U.S. EPA has published the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 Exchange Network (EN) Grant Program Solicitation Notice (SN) to Grants.gov at: EPA-OMS-25-01, Fiscal Year 2025 National Environmental Information Exchange Network Grant Program Solicitation Notice. Applications are due in grants.gov by 11:59 PM Eastern Time, Monday, March 24th, 2025. Additional guidance tools, including optional fillable templates for the cover letter, project narrative (work plan), and budget narrative attachment form, plus a budget calculation tool, are also available through the grants.gov listing and on EPA’s EN website.
Applicants are encouraged to carefully review the new FY25 SN, as updates have been made since the FY24 version. Applicants can view a general summary of these changes on the EPA website under the ‘Solicitation Notice’ section. EPA plans to hold applicant webinars in the upcoming weeks; more information will be provided shortly and posted to the EPA website in the ‘Webinar Series’ section.
The purpose of the Exchange Network (EN) grant program is to foster better environmental management and decision-making through increased access to timely, high quality, environmental information. An applicant’s proposed project goals and outputs should align with one or more EN Funding Areas as described in Section 3A of the SN and EPA’s FY 2022-2026 Strategic Plan:
https://www.epa.gov/planandbudget/strategicplan. Applicants are encouraged to read the Solicitation Notice carefully for further information on applicant requirements.
EPA expects to award 30-35 grants of up to $600,000 each, totaling approximately $9,500,000 in FY25. The exact number of grants awarded will depend on the number of applications submitted to EPA by the application deadline, the amounts of proposed project budgets, and the quality of proposals. Please be aware: award funding thresholds have increased from prior years by $100,000. Individual applicants can now request up to $400,000 and eligible EN partnerships can request up to $600,000.
EPA only accepts project proposals for EN grants submitted electronically through Grants.gov, unless applicants have a waiver. Please allow for enough time to successfully submit your application and allow for unexpected errors requiring you to resubmit. EPA anticipates that it will announce selection decisions around July 2025, and tentatively plans to issue awards by October 2025.
For more information, please contact:
Erin McGown
EN Grants Program Manager
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Email: [email protected]