Land & Water Conservation Fund Grants

Announcement

2022-2023 Announcement memo

The 2022-2023 Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) grant cycle officially opens April 1 and will close Wednesday, May 31, 2023 at 11:59 p.m.

The LWCF grant program is accepting applications for acquisition of park land, develop of recreation facilities and renovation of existing outdoor recreation facilities from eligible applicants. Eligible applicants are defined as qualified local governments (as determined by the Department of Community Affairs) and constituted recreation authorities/commissions who are in good standing with LWCF. All eligible applicants must complete a pre-application online. Click hereto access the on-line submission portal. Paper applications will not be accepted. Following the competitive pre-application phase, successful applicants will be invited to complete a second-level application. For more program information, you can watch videos from our educational webinar located near the bottom of the page.

*Pre-applications must include a discussion of each criterion to support point values. DNR will assign points based on reasonable and verifiable facts and not supposition. Points will be assigned in a way that provides for consistency in interpretation and application for all pre-applications in the scoring process.

**To ensure that only high caliber projects are awarded grants, DNR reserves the right to set minimum scores. If there is an insufficient number of high-scoring, high caliber projects, DNR may delay grant awards and solicit new grant applications/proposals the following grant cycle.

Grant timeline

April 1- Grant cycle opens

May 31- Grant cycle closes/competitive pre-application due

June-July- Applications reviewed and ranked

September- Project selections announced

February 2024- 2^nd level applications due

Click here to start your pre-application

Overview

The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) Program is a federal program authorized by Congress for the purpose of acquiring federal lands and assisting states and local governments with funds to acquire lands and develop and renovate outdoor recreation facilities. LWCF funds are appropriated by Congress to the U. S. Department of the Interior, National Parks Service (NPS), and NPS allocates the funds through state agencies as a grant program to state and local governments. Grantees must match the grant award dollar for dollar.

The LWCF Program, first authorized in 1965, has resulted in Georgia receiving over $120 million in matching grant funds. The program was reauthorized and received permanent funding in fiscal years 2019 and 2020 respectively. With the permanent funding, it is anticipated that Georgia will receive $5-7 million annually.

In order to efficiently administer the grant funds, LWCF moved to a bi-annual grant cycle. With two years of allocations to award, an estimate of $10 million will be available to local governments during the 2022-2023 grant cycle.