<aside> 💡 Develop an approach to identify and pursue federal funding support for your initiative

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Just as it is important to consider state funding when building a comprehensive strategy, it is useful to look at federal funding opportunities for launching and sustaining a statewide climate corps program. Climate commitments and priorities continue to be solidified at the federal level, resulting in greater funding sources dedicated to the initiatives.

While this toolkit is in part an outgrowth of the failure of federal funds to support a civilian climate corps directly in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), that does not mean that federal funds are a dead end. The IRA still includes a historic level of investment in climate programs, community engagement, and workforce development across a wide swath of federal offices. This includes funding for local community investment, environmental justice programs, and climate-smart conservation practices through federal offices including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). For example, the IRA allocated $2.8 billion to the EPA for 3-year grants and $200 million for technical assistance. The grants can be used for projects related to climate change and air pollution, which could include community engagement.

The Partnership for the Civilian Climate Corps (PCCC) remains active in efforts to connect federal support to service program efforts, but to date, funding opportunities remain somewhat opaque with regards to utilization for service programming.

As such, the lack of dedicated or clearly accessible federal funding for AmeriCorps means that more effort and creativity will be needed to identify and secure relevant funding. Additionally, given the constraints on federal to federal matching with AmeriCorps funding, some available resources might have to be used indirectly, such as providing project-related funding for the partners of corps programs versus being used by corps programs directly.

Identification of federal climate corps resources may require a broad search approach. This includes looking at diverse focus areas such as building community resilience, supporting health initiatives, food security, restoration, transportation, energy security, and other national goals.

The federal funding landscape can be difficult to navigate, but outlined below is a series of potential actions to help uncover potential funding opportunities.