The Community Change Grants will support comprehensive community and place-based approaches to redressing environmental and climate injustices for communities facing legacy pollution, climate change, and persistent disinvestment. These concentrated local investments will fund community-driven, change-making projects that center collaborative efforts for healthier, safer, and more prosperous communities.

Designed with meaningful community, Tribal, and other stakeholder involvement, the investments EPA makes through the Community Change Grants are intended to achieve the following objectives:

1. Provide resources for community-driven projects to address environmental and climate challenges in communities facing disproportionate and adverse health, pollution, and environmental impacts, and suffering from generations of disinvestment.
2. Invest in strong cross-sectoral collaborations with partners who bring a robust commitment to working with and for communities with environmental and climate justice concerns.
3. Unlock access to additional and more significant resources to advance environmental and climate justice goals from across the federal government and other sources.
4. Empower communities and strengthen their capacity to drive meaningful positive change on the ground for years to come.
5. Strengthen community participation in government decision-making processes that impact them.

EPA will consider applications under two separate tracks.

• Track I applications – Community-Driven Investments for Change will focus on multi-faceted applications with Climate Action and Pollution Reduction Strategies to meaningfully improve the environmental, climate, and resilience conditions affecting disadvantaged communities. Awards under Track I are expected to be $10-20 million each and cannot exceed $20 million. EPA expects to award approximately $1.96 billion for approximately 150 Track I awards.
• Track II applications – Meaningful Engagement for Equitable Governance will facilitate the engagement of disadvantaged communities in governmental processes to advance environmental and climate justice. Awards under Track II are expected to be $1-3 million each and cannot exceed $3 million. EPA will award approximately $40 million for approximately 20 Track II awards.

The number of Track I and Track II awards are estimates, and EPA reserves the right to increase or decrease the total number of awards and dollar amounts for each track, contingent on the quality of applications received, the amount of funds awarded to selected applicants, budget availability, agency priorities, programmatic considerations, or a combination of these.