Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program (EJ TCGM)

Background
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is issuing a solicitation for the design and management of a new Environmental Justice (EJ) competitive pass-through program. The program aims to competitively select multiple pass-through entities to provide grant funds via subawards to community-based nonprofit organizations and other eligible subrecipient groups representing underserved and disadvantaged communities. This initiative aligns with the EPA's mission to protect human health and the environment, particularly assisting communities disproportionately affected by environmental, climate, and human health harms and risks.

Grant Details
The EPA plans to award cooperative agreements to pass-through entities (referred to as Grantmakers) who will collaborate with EPA to design and build their own processes to receive and evaluate competitive community project applications from communities for EJ Thriving Communities Subgrant activities. These activities consist of assessment, planning, and/or project development activities addressing local environmental and/or public health issues. The Grantmakers will be responsible for various key activities including designing a competitive application submission and evaluation process, developing communications plans and conducting outreach activities, managing the subgrant application in-take processes, evaluations, subgrants awarding process, project tracking for communities and/or subgrant funding recipients, providing technical support to subrecipients, disseminating project results, collaborating with EPA environmental justice staff, federal technical assistance providers, and other federal grants programs.

Grant Value
The total value of the grant is approximately $550 million. Up to 11 awards are expected to be made for the Grantmakers.

Eligibility Requirements
Eligible subrecipients include nonprofit organizations, community-based and grassroots nonprofit organizations, philanthropic and civic organizations with nonprofit status, tribal governments (both federally recognized and state-recognized), Native American Organizations, Puerto Rico, US Territories, Freely Associated States (FAS). Ineligible subrecipients include individuals, for-profit businesses, and state governments. Priority is given to applications from Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs), Predominately Black Institutions (PBIs).

Period of Performance
The period of performance for the grant is over the next 3 years.