Creating Opportunities and Building Capacity for Urban Conservation in Michigan

About this grant

Nationally, parks serving primarily non-white and low-income neighborhoods are smaller in size and four to five times more crowded than parks serving white and high-income households. This uneven distribution of high-quality urban open space and parks is evident throughout the Great Lakes, including older industrial cities in Michigan. To address these deficiencies, The Conservation Fund — a leading national conservation organization — will undertake a project with three goals: increase coordination among different urban conservation stakeholders, increase the capacity of such local stakeholders to successfully execute urban land conservation projects and provide loans and grants that can be used for property acquisition and to strategically unlock other funding. The Conservation Fund will pursue these goals through a combination of technical assistance, regrants and revolving loan funds.