The Youth Athletic Facilities program provides grants to buy land and develop or renovate outdoor athletic facilities such as ball fields, courts, swimming pools, mountain bike tracks, and skate parks that serve youth through the age of eighteen.
Donor Name: Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office
State: Washington
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 04/30/2026
Size of the Grant: More than $1 million
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
While the program focuses on youth, RCO strongly encourages grant recipients to design facilities to serve all ages and multiple activities.
An athletic facility is an outdoor facility used for playing sports or participating in competitive athletics and excludes playgrounds, tot lots, vacant lots, open or undeveloped fields, and level open space used for non-athletic play.
Typical Projects
- Adding lights to a field to allow evening games
- Changing an underused tennis court to a high-demand basketball court
- Changing the field surface, such as installing artificial turf, to allow more games per season or more seasons when the field may be used
- Expanding a youth-sized softball field to accommodate broader community uses.
Types of Grants
- Small Grants
- The program provides grants to develop or renovate outdoor athletic facilities serving youth in small communities.
- Large Grants
- The program provides grants to buy land and develop or renovate outdoor athletic facilities serving youth.
Funding Information
- Small Grants: Up to $350,000 (total project cost including match must be no greater than $700,000)
- Large Grants: $25,000-$1.5 million
Eligible Projects
- Architectural and engineering costs.
- Areas associated with track and field events.
- Land acquisition for future development of eligible facilities.
- Outdoor athletic fields, such as baseball, lacrosse, and soccer fields.
- Outside pools for competitive events.
- Sport courts outdoors such as tennis or basketball courts.
- Support elements such as landscaping, restrooms, drinking fountains, bleachers, bike racks, scoreboards, signs, roads, driveways, fire lanes, and
- parking lots. These projects must include an “in bounds” item, which is an item found within the field of play or on the court or track and is essential for the competitive sport to occur. Refer to the Manual 17: Youth Athletic Facilities for more details or contact a grants manager. This requirement does not apply to stand-alone accessibility improvement projects in the Small Grants Category.
Eligibility Criteria
- Small Grants Category
- Cities, towns, and park districts with ten thousand or fewer residents.
- Counties with fewer than sixty-thousand residents are eligible, but the project must be in an unincorporated area.
- Native American tribes
- For nonprofit organizations, the population of the jurisdiction where the project lies will apply.
- Large Grants Category
- Cities, counties, towns, park districts
- Native American tribes
- Qualified nonprofit organizations.
for more information, visit WSRCO.
