2025 Community Climate Resilience Grant Program

Eligibility 

The Community Climate Resilience (CCR) Grant Program is intended for frontline communities, defined as those that are disproportionately impacted by climate change due to existing and historic racial, social, environmental, and economic inequities, and who have limited resources and limited capacity to adapt.

Frontline communities include Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities, immigrants and refugees, people living with low incomes, communities experiencing disproportionate pollution exposure, women and gender non-conforming people, LGBTQIA people, people who live and/or work outside, those with existing health issues, people with limited English skills, and other climate-vulnerable groups.

Eligible applicants must:

• Have 501(c)3 nonprofit status; or
• Have a fiscal sponsor with 501(c)3 nonprofit status
  • For groups that must hire a fiscal sponsor, a fee of 8% to 15% of the total grant award is often charged. This fee may be included in your proposed budget.
• Organization/collective or community group applying must be representative of a frontline community as defined above and the proposed project must directly benefit frontline community members
• All projects must take place within King County and serve frontline communities located in King County

Project Eligibility:

The CCR Grant Program is meant to serve as a resource for frontline communities to develop new or expand on existing community-based climate resilience projects. We require that proposed projects align with one or more of the Sustainable & Resilient Frontline Communities (SRFC) Focus Areas listed below. The project actions listed under each focus area are meant to serve as examples of project goals, but they are not limited to these actions.

• Community Capacity Development
  • Grow community capacity through leadership development trainings to prepare community members to act for climate resilience
  • Design and implement culturally relevant communication and education strategies that best inform frontline communities about climate change and intersecting climate justice issue areas
  • Create or grow youth development programs to elevate youth voices around climate action and create opportunities for youth to be leaders in decision-making spaces
• Community Health & Emergency Preparedness
  • Create communication channels for frontline communities around health, access and warnings for climate events
  • Provide training materials to prepare frontline communities for emergency events and climate-related health impacts
• Food Systems & Food Security
  • Support local and BIPOC growers to expand affordability and accessibility to fresh, health and culturally relevant produce to frontline community members who could be disproportionately impacted by climate-influenced food insecurity
  • Support the development and/or expansion of programs focused on the production and distribution of affordable and health foods to communities that live in areas experiencing food insecurity and have low accessibility to public transit, people with disabilities and/or who have health disparities, and people who are disproportionately impacted by climate change
  • Expand frontline community capacity and access to health lands and waters in which to grow, gather, and/or harvest culturally significant plants, foods, and natural resources in a changing climate
• Housing Security & Anti-Displacement
  • Expand capacity, knowledge and resources for frontline communities to articulate the connections between housing and climate change through accessibility workshops, trainings, informational resources and/or partnerships
  • Strategizing and/or development of climate resilient infrastructure for frontline communities
• Energy Justice & Utilities
  • Build energy literacy in frontline communities to develop leadership capacity for taking actions towards energy justice in systems
• Special Topics: Heat Mitigation*
  • Support community-determined solutions to reduce the impacts of extreme heat on vulnerable populations
  • Highlight strategic objectives, including keeping people safe indoors and outdoors, increasing heat safety awareness and education, integrating heat resilience into infrastructure planning and green spaces, and supporting community-led heat action

  *In July 2024, King County released the first ever Extreme Heat Mitigation Strategy, which provides 20 near-term and longer-term actions for King County and local partners to better prepare for and respond to the impacts of extreme heat. The strategy actions were informed by engagement with over 900 individuals, including community partners, and the highlighted strategic objectives including keeping people safe indoors and outdoors, increasing heat safety awareness and education, integrating heat resilience into infrastructure planning and green spaces, and supporting community-led heat action.
  
  If you have any questions about this topic area or are seeking guidance on submitting a heat topic area project, please contact Daaniya Iyaz (daiyaz@kingcounty.gov), Climate Preparedness Project Manager in the King County Executive Climate Office.
  
  At this time non-eligible projects include any proposals related to land acquisition or development of a scholarship program.