The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) is requesting proposals for the 2025 Conservation Partners Program.
Donor Name: National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF)
State: Selected States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 07/15/2025
Size of the Grant: $500,000 to $1 million
Grant Duration: 3 Years
Details:
In partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI), The J.M. Smucker Co., and with additional support from the General Mills, Walmart and Sam’s Club collaboration, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) will award competitive grants to accelerate the voluntary adoption of regenerative agriculture principles and conservation practices on private working lands in priority geographic areas.
Program Priorities
The Conservation Partners Program (CPP) will fund locally-led projects that provide technical assistance to agricultural producers seeking to voluntarily adopt regenerative agriculture systems and conservation practices. Grant recipients will hire or support field conservation professionals to help producers develop and implement economically sound management practices that yield positive environmental outcomes. Grant funds cannot be used to provide financial assistance to farmers and ranchers, though projects may leverage other funding for this purpose. Grant funds may not directly support other projects with existing, USDA-funded technical assistance budgets, such as those supported through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program and Advancing Markets for Producers (AMP) initiative.
Competitive projects will increase participation in Farm Bill programs as one way to advance regenerative agriculture principles. Some of these principles include: 1) minimizing chronic disturbances to the soil and biological community; 2) enhancing wildlife habitat; 3) extending crop rotations; 4) keeping the soil covered; 5) keeping a living root in the ground at all times; 6) efficiently managing water resources; and 7) integrating livestock into agricultural systems.
The Conservation Partners Program will support projects that:
- Direct staff resources to work with agricultural producers to develop site-specific conservation plans and design and implement regenerative agriculture systems and practices.
- Help agricultural producers access financial assistance through Farm Bill conservation programs, especially the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP).
- Develop innovative technical assistance approaches that reach new producers and modernize technical assistance delivery.
- Foster the development of peer-to-peer networks to advance regional knowledge and identify and overcome barriers to adopting regenerative agriculture systems and practices.
- Advance locally led conservation by incorporating local input into project design and aligning individual producer objectives with the community’s natural resource conservation priorities.
- Generate environmental benefits, such as improvements to wildlife habitat, soil health, and water quantity and quality.
- Promote conservation systems to complement and advance producer economic interests and operational efficiency.
- Align with NRCS goals, resource conservation priorities, and capacity needs. Applicants should confer with the NRCS State Conservationist and their staff in the state in which the project is located.
Competitive projects will advance one or more of the following strategies:
- Crop management: Improve water quality and maximize soil health and wildlife values by increasing adoption of cover crops, reduced tillage, extended crop rotations, perennial cropping systems, nutrient and pesticide management plans, precision agriculture, and other soil health practices.
- Grazing management: Promote plant growth above and below ground, improve wildlife habitat, and maximize soil health by establishing native grasses and optimizing stocking rates, livestock rotations, utilization rates, and plant rest and recovery.
- Irrigation improvement: Improve hydrology, in-stream flows, aquifer recharge, water conservation, and flood and drought resilience by increasing efficiency of on-farm irrigation practices and reducing agricultural runoff.
- Habitat enhancement: Enhance habitat values of working grasslands, field buffers, forests, wetlands, riparian zones, floodplains and other adjacent areas through native plantings, removal of invasive species, beneficial mowing, prescribed burning, fencing and other conservation practices.
Funding Information
Typical grant awards will range from $200,000 to $1,000,000, with an estimated average grant size of approximately $500,000.
Grant Period
Project start date cannot be before October 1, 2025 and should be within 6 months of the award announcement period. The project end date should be within 36 months of the project start date.
Geographic Focus
This funding opportunity will provide grants for projects that align geographically with the following:
- Great Plains: Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wyoming
- Upper Mississippi River Basin: This geography includes the NRCS’s Mississippi River Basin Healthy Watersheds Initiative (MRBI) states upstream of the Ohio River confluence with the Mississippi River. Priority will be given to projects focused within MRBI Focus Area Watersheds.
- Great Lakes Basin: This geography includes the U.S. portion of Great Lakes watersheds.
- Western Grazing Lands: This geography includes grasslands, shrublands, and pasturelands in the Western United States.
Eligibility Criteria
Eligible applicants include non-profit 501(c) organizations, state government agencies, local governments, municipal governments, tribal governments and organizations, and educational institutions. To be competitive, applicant organizations must demonstrate capacity and experience commensurate with the scale of the project being proposed and the funding being requested.
For more information, visit NFWF.
