OpportunityTitle: Land and Water Conservation Fund Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership Program
CategoryExplanation: Outdoor Recreation - Aquisition and Development
AdditionalInformationOnEligibility: Additional Information on EligibilityIn accordance with 54 U.S.C. 200305(a), each state has a lead agency designated by the State&#8217;s Governor or by state legislation for the purposes of implementing LWCF in that state, and only the lead agency can be an applicant for an LWCF grant. Therefore, only the state lead agencies are eligible to submit applications for ORLP grants. The lead agency may submit on behalf of themselves or another eligible subrecipient.Applications submitted directly by entities other than the State Lead Agency for LWCF, will be eliminated without consideration. Individuals, nonprofit organizations, and other private entities are not eligible as applicants or sub-recipients.Eligible sub-recipients (aka project sponsors) include state agencies, local units of government (state political subdivisions such as cities, counties, and special purpose districts such as park districts), and federally-recognized Indian Tribes.For a project to be eligible the sub-recipient must represent a project within, or abutting, a city with a population of at least 30,000 people.
Description: The LWCF State and Local Assistance Program was created by Congress in 1964 to assist in preserving, developing and assuring accessibility to present and future generations of U.S. citizens and visitors &#8220;such quality and quantity of outdoor recreation resources as may be available and are necessary and desirable for individual active participation in such recreation and to strengthen the health and vitality of the citizens of the United States[.]&quot; This is accomplished in part by authorizing and providing grants to states, and through states to local units of government and federally-recognized Indian tribes, for projects that will provide outdoor recreation opportunities to the public through the acquisition of lands and waters for parks and other outdoor recreation areas, as well as through the development of new, or the renovation of existing, outdoor recreation facilities.The LWCF State and Local Assistance program is operated by the National Park Service (NPS) in partnership with designated lead agencies in each of the 50 states as well as American Samoa, the District of Columbia, Guam, Northern Marianas Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Congress allocates money from the LWCF for this program, which is then allocated to the states based on a legislative formula. To be eligible for LWCF grants, states must maintain an approved Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan (SCORP), which must be updated at least once every five years. Among other things, SCORPs are used to assess the supply and demand for outdoor recreation resources and set priorities for the use of LWCF funds. In 2014, in coordination with Congress and the Secretary of the Interior, NPS created the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership (ORLP) Program, a competitive grant program administered under the authority of the LWCF Act. NPS designed the ORLP with input from Congressional Committee staff, the States, and other interested parties. As designed, the goal of the ORLP Program is to provide new or significantly improve recreation opportunities for economically-disadvantaged communities in larger urbanized areas (as designated by the Census Bureau) that are under-served in terms of parks and other outdoor recreation resources. With Congressional support, the NPS has funded and issued grants pursuant to the ORLP each year. ORLP grants are selected through an NPS-lead national competition following a solicitation and nomination by the States, and such grants do not count against State apportionments.
GrantorContactEmailDescription: ginger_carter@nps.gov
GrantorContactText: Ginger Carter&lt;br/&gt;ginger_carter@nps.gov
CloseDateExplanation: Electronically submitted applications must be submitted no later than 11:59 PM, ET, on the listed application due date. and must be submitted by the state LWCF lead agency via Grants.gov. Round 6 will consist of two rounds: 6A and 6B. Applications submitted under Round 6A will only compete against other applications submitted under that round.&#160; &#160;Applications eliminated in Round 6A due to technical issues may be resubmitted in Round 6B. Due dates for each round are as follows: Round 6A: &#160;applications due by 11:59 pm ET, Tuesday, January 31, 2023 Round 6B:&#160; applications due by 11:59 pm ET, Wednesday, May 31, 2023.The state LWCF lead agencies may establish earlier deadlines for project sponsors to submit their proposals for their review for nomination to the national competition. Applications sent by facsimile, email, or mail delivery will not be accepted. Applications that are not received by the deadline will not be considered. The NPS will accept applications that: 1) were accepted in Grants.gov by the stipulated time, based on the time/date stamp in Grants.gov and 2) have been validated in Grants.gov, even if they are not forwarded to the DOI&#8217;s grant management system before the deadline.You are encouraged to submit your application well before the deadline and not wait until the last minute. The uploading and transfer process can take a while, especially when Grants.gov is getting heavy use. In addition, after the application is submitted it gets validated before it is forwarded to the NPS. Normally this happens within a few minutes to a couple of hours, but it can take Grants.gov up to a day or two to validate or reject an application. You can monitor your application&#8217;s status by using &#8220;Track My Application&#8221; on Grants.gov.&#160; Be sure to record the Grants.gov tracking number which will displayed on the confirmation page in Grants.gov immediately after you successfully submit to Grants.gov as you will need it for tracking.Sometimes there are glitches that prevent actual transmission, for example, applications that exceed 200MB in size do not get forwarded to the DOI system. Technical difficulties with application submittal should be directed to the Grants.gov help desk. NPS staff can confirm receipt of submission but cannot resolve issues with Grants.gov or extend the application deadline due to difficulties with submission via Grants.gov.&#160;