Five for Friday: Grant Opportunities and More!
Curated by: The Western Nevada Development District…
This edition of Five for Friday focuses on opportunities for economic development around the region in the areas of STEM training, technology, infrastructure, and arts and culture.
Grant Opportunities & More
Building STEM Talent Training Systems to Strengthen Regional Innovation Economies
Applications are now being accepted by the Economic Development Administration for the FY23 STEM Talent Challenge. The funding opportunity makes $4.5 million available to eligible entities to create and implement STEM talent development strategies to complement their region’s innovation economy.
Projects should include training models that provide workers with the experience and skills they need to succeed in real-world job situations and to identify opportunities in high-growth potential sectors.
This can include:
• Engaging regional entrepreneurs, innovators, and the organizations that support them to assess and forecast current and future talent needs and to develop collaborative solutions with work-based programs.
• Building highly skilled talent and connecting it to highly technical opportunities that foster professional development and provide continuing advanced skills training to develop the technical and scientific workforce.
• Strengthening collaboration among entrepreneurs, industry leaders and employers, educational organizations, established corporations, economic and/or workforce development organizations, and the public sector to develop demand-driven workforce pipelines for the innovation economy.
• Placing new employees into immediate job openings with regional employers in need of STEM talent.
Competition applicants may request up to $500,000 for implementation of a 24-month program. A 1:1 funding match is required.
Application Deadline: June 12, 2023
USDA to Help Build and Improve Water and Wastewater Infrastructure in Rural America
USDA is making grants available under two different programs with similar objectives but differing eligible groups. Nonprofit organizations may apply for funding to create lending programs to help rural homeowners build, refurbish, and service water wells and individually owned household wastewater systems. In a separate program, private nonprofits can apply for funding to help public entities build and improve water and wastewater disposal systems in rural areas. Both programs are designed for grant recipients to create revolving loan funds for water and wastewater needs in rural areas.
Applicants to the Rural Decentralized Water Systems Grant Program may receive grants to provide up to $15,000 in loans and sub-grant funds to homeowners.
Applicants to the Revolving Funds for Financing Water and Wastewater Projects program may provide up to $200,000 in loans to finance water and wastewater projects.
Application Deadline: June 10, 2023
Rural Decentralized Water Systems Grant Program
Revolving Funds for Financing Water and Wastewater Projects
EDA Tech Hub Program Fact Sheet Now Available: Application Period Opens Soon
The Economic Development Administration’s Tech Hubs Program seeks to strengthen U.S. economic and national security by ensuring the industries of the future—and their good jobs—start, grow, and remain in the United States.
The Tech Hubs Program will make place-based investments in regions with the assets, resources, capacity, and potential to become globally competitive, within a reasonable period of time, in critical technologies and industries. EDA will run this competition with a focus on geographic diversity and equity. Successful proposals will demonstrate a region’s capabilities in, and focus on, its primary technological strength, and its potential for Tech Hubs investments to enable the region to become the global leader in that critical technology area within a decade.
Phase 1 Application Window: Opens late April/early May 2023 and will be open for two months.
Time for Art and Culture: Humanities Projects Funding Now Available
The National Endowment for the Humanities has just opened its next round of funding in the Public Humanities Projects. This program supports projects that bring the ideas of the humanities to life for general audiences through public programming. Projects must engage humanities scholarship to analyze significant themes in disciplines such as history, literature, ethics, and art history. Awards support projects that are intended to reach broad and diverse public audiences in non-classroom settings in the United States. Projects should engage with ideas that are accessible to the general public and employ appealing interpretive formats.
Public Humanities Projects supports projects in three categories at two funding levels (Planning and Implementation):
• Exhibitions
• Historic Places
• Humanities Discussions
Proposed projects may include complementary components: for example, a museum exhibition might be accompanied by a website or mobile app.
Planning grants up to $75,000 and implementation grants up to $400,000.
Application Deadline: August 9, 2023
In Case Your Missed It! Nevada Builders Alliance Annual Barbecue
Nevada Builders Alliance hosted their annual barbecue “Meat and Drink 2023” on May 4th at the historic Sutro Tunnel in Dayton, NV. The event was held to support efforts by the Friends of the Sutro Tunnel and the Nevada Builders Foundation to restore the Victorian House at the Tunnel, preserve the site, and make it safe and accessible for visitors.
Over 400 guests fared the cold weather to celebrate the restoration of the first 50 feet of the Tunnel Restoration Project which was rebuilt using Tahoe lumber per Adolph Sutro’s original design. Attendees enjoyed great food, whiskey tasting, and even tried a new local craft beer, the Karma Sutro Pale Ale from the The Fox Brewery.
Photos Courtesy of Nevada Builders Alliance