Coral Community Group Support
Applications submitted under the Local Coral Community Group Support priority should propose work plans over a duration of 12 to 24 months (1 to 2 years). Each application should not request more than $50,000 in total Federal funds per geographic region (e.g., counties, islands, or States) in which the project will be performed. Applications that propose projects across multiple geographic regions may request proportionally higher levels of Federal funds. Applications may be submitted by the local organization(s) themselves or by a collaborating partner (either local, regional, or national) who may act as a fiscal agent or primary program coordinator.

PRIORITY 2: National Coral Conservation Support.
Applications submitted under the National Coral Conservation Support priority will be implemented through either a grant or cooperative agreement and should propose work plans over a duration of 12 to 48 months (1 to 4 years). Each application should request no more than $75,000 in Federal funds per year for projects with regional beneficiaries and no more than $150,000 per year in Federal funds for projects with national beneficiaries. It is expected that one national or up to two regional applications may be selected. Applications are expected to be submitted by multi-state or multinational entities that may be located outside one of the beneficiary States, however, applicants should demonstrate experience working across these diverse jurisdictions.