OSI: Land and Climate Catalyst Planning Grants

The OSI Land and Climate Catalyst Planning Grants provide $300,000 in funding to assist land trusts, non-profits, and recognized Tribes in incorporating climate science into strategic land protection and forest stewardship plans. The program supports the development of plans that enhance habitat resilience, carbon storage, and community adaptation to climate impacts, including flooding and drought. With a focus on equity, it encourages proposals that address the climate change burdens faced by marginalized communities.

Land and Climate Grant Program
Across the country, communities and ecosystems are experiencing climate change and grappling with its unknowns. How much will temperatures rise and how quickly?
Despite this uncertainty, scientists agree: land protection is, and will remain, a key strategy for ensuring that natural systems — and the plants, animals, and people that depend upon them — can continue to thrive.
Since 2012, OSI has been helping land trusts and other groups that protect and steward land develop effective approaches to conserving land in a rapidly changing climate. Working alongside our capital grants program that funds the acquisition of land that is resilient and stores and sequesters carbon, OSI has supported the development of over 70 climate-aligned conservation plans and offered workshops, webinars, and trainings to over 6,000 participants.
OSI’s Catalyst Program currently focuses on addressing the following climate issues: habitat resilience, forest carbon storage and sequestration, and community resilience to climate impacts such as flooding. We support conservation groups and communities by offering planning grants and technical assistance, authoring guidance documents, and hosting workshops.
Through a collaboration between Open Space Institute and Land Trust Alliance, $300,000 is available in the 2023 grant round to help land trusts, other not-for-profit organizations, and state and federally recognized Tribes integrate climate science into strategic land protection plans or forest stewardship plans.
Land trusts may also apply for climate-informed land conservation planning or communications technical support from the Land Trust Alliance.
2023 Grant Program
Open Space Institute and the Land Trust Alliance are pleased to announce the 2023 Land and Climate Grant Program. The program aims to support and build the capacity of land trusts and other groups that conserve and steward land to integrate climate change into land protection and management decisions.
The program will support the development of climate-informed land conservation, stewardship, policy, or communications plans that address one or more of the following issues: habitat resilience, carbon mitigation, renewable energy siting or community adaptation to climate impacts such as stronger storms, flooding, drought, fire or extreme heat.
Projects should achieve one or more of the following deliverables:

• Land Protection Plans
• Incorporate climate science into new or existing strategic conservation plans that target land protection for climate adaptation or mitigation.
• Management Plans
• Incorporate climate science into land stewardship or management plans to address adaptation or mitigation strategies.
• Communications Plans

Develop a comprehensive climate communication strategy that promotes the adaptation and mitigation goals of the organization and its conservation or stewardship plans
Renewable Energy Siting Plans
Develop a plan, decision matrix or policies to guide organizational engagement with renewable energy siting on conservation lands and/or in service areas.
The program encourages proposals that address the inequitable burdens of climate change and environmental racism on Black, Indigenous and People of Color and low-income communities.

Eligibility

The grants may be used to cover costs associated with the development of strategic conservation plans or land management plans as described above and/or to develop internal policies, procedures, and communications in support of this work. Eligible costs include, but are not limited to staff time, travel, graphic design, printing, mailing, indirect costs (up to 15%) and project consultants.Land Trust Alliance member land trusts and Affiliate state land trust associations are eligible to apply for planning grants or technical support.Applicants must have been a qualified organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code for at least two years, or, in the case of affiliate member state land trust associations, have an established fiduciary meeting this qualification.
Applicants must be a current member in good standing of the Land Trust Alliance.Geographic eligibility: Nation-wide.
Please note that technical support awards and Renewable Energy Siting project grants are only available to applicants that meet Land Trust Alliance eligibility requirements.There is no match requirement.

Ineligibility

Ineligible Use of Grant fundsGeneral operating supportResearch that is not directly related to the conservation planning or management project described in the application
Political lobbying
Development of carbon offset projects.