Conservation Innovation Grants | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG) program, administered by USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), is a discretionary grant opportunity designed to speed up the development and real-world adoption of innovative conservation approaches and technologies. The central idea is to strengthen environmental protection and enhancement while still supporting productive agriculture, and to make sure federal conservation investments translate into tools and practices that can be used widely. CIG is especially focused on moving proven or emerging conservation strategies beyond the early stage and into broader use, often by demonstrating them at field scale and showing how they can be replicated and scaled.

CIG-funded projects are expected to produce practical outcomes that can be transferred into NRCS technical manuals and guidance (so they become part of standard conservation practice) or into the private sector for broader deployment. Rather than funding basic research, CIG emphasizes applying or demonstrating technologies and approaches that have already shown promise, using pilots, field demonstrations, and on-farm conservation research to increase confidence and adoption among producers and other land managers. The program also supports innovative approaches such as market-based systems, reflecting an interest in conservation strategies that can sustain themselves economically and encourage participation through incentives and new business or market mechanisms.

A key eligible project type under CIG is on-farm conservation research, which NRCS defines in a fairly specific way. This is research conducted to answer a focused conservation question using a statistically valid experimental design, carried out on actual farm fields with farm-scale equipment. In practical terms, that means the work should include an appropriate number of replications and a plan for statistical analysis, so the results are credible and usable beyond a single site. When NRCS funds research through CIG, it is limited to on-farm research that clearly stimulates innovative natural resource management approaches in tandem with agricultural production, reinforcing the program's applied, adoption-oriented mission.

Projects may be single-year or multi-year, but they cannot exceed three years in length. Proposals are accepted from across a broad geographic footprint: all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories and affiliated areas including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands (Caribbean Area), as well as Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (Pacific Islands Area). Eligibility is wide and includes federally recognized Native American tribal governments, state and local governments, special districts, public and private institutions of higher education, nonprofit organizations with 501(c)(3) status (other than universities), individuals, and for-profit entities including small businesses.

The selection process uses a two-tier review system intended to combine technical rigor with program-level oversight. First, a technical peer review panel evaluates complete proposals using the formal proposal evaluation criteria described in the solicitation instructions. In the second stage, full proposals and their technical evaluations, along with input from the State Conservationist, are forwarded to a Grants Review Board. The Board makes recommendations to the NRCS Chief, who makes the final funding decisions.

For this specific posting (Funding Opportunity Number USDA NRCS NHQ CIG 16 01; CFDA 10.912), the activity areas are agriculture, environment, and natural resources. Awards are grants, with an award ceiling listed at $2,000,000 and an expected total of about 75 awards. The posting date and creation date were March 7, 2016, and the application deadline for complete proposals was May 10, 2016.

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