The Municipal Fiber Grant program is a competitive grant program that will support the closing of critical gaps that exist in municipal networks.
Donor Name: Commonwealth of Massachusetts
State: Massachusetts
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant | In-Kind
Deadline: 04/10/2025
Size of the Grant: $100,000 to $500,000
Grant Duration: 2 Years
Details:
The provision of fiber in communities allows for centralized management of IT infrastructure, including an enterprise approach to network monitoring, cybersecurity, records management, and backup and recovery. A cohesive municipal network also creates opportunities to gain economies of scale by aggregating internet bandwidth purchases and the associated security infrastructure. A key provision of this grant program is that the fiber must be owned by the municipality.
Focused on connecting municipality-owned facilities, it will assist municipalities in achieving many critical goals associated with municipal fiber networks, including the following:
- Growing risk and incidences of cyber security exploits in local government
- Significant increases in the complexity and expectations of IT infrastructure in local government
- Expectation that municipal employees should be able to collaborate regardless of physical location
- Growing need for internet bandwidth, particularly as line of business technology moves to the cloud
- Growing public expectation that online transactions are made available
- Growing need for centralized and proactive management of IT infrastructure
- Increased reliance on technology for school safety and a growing need for centralized security camera management
- Growing reliance on technology to ensure continuity of government and disaster recovery
- Growing technology dependency for public safety interoperability, radio backhaul, and emergency operations center.
Funding Information
Grant requests of any size up to $250,000 will be considered. However, if the application is for a multi-jurisdictional project, grants of up to a maximum of $500,000 may be awarded. A local match of 5% is required. In-kind services can serve as the match.
Grant Period
Projects awarded grants must be completed within 18 months of the grant being awarded.
Eligibility Criteria
All municipalities are eligible except those awarded grants in FY24.
For more information, visit Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
