Overview

The American Flood Coalition created the Flood Funding Finder—a first-of-its-kind, interactive website—to simplify the complex federal grants system and to help small communities identify and prioritize opportunities to fund flood resilience.

Across the country, small and rural communities are on the front lines of protecting residents from flooding and sea level rise. From assessing risk to implementing projects, small communities often face enormous costs that they cannot cover alone. Several federal agencies have programs that fund flood mitigation, flood risk reduction, and disaster recovery, but navigating these funding opportunities can be time-consuming and difficult.

With the exception of a few agencies, many federal programs do not make it readily apparent that smaller municipalities and communities are eligible for funding. In fact, there is no standard definition of a small municipality across federal agencies. Nevertheless, there are important federal programs to be leveraged by local communities.

The Flood Funding Finder is a resource for local leaders exploring federal funding opportunities for flooding projects in small communities. While there may be additional funding opportunities for which a connection to flooding could be made, the tool focuses on opportunities where there is a trend of funded projects that address flooding and sea level rise. In addition to summarizing how each federal program can be used by small communities, the program summaries include external links to applications and in-depth program information, as well as Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers that applicants may use to search for grant information on federal websites. 

The Finder allows users to filter by fund characteristics, assistance type, estimated funding amount, federal support mechanism, whether for a tribal resilience program, and by closing date.

Audience

The Flood Funding Finder is a resource for local leaders exploring federal funding opportunities for flooding projects in small communities.