The Nature Conservancy (TNC), a global environmental nonprofit founded in 1951, is offering grants of up to $50,000 across Long Island and New York State to support conservation and climate adaptation initiatives, with a focus on projects that protect lands and waters crucial for adapting to climate change.
This initiative is part of TNC's 2025 Climate Resilience Grant Program (CRGP), which awards grants to local organizations and supports fee and easement acquisitions connecting critical floodplains and shorelines, helping to mitigate flooding and erosion. The program also provides funding for organizational capacity-building, as well as planning and strategy development.
TNC prioritizes projects that involve meaningful community engagement, especially in underserved and frontline communities, and that work with groups historically excluded from conservation, aiming for more equitable outcomes for people and communities.
Entering its fifth funding cycle, the CRGP has already supported 23 organizations with 53 projects, distributing approximately $1.2 million in funding. Each year, the program addresses issues TNC deems critical for adapting to and planning for the effects of climate change.
In 2025, TNC will focus on projects centered around natural infrastructure – such as floodplains, streams, wetlands, tidal marshes, beaches, dunes and bluffs – as these ecosystems play a key role in mitigating flooding and erosion.
New York is experiencing more intense rainfall, erosion and sea level rise, and we must plan for future conditions, engage with people affected by flooding, and collaborate with nature to keep people safe and allow nature to adapt. This grant program seeks to do just that.
Matt Levy, Director of Land Protection at The Nature Conservancy in New York
As climate-related challenges continue to evolve, the 2025 CRGP offers a vital opportunity for communities and organizations to collaborate on solutions that protect both people and nature. By addressing immediate needs and long-term goals, TNC remains committed to building a more resilient and sustainable future for New York and beyond.
The deadline for application submissions is Friday, February 7, 2025.
To submit an application, visit the 2025 Climate Resilience Grant Program website.
Additional resources:
- The Nature Conservancy: 2024 Impact Report (New York)
- Resilient Land Mapping Tool – This tool is designed to explore and analyze the Resilient and Connected Network, a proposed conservation network of representative climate-resilient sites designed to sustain biodiversity and ecological functions into the future under a changing climate. Returning users should find this tool similar in concept and function to the previous tool.
- The Nature Conservancy's Resilient and Connected Appalachians Grant Program
- Guidance on and Examples of Community Benefits
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