Awards for Community Lenders

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The Green Bank for Rural America will make capitalization and technical assistance awards to community lenders serving priority communities in Appalachia, energy communities, rural communities of color, and Native communities. Our first initiative features a competitive application process for community lenders to access awards from our $500 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. This page provides all details related to this opportunity. Applications are open on a rolling basis beginning December 4, 2024, and we will announce the award recipients quarterly. We anticipate announcing the initial awards in the first quarter of 2025 and awarding all funding by January 2027.

About the Awards

Community Lenders may receive two types of awards: Capitalization Awards and Technical Assistance (TA) grants.

Capitalization Awards

Capitalization awards range from $1 million to $10 million.
We will make a small number of awards of up to $35 million.
Community lenders may apply for the greater of 100% of their net assets or the cumulative total of loans they originated during the past three years.
For emerging community lenders with limited track records, we may determine the maximum award by weighing additional factors such as organizational capacity, project pipeline, community needs, and the community lender’s coverage.

Technical Assistance (TA) Grants

TA grants are available only to community lenders that have been selected for a capitalization award.
The amount of a TA grant will be 10% of the capitalization award received.
There is not a separate application process for TA grants. We evaluate capitalization award applications and TA grant applications together.

Note: In our award application, community lenders are required to disclose whether they have applied for or have received funding from other U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Clean Communities Investment Accelerator or National Clean Investment Fund awardees.

Eligible Community Lenders

Several types of community lenders are eligible to apply for awards from the Green Bank. These include:

Community development financial institutions (CDFIs), including Native CDFIs, certified by the U.S. Department of the Treasury
Public-sector lenders, including state, municipal, and Tribal governments, and federal agency affiliated lenders, such as U.S. Economic Development Agency (EDA) Revolving Loan Funds and U.S. Department of Agriculture Intermediary Lending Fund Program lenders
Not-for-profit entities that are legally eligible to make loans.

Entities that do not fit these descriptions are not eligible to apply for funding. This includes for-profit organizations, except for those that have a for-profit structure but also meet the criteria above, such as certified CDFIs.

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