The Openlands is pleased to announce the 2025 ComEd Green Region Grant.
Donor Name: Openlands
State: Illinois
County: Selected Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 03/28/2025
Size of the Grant: $1000 to $10,000
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
The Chicago metropolitan region is rich in diversity – both in the landscapes that include native prairies, wetlands, woodlands, and a vast network of streams and rivers, as well as in the 10 million people who call this region home.
Special focus projects demonstrate climate resiliency, specifically nature-based solutions that help the region prepare for, recover from, and adapt to climate change and support pollinator conservation.
ComEd and Openlands are committed to a greener future by focusing on climate resiliency.
Recent international research and reports on climate change tell them that they are at a tipping point, and action must be taken to ensure a sustainable future. Examples of nature-based resiliency projects include but are not limited to, projects that:
- Increase biodiversity and create habitat for wetlands and grasslands systems of concern. Examples: restore wetlands, savanna ecosystems, or prairies; plant pollinator gardens; install bug hotels; install proper landscape structure (over story canopy, shrub layer, and native plants).
- Protect water quality and manage water where it falls. Examples: build rain gardens, bioswales, or underground cisterns and french drains; plant climate-resistant trees; replace non-porous surfaces with permeable surfaces.
- Build healthy soil. Examples: plant deep-rooted, climate-resilient prairie species to sequester carbon; promote mycorrhizal and macroinvertebrate development within the soil for proper structure and composition.
- Your project: you tell them how you can support climate resiliency through conservation, restoration, and improved land management actions with a nature-based solution in your community’s public, open space.
Funding Information
Grants will be for amounts up to $10,000 and may be used to pay for up to two-thirds of eligible activities.
Eligible Activities
Priority is given to projects that demonstrate a) significant impact on the surrounding community by increasing the public’s access to open space and encouraging their engagement with the project; and b) active partnerships within the community. Additional preference may be given to projects that support a special focus area that has been designated for the grant cycle. Eligible activities include:
- Developing or updating open space plans. Expenses may include consultant fees, costs associated with obtaining public input (hall rental, advertising, etc.), and publication costs.
- Improving applicant-owned open spaces, including planning costs. Funds may be used for habitat improvements such as installing or improving natural areas such as prairies, woodlands, wetlands, associated buffers, and other native natural communities. The plans also may include the installation of capital improvements for passive recreation, such as trails, boardwalks, kiosks, and observation platforms. Parking lots are not eligible for funding. Expenses related to capital improvements may include consultant fees for landscape architects, park designers, botanists, restoration specialists, engineers, etc.
- Acquisition (by purchase or donation) of parcels of land to be used for open space. Expenses may include land cost, legal or consultant fees, survey, environmental assessments, appraisals, etc.
- Acquisition (by purchase or donation) of conservation easements (also known as “development rights”) on parcels of land to be used for open space. Eligible expenses include legal costs to purchase development rights, consultant fees, survey, environmental assessments, appraisals, etc.
Eligibility Criteria
Eligible applicants include non-profit organizations, schools, school districts, and housing authorities with a letter of support, townships, counties, park districts, conservation districts, forest preserve districts, and municipalities-including municipal entities such as water reclamation districts- within ComEd’s service territory in the following counties: Boone, Bureau, Carroll, Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Ford, Grundy, Henry, Iroquois, Jo Daviess, Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, Lake, LaSalle, Lee, Livingston, Marshall, McHenry, Ogle, Rock Island, Stephenson, Whiteside, Will, Winnebago and Woodford.
For more information, visit Openlands.
