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Project Title

Executive Summary (limit 200 words)
This summary should briefly describe your project and its goals. Responses may include: where your project will take place, what challenges it will address, how your team proposes to address this challenge using nature-based solutions and community engagement, how your approach prioritizes leadership by and support from communities of color, and what community benefits will be delivered by the project.

Location

• City
• State or Province
• Country (United States, Canada, or Mexico)
• While your team’s work should be based primarily in an urban center, we understand that conservation efforts don’t always unfold within the confines of municipal boundaries. Tell us more about the scale of your team’s place-based approach—e.g., does it involve regional stakeholders, is it more focused on a specific neighborhood, is it a city-wide effort, is it part of a connected urban corridor? (limit 200 words)

Leadership by Communities of Color
All teams must include at least one organization led by a Black, Indigenous, or other person(s) of color, and all proposed projects must be designed to benefit communities of color. Please describe how your project is led by and supported by communities of color. (limit 200 words)

Video Presentation
We ask that each team submit a video, via a YouTube or Vimeo link, that explains its project and why it should be funded. Capture your team’s energy and passion and showcase your unique city in a way that supplements the other contents of your application. This DOES NOT need to be a professionally produced video. (See tips below for shooting video on your smartphone, and click here to learn how to turn a PowerPoint slideshow into a video.)

Video guidelines and suggestions:

• Introduce yourself and your organization(s) and/or team.
• Describe the problem that you are committed to solving.
• Explain your solution.
• Explain what is unique about your solution.
• Describe how you plan to measure success and achieve meaningful impact.
• Include visual content (photos, maps, other graphics) that supports the goals of your project.
• We encourage videos not to exceed 90 seconds, but a time limit is not strictly enforced.
• If your video is recorded in a language other than English, please provide English subtitles or a transcription.
• Your video should not contain identifiable children without parental consent.

Upload guidelines
Set the Privacy Settings on your video to Public or Unlisted (do not set them to Private). Please also include captions on your video; you can view instructions on how to use YouTube automatic captioning here.

Tips for filming on a smartphone

• Don’t use selfie mode – decide where you want to film yourself, set the camera up so that location is in the frame (and make sure it’s stable!), and then record; I can edit out the frames in which you’re moving from your phone and getting settled in your filming position.
• Focus on your phone’s camera lens while you’re speaking.
• Make sure you phone is filming in landscape not portrait (e.g., lay it on its side).
• Make sure there is plenty of good lighting all around you, but avoid being too backlit; if you’re outside, make sure the sun’s not directly behind you.
• Speak clearly, and feel free to pause and repeat yourself if you didn’t like the way you sounded and/or if you stumbled over your words.
• Position yourself no more than a foot or two from your phone – the microphone is decent, but not so powerful that it’ll capture good quality sound if you move more than a few feet from it.
• Don’t zoom in – you’ll reduce the quality of the video you’re taking.

Principal Applicant

• Lead organization name
• Lead organization website
• Lead organization Facebook, Twitter, or other social media handles (if available)
• Lead organization primary contact (first and last name, title)
• Primary contact email
• Primary contact phone
• Other team members
• We strongly encourage teams to be interdisciplinary and cross-sector. Check all areas represented by your team:
  • Community-based partner organization, conservation-oriented or otherwise
  • Conservation-oriented partner organization, local or otherwise
  • University researcher(s) or other academically-oriented partner
  • Governmental agency partner or similar policy-oriented partner
  • Other (please explain)

• Why is it important for the organizations listed above to collaborate on this project? (limit 150 words)
  Use this space to explain what your team can accomplish together that the individual organizations couldn’t accomplish alone.
• Why is your team the best group to solve the problem? (limit 250 words)
  Use this space to emphasize the unique expertise, experience, and resources your team will bring to the project. As an example, responses may describe past successes, outline a track record of collaboration between team organizations, highlight team members’ complementary personal or professional experiences, and explain organizational and/or mission fit.
• Describe your team’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion principles and environmental justice. (limit 250 words)
  Use this space to elaborate on leadership, both within the organizations that comprise the team and within the team itself, and why this leadership is critical to your success. Responses may also include details about community buy-in for your project, as well as current or past community engagement efforts.

Describe the climate resilience, equity, and green space challenge your team aims to address with its innovation. (limit 250 words)
Use this space to outline why this problem exists, how it impacts your city or community, who it affects, and how it may be part of or connected to related issues. Responses may also outline leverage points, opportunities for impact, and other known factors for success.

Describe your city, pertinent local conditions, and at what scale your team intends to realize impact (e.g., in certain neighborhoods, city-wide, in a broader metro area?). (limit 250)
Use this space to present local context, including demographic data, environmental trends (including climate change impacts), and relevant political or cultural factors. What are the opportunities you see for change? Barriers? Are there communities who have an interest in your success (or failure) who are not engaged in this project, and what impact will that have on your work?

How does your team intend to solve the problem? (limit 300 words)
Use this space to describe the anticipated benefit(s) or outcome(s) of your solution, including who will benefit, how you will meaningfully make use of nature-based solutions to improve community health and resilience, and what impact you hope your approach will have on the identified problem over a period of 18 to 24 months, and beyond, if applicable.

Who do you need to engage to ensure your project will be successful? (limit 300 words)
Use this space to outline local organizations, jurisdictions, and communities whose cooperation is required for your team to be successful. Specifically, explain how you intend to engage and ensure the active participation of communities of color who are disproportionately affected by climate change and who may not be equitably represented in other programs from within the community.

What additional support could you use to build out your solution? (limit 300 words)
Every project could use some help! If you had some additional time and resources to further strengthen your project, how would you spend it? This could be finding additional partners, learning more about how the nature-based solution has been implemented successfully elsewhere, building capacity within your organization or partnership team, building support within a particular community, or something entirely different.

Describe why you believe your solution will be effective. (limit 250 words)
Has the nature-based solution you plan to implement been successful before (in your locale or elsewhere)? What local conditions can be measurably improved by your solution? Use this space to champion your project plan and present evidence that you’ll achieve meaningful impact.

What is the expected timeline for project completion? (limit 200 words)
Use this space to illustrate your project plans over an 18-24 month period, including any contingencies you may be considering in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What outcomes will you track and why? (limit 250 words)
Use this space to explain how your team will know if it is successful, or on track to be successful, over your intended timeline. How will your desired outcome(s) be developed such that they will provide demonstrable measures of success? Please note: the winning team will be required to submit a progress report midway through, and an impact/lessons learned report will be due at the end of the award period).

What challenges do you anticipate? (limit 150 words)
Use this space to describe the most threatening barriers to the short- and long-term success of the project, as well as any potential unintended consequences, and your plans to mitigate them. Barriers may include problems inhibiting solution scalability, political or public policy concerns, or any other potential operational or tactical hurdles that could hinder your solution’s success.

How will your project take local policy and practice into account? (limit 250 words)
Now that you have outlined local conditions and your team’s plan to overcome specific barriers, use this space to describe how your project may incorporate policy and practice in your city. Responses may include how your project builds upon existing policies or practices, and what, if any, gaps in local policies and practices your solution could fill.

What do you hope others will learn from your project? (limit 200 words)
One goal of the Thriving Cities Challenge is to support projects that provide critical lessons for the broader community of interest. We encourage teams to consider how their efforts may be scaled up and/or replicated. Use this space to imagine how your project’s success could serve as a model for others.

Other considerations (limit 150 words)
Use this space to raise any other considerations relevant to your team’s proposal; you may emphasize or expand upon a previous point or provide new information as necessary.

How will your team spend a $50,000-100,000 (USD) award to implement your proposed project over an 18-24 month period?
Use this space to explain what portion of the budget, if any, is expected to be spent on capacity building (a perfectly acceptable use of funds) to ensure effective execution on the project. Please also specify what portion of the budget is expected to be spent on measurement and evaluation of results. Otherwise, please offer a narrative breakdown of your spending plan that does not exceed $50,000-100,000 (USD).

Budget (upload)
This document should provide specific line items from your team’s budget narrative (above). To help us understand your team’s priorities, please provide this detailed budget according to how you would spend a $50,000-100,000 (USD) grant. Please make sure that any funds identified in this table reflect and clarify your team’s general explanations provided in your team’s budget narrative above.

In addition to the $50,000-100,000 (USD) budget that you have outlined above, describe any non-financial needs your team may have. (limit 150 words)
Use this space to elaborate on whether your team may require more support from key constituents, regulatory authorities, or others in your target geographic area. We welcome a frank and open explanation of all the key ingredients required for your team to succeed.

If your proposed project includes the provision of other resources which have already been committed from other sources, please describe them here.
While your proposed budget may not exceed $50,000-100,000 (USD), we invite proposals which may exceed the grant offered through this Thriving Cities Challenge, provided you are able to explain those other sources of secured or anticipated funding and describe the level of commitment from any other sources of additional necessary partners. If no other sources are required, please enter “not applicable.”

If you have letters of support from organizations or other stakeholders, including local government leaders, who are not part of your team but who will be important for your project’s success, you can upload and/or request your supporters submit them here. This is your opportunity to show that the communities in which you intend to implement your solution are in full support of your plans.