Technical Assistance Grants
In 2017, NACD entered into the first of a series of cooperative agreements with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to provide funding to further enhance conservation district technical assistance across the nation. The agreement specified that the funds would be awarded to conservation districts to hire staff where additional capacity is needed to improve customer service and reduce workload pressure. The priorities were established from national workload databases and the decisions of the state/territory conservation partnership leaders. At NACD’s 2020 Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, the National Conservation Partnership (NCP) renewed the Memorandum of Agreement that provides the basis for the Technical Assistance Grant Program.
The first technical assistance grants based on that agreement were awarded in 2018. Every year since, NACD and NRCS have joined in an additional cooperative agreement to continue and build on what was started in 2017. To ensure the funds are directed to areas where they will have the highest impact, NACD works with state and territory conservation partnerships to identify the highest priority locations. To find out about each of the agreements, please refer to the page dedicated to it: 2018 TA Grants; 2019 TA Grants; 2020 TA Grants and 2021 TA Grants
The maps below represent cumulative award recipients to date.