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Applicant Resources, Forms, & Policies

How to Apply for a Chesapeake Bay Trust Grant

Watch the video below to learn about the Chesapeake Bay Trust, our programs and opportunities, and the application process for applying for a grant or other award opportunity.

Access the Chesapeake Bay Trust Online System

Financial Management Spreadsheet (FMS)

Applicants are required to submit a budget using the Trust’s Financial Management Spreadsheet (FMS) as part of their application package. Applicants should complete the Application Budget worksheet of the FMS and submit the entire spreadsheet file with the online application. If you are awarded funding, the same FMS submitted with your application will be used throughout the entirety of the award.

Download the FMS

Program Specific Resources

Capacity Building

Organizational Capacity Building Resources:

Network Building Resources:

Chesapeake Bay Funders Network Expanding the Circle:

  • The Capacity Building Initiative Lessons Learned Report summarizes the Capacity Building Pilot Program. This program was started in 2015 by the Chesapeake Bay Funders Network and the Chesapeake Bay Trust. Included in this report are summaries of each project, lessons learned, and recommendation for both watershed organization and funders.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice

In May 2017, the Chesapeake Bay Trust, the Chesapeake Bay Funders Network, and the Choose Clean Water Coalition launched a significant, collaborative initiative to assess the state of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) among organizations working on environmental issues in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and to develop a DEIJ Guide with recommendations for how organizations working on environmental issues and the funders who support them, can increase DEIJ within their organizations. This effort represented the first assessment effort of its kind within the Chesapeake Bay Watershed restoration community. The impetus for launching this initiative grew out of several DEIJ efforts already being led by these three organizations to address a recognized lack of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in our environmental community, and a desire to assess the readiness of their grantees and member organizations to advance DEIJ.

Environmental Education

Chesapeake Bay Program – Bay Backpack: for Bay-wide teacher resources, field studies, professional development opportunities, and additional funding opportunities.

An Educator’s Guide to the Meaningful Watershed Educational Experience (MWEE)

MWEE Guide Tools:

MWEE 101 Online Course:

  • Partners from the Chesapeake Bay Program Education Workgroup developed an online course to provide an in-depth understanding of the MWEE for both formal and non-formal educators. The course is a free resource that is comprised of 3 lessons: 1. Why MWEEs?  2. What Makes a MWEE? and 3. Planning & Evaluating MWEEs. Throughout the course, participants will gain an extensive understanding of the essential elements and supporting practices by following a series of case study videos and looking at examples of completed planning and implementation tools.
  • The course may be used to support professional development in a number of ways: First, as a stand-alone resource for educators to reference as they learn about and build MWEEs. Second, the course is offered for continuing education credits in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Third, the course can be used to support in-person professional development by providing information to participants before, during, and after workshops. This model will allow more time during in-person trainings to be spent on modeling best practices for outdoor field experiences and working with educators to plan their MWEEs.
  • Check out the  today!

Lessons and Action Project Resources:

Field Experiences & Provider Resources:

Other:

How to Obtain Restoration Project Cost Estimates

For guidance on obtaining cost-effective and realistic budget values for an application and/or award with a restoration focus click here.

Living Shorelines

About Living Shorelines:

Tools and Resources for Living Shoreline Design and Implementation:

Project Examples:

Maintenance of Stormwater Best Management Practices

Ensuring the Practices Function Properly

A key component to stormwater management is ensuring that the practices installed work as intended and are maintained properly after installation. The Chesapeake Stormwater Network (CSN) provides a variety of resources on the inspection and maintenance of stormwater Best Management Practices (BMPs). A few of these resources are listed below.

  • This technical bulletin outlines a visual indicators approach for constructing, inspecting, maintaining, and verifying the practice. (This resource can also be viewed in this webcast recording).
  • This Homeowner BMP guide was created for homeowners and presents a step by step approach for analyzing your property to determine the appropriate practices to install and designing and installing your practice.
  • This video provides information on stormwater BMP maintenance. Construction and inspection videos can be found here.
  •  All CSN BMP resources can be found on their Resources page.

Maintenance Plan Template

Native Plants

Outreach and Behavior Change

In order to help you plan your behavior change project and ensure it is based on best practices you are encouraged to access the Outreach resources we have identified below:

  • Behavior Change Case Study Database 
    The Chesapeake Outreach Campaign database is an open collection of outreach campaigns focused on changing behaviors or practices of target audiences that reduce their impact on the local environment. This site exists to assist anyone interested in helping others do their part by sharing lessons learned, best practices, transferable materials, techniques, and ideas that ensure your effort to change behavior is as successful as possible. Whether you are a concerned resident, a behavior change specialist, or a practitioner looking to increase the adoption of environmentally responsible behaviors there is something for you in this resource.
  • Rapid Assessment for Outreach Programs Fostering Environmentally Responsible Behaviors
    This document is designed to assist organizations with assessing whether elements of their environmental behavior change programs are being used to their full potential. Program elements are summarized into one-page assessments, including questions about the use of a particular program element, based on what research shows is most effective. These questions serve to prompt the assessor to examine how a program is currently utilizing the element and ways the use of the element could be improved.
  • Strategies for Motivating Watershed Stewardship: A Guide to Research-Based Practices
    Despite the fact that Chesapeake Bay Watershed residents are generally concerned about the Bay’s health, they continue to behave in ways harmful to the Bay and its local waters (McClafferty, 2001; Raabe. 2011). This document describes a variety of strategies that environmental outreach programs can utilize to foster environmentally responsible behaviors (ERB). In particular, Chesapeake Bay Watershed organizations can use this document to help inform the design and implementation of outreach programs.

Restoration

Pollinators

Mapping and Site Selection

  • Water Resources Registry (WRR) – An interactive mapping for grantees to build their own site maps for project submission, for Trust staff to research sites, and for Trust staff and partners to share site visits and site information, etc. The latest mapping layers for MD are available and easily added, viewed, used to select restoration or protection, and exported to pdf.
  • MD iMAP – Maryland’s mapping and GIS data portal. This data is also included in the WRR.

Sea Level Rise Mapping tools

MD Trust Fund Project Sites

Green Stormwater Infrastructure siMple Pollutant Load Reduction Estimator

The Green Stormwater Infrastructure siMple Pollutant Load Reduction Estimator was developed to help Chesapeake Bay communities more easily and consistently estimate the water quality benefits of proposed stormwater retrofit and community greening projects. The tool is an easy-to-use spreadsheet that is consistent with the pollutant loading rates and load reduction efficiencies used in the Chesapeake Bay Model. It allows users to estimate pollutant load reductions from individual projects as well as to compare a suite of candidate projects based on factors such as cost-effectiveness, pollutant load reduction, maintenance burden, and constructability.

Signage

The Trust strongly encourages and sometimes requires our grantees to consider project signage as part of their proposal. Signage functions to increase awareness, educate the public, foster appreciation and long-term sustainability, and demonstrate commitment to communicating the purpose and value of water quality-related projects.

Interpretive signage on restoration projects educates visitors about the ecological (and other) functions of your project and signals to maintenance staff that an environmental restoration project is present that must be protected and managed.

Research shows that the presence of signage is one of the factors most highly correlated with project success.

These links can provide direction and guidance when creating project signage:

Examples from other projects may provide a good starting point as you develop interpretive signage.  You can use others’ work to guide your decisions on wording, graphics, and type of signage. To prolong the life of the sign, check with the signage company to see if the sign image can be printed on both sides of the panel. Click on each image to view a larger version.

Bioswales, Buffers, Eco Tours, Green Streets

Living Shorelines

Rain Barrels & Cisterns

Rain Gardens, Conservation Landscapes, Native Plants

Stream Restoration, Trash Trap, Tree Planting

Wetlands and Other

The Trust does not endorse any signage companies. While this is not an exhaustive list, the following are companies that provide signage to the Chesapeake Bay region.

Application Budget Resources

Each application must be accompanied by a project budget. Budget items can be broken down into the following categories. For more detailed descriptions of each budget category, read the “Application Budget Instructions” tab in the FMS Excel document:

  1. Personnel – Salaried (W-2) staff hours, fringe benefits
  2. Supplies – Supplies and Materials needed for the project, including plants, planting supplies, rain barrels, tools, etc.
  3. Contractual – Hiring of consultants, construction firms, outside firms, or individuals working on the project who do not receive a W-2 form from the organization
  4. Travel – Travel-related costs, including mileage reimbursement and field trip transportation
  5. Field Trip Fees – Only to be used for education-related requests and should only include field trip program fees and substitute teacher costs
  6. Other – Sub-awardees or rare circumstances where it cannot fit into another budget category
  7. Indirect – Administrative and Management costs used to support the award. More details regarding our policies can be found here. 

Example Application Budget

Provided is an example application budget. Please use this file as a guide when creating your project’s application budget. Please note that only the white cells can be edited. The grey cells are locked in order to auto calculate. The information you provide in the white cells will allow for the grey cells to calculate your project’s totals. Please do not try to unlock these cells.

Example Expense Budget FMS
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