The Climate Smart Communities Initiative (CSCI) is pleased to announce the launch of the 2026 CSCI grants opportunity for US-based climate resilience projects.
Donor Name: Climate Smart Communities Initiative
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 03/12/2026
Size of the Grant: $100,000 to $500,000
Grant Duration: 1 Year
Details:
Climate Smart Communities Initiative awards provide funding and technical assistance to advance community-based climate resilience in US communities or regions that are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The program prioritizes funding for communities that include historically disinvested populations at increased risk to climate-related impacts. It is open to US-based project teams composed of a climate adaptation practitioner and representatives from a local or regional government entity and a community-based organization.
Benefits
- CSCI grants are designed to be flexible to meet the unique needs of each community. Grant funds can be used to support new climate resilience efforts or build on previous work as well as fund a range of activities.
- In addition to funding, awarded project teams have access to CSCI’s comprehensive cohort support program, which is designed to provide capacity building support, including training and peer-to-peer learning opportunities from CSCI’s growing network of funded partners.
- CSCI also offers technical assistance on an as-needed basis. Supplemental funding may be available to grantees to support access to topical experts and technical resources throughout the grant period.
- Finally, award recipients are automatically included in CSCI’s learning and evaluation program, which aspires to refine collective understanding of best adaptation practices, identify replicable resilience strategies, and establish common metrics of success to accelerate climate resilience efforts across the country.
Priorities
- Climate Change Vulnerability
- CSCI funds projects designed to help communities that are vulnerable to climate change-related hazards to build their capacity to plan for climate impacts and to increase their resilience to those hazards.
- Equity
- CSCI prioritizes projects that center equity in climate resilience planning and implementation. Equity is a core value of the program and an important component in any effort aimed at increasing the effectiveness and sustainability of a climate resilience plan or project.
- Nature
- CSCI also prioritizes the consideration of climate impacts on nature and nature-based solutions (NbS) in climate resilience plans and projects. NbS are often more adaptive and cost-effective alternatives to standard gray infrastructure-based solutions and provide many co-benefits to people and to nature. While consideration of nature and NbS are required, their inclusion is not as they may not be the best fit or in scope for every project.
- Readiness to increase climate resilience
- CSCI requires applicants to demonstrate that the work they propose is aligned with the needs of, and conditions present in, the community or region in question. Unless the project team is in the earliest phase of their planning process, the proposed activities must be informed by or build on prior work that broadly aligns with the sequence of the Steps to Resilience (StR) Framework. The goal of the proposed work must be clearly linked to the cited climate change-related hazards and the proposed activities must aspire to enable the community to increase its resilience to those hazards.
- Capacity building
- CSCI awards are limited to 12-month grant periods, but climate change impacts will remain an ongoing challenge in all communities. To help extend the impact of the technical and financial support provided, the initiative will prioritize investment opportunities that explicitly address or indirectly increase capacity of the applicant community to pursue their climate resilience goals beyond the grant period.
Funding Information
- The total grants budget is $1.5-2 million, and grants typically range from $75,000 to $115,000 based on the scope of work proposed in the application. CSCI anticipates awarding between 16-20 grants for the 2026 cycle.
- CSCI awards are limited to 12-month grant periods.
Uses of Funds
Funding can be used to cover a range of expenses and resources depending on the needs of the community and the ‘step’ at which the community is along the StR (see the Applicant Resources section) including:
- Complete a climate vulnerability and sensitivity analysis,
- Facilitation of planning processes
- Community engagement
- Resilience project prioritization
- Obtaining financing for the implementation of planned climate resilience efforts
- One grant agreement or contract will be generated for each project with one of the project partners, typically the adaptation practitioner, as the recipient.
- Funds may be passed-through to local governments partners, community-based organizations, and other project participants.
- CSCI does not have requirements for how subcontractors or subgrants or stipends are paid from the CSCI award are managed.
Eligibility Criteria
- Location: Projects and project partners must be based in the United States, inclusive of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa,, as well as the Tribal nations that share these geographies.
- Climate impacts: Applicant communities must be facing significant impacts from climate change-related hazards based on environmental as well as socioeconomic considerations.
- Climate resilience: Activities and work proposed must be strictly focused on climate adaptation and resilience. Applications with a primary focus on, climate mitigation actions, emissions reduction, carbon sequestration, or energy efficiency will not be considered.
- Community size: The population of the community (number of people within the geographic area that is the focus of the proposed climate resilience project) should be less than 300,000 residents. However, applicants representing geographies with populations up to 500,000 residents will be considered for projects that are regional in scope.
- Partners: CSCI grants support climate resilience-building efforts that include three types of partners: Adaptation practitioner, Community-based organization, U.S. local or regional government.
- All applications must include at least one partner of each type.
- Partnerships can be new or a previous or ongoing collaboration.
For more information, visit CSCI.
