Boulder County is planning changes to its Climate Equity Fund grants in hopes of a smoother process as the program focused on grassroots climate change enters its second year.
The county last year awarded about $2 million to 15 organizations in its inaugural Climate Equity Fund grants for projects that included clean energy improvements at mobile home parks, a climate class for immigrant students and a community garden in Nederland.
Together, more than 50 organizations applied for the grants in 2025, requesting more than $12.5 million in funding.
But after the county commissioners formally approved the award amounts, at least one group that didn’t receive a grant asked for a review. Representatives from the Apache Nation of Colorado said the awards failed to deliver on the fund’s equity commitments, arguing that multiple proposals from the targeted communities were denied, while newer, white-led organizations with limited history in Indigenous, immigrant and low-income communities received awards.
Other concerns included potential conflicts of interest from evaluators and not awarding the full amount available for grants. About $370,000 was rolled over to this year’s grant fund, which will include $2 million for grants.
The Boulder County commissioners recently approved an amended contract to outside fund manager JSI Research Training, which is administering the Climate Equity Fund.
In 2025, JSI received about $460,000 to design the fund, provide technical support to grantees, make site visits, complete financial compliance reporting and manage the contracts. For 2026, the county will pay JSI about $467,500. Along with providing technical support and managing the grant projects, the scope of work for 2026 includes making structural changes to the grant based on feedback.
“We heard a lot of feedback,” Boulder County Climate Communications Specialist Sabina Maniak said. “We’ve learned a lot.”
Planned changes include increasing the cap on the number of projects to ensure all the available money is distributed this year. Instead of last year’s cap of 15 total projects, this year will raise the cap to 28 total projects — up to 20 smaller projects and up to eight larger projects.
Other planned changes include a stronger division between smaller project grants and the larger grants, which will total $150,000 to $400,000. That division will include separate application processes and evaluators.
In last year’s grant round, many of those who served on the evaluation committee also were part of the organizations that wanted to apply. That meant most community evaluators could only score the small number of applications they weren’t connected to during the initial review. The top scoring applications then were evaluated mainly by county staff members, with only two community evaluators involved in that second round because of conflicts of interest.
To improve this year, Maniak said, those who apply to or have a connection to the applicants for the smaller project grants won’t be allowed to serve as evaluators, while the same rules will apply for the larger project grants. But they can serve on the evaluation team for whichever tier they didn’t apply for, with a goal of increasing the number of evaluators involved in the second round of evaluations.
“We can have more wholistic conversations,” Maniak said. “They can all discuss the applications, raise any red flags and highlight work they know about we should consider. We’re hoping these additional eyes will improve the process.”
Another planned change based on feedback from applicants is a longer application window to apply to increase accessibility. The goal is to open applications in early June, then give community members the summer to apply.
“Our priority really is making sure the funds go into the hands of the community,” Maniak said. “We want to support those most affected by climate change.”