The Urban Trees Grant Program, called for by the Maryland General Assembly as a component of a 5,000,000-tree goal by 2031, welcomes requests for tree planting projects in urban, underserved communities. The goal of the Urban Tree Grant Program is to green communities; enhance quality of life, human health, and community livability by improving air quality and reducing urban heat island effect; and mitigate some of the effects of climate change.
Donor Name: Chesapeake Bay Trust
State: Maryland
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline (mm/dd/yyyy): 03/03/2022
Size of the Grant: $1,000,000
Details:
The Chesapeake Bay Trust will be seeking grant proposals from a wide range of applicants to plant trees in urban, underserved communities.
Projects selected for funding must be fully or significantly focused on planting of trees. Projects may include other components, such as a workforce development component, but the tangible result of projects selected for funding must be trees in the ground, at least for the first year. An assessment will be made after the first year to determine barriers and capacity to meet the General Assembly’s tree planting goals.
Request Amounts
There will be no maximum request; however, requests will generally be at the following scales:
- Up to $15,000 for projects serving a single small neighborhood (on the order of 25 to 100 trees)
- Up to $45,000 for projects serving multiple neighborhoods within a community (on the order of 75 to 300 trees)
- Up to $200,000 for projects serving multiple communities (on the order of 300 to 1,000 trees)
- Up to $1,000,000 for projects serving communities across an entire county-scale (on the order of 2,000 to 6,000 trees)
Eligible Project Locations
Tree planting projects proposed as part of this program must occur in urban, underserved areas, defined in Section 8–1911 of the Natural Resources Article of the Annotated Code of Maryland as:
- An urban area, as delineated by the United States Census Bureau AND
- An area that meets ONE or more of the following criteria:
- Historic Disenfranchisement: A neighborhood that was, at any point in time, redlined or graded as “hazardous” by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation; OR
- Unemployment: A census tract with an average rate of unemployment for the most recent 24- month period for which data are available that exceeds the average rate of unemployment for the State; OR
- Household Income: A census tract with a median household income for the most recent 24- month period for which data are available that is equal to or less than 75% of the median household income for the state of Maryland during that period; OR
- Housing Project: A housing project as defined in Section 12-101 of the Housing and Community Development Article.
Eligible Project Property Types
Tree planting projects can occur on sites including, but not limited to:
- Streets and Right of Way projects – Street Tree Projects
- Vacant Lots – Greening Vacant Lots by planting trees
- Institutional Grounds, such as, but not limited to, faith, education, or health institutions
- Other types of public or private property
Eligible Applicants
- Funding Partners and the Trust welcome requests from non-profit organizations, schools, community associations; service, youth, and civic groups; institutions of higher education; counties; municipalities; and forest conservancy district boards and neighborhood/community associations (as per statute).
- Also as per statute, grant applications from qualified organizations located in the underserved areas where the proposed tree planting projects will be implemented will be prioritized.
For more information, visit Urban Trees Grant Program.
