Five Star Restoration Program
2009 Request for Proposals

The Five Star Restoration Program seeks to develop community capacity to sustain local natural resources for future generations by providing modest financial assistance to diverse local partnerships for wetland, riparian, and coastal habitat restoration. The National Association of Counties, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), the Wildlife Habitat Council, in cooperation with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Southern Company, and our newest partner Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), are pleased to solicit applications for the Five Star Restoration Program.

FUNDING AVAILABILITY:

Funding is available throughout the country from EPA, and from our two corporate sponsors in several southeast states and most of northern and central California. In 2009 NFWF anticipates the following funding will be available:

Approximately $225,000 will be available from EPA to support projects throughout the United States in each of EPA's ten geographic regions. Visit http://www.epa.gov/epahome/regions.htm to view a map of the EPA Regions.
Approximately $200,000 will be available from Southern Company and its operating companies (Georgia Power, Alabama Power, Gulf Power, and Mississippi Power) to support projects in the Southern Company service area, which includes:
- Georgia (excluding Union, Fannin and Towns Counties)
- Alabama (excluding Lauderdale, Colbert, Lawrence, Limestone, Madison, Marshall, Morgan, Jackson, DeKalb, Cherokee and Cullman Counties)
- the Florida Panhandle (west of the Apalachicola River)
- Southeast Mississippi (23 counties, from Meridian to the coast, with the west boundary running from Pearl River County to Union County)

Visit www.southerncompany.com/aboutus/about.aspx to view a map of the Southern Company Service Area.

Over $260,000 will be available from PG&E's Nature Restoration Trust Program to support projects located in the PG&E service area. If you are applying for funding in northern or central California, please visit www.nfwf.org/NRT for additional guidance.

Elements of a Five Star Project

On-the-Ground Restoration. Projects must include on-the-ground wetland, riparian, in stream and/ or coastal habitat restoration.
Environmental Education. Projects must integrate meaningful education into the restoration project either through community outreach, participation, and/or integration with K-12 environmental curriculum.
Partnerships. Projects must involve a diverse set of community partners to accomplish the projects objectives.
Measurable Results. Projects must result in measurable ecological and educational/social benefits.

Grant Guidance

The Five Star Restoration Program is open to any public or private entity; however, grants funded by PG&E's Nature Restoration Trust are restricted to non-profit community-based organizations, conservation organizations, local governments, and school districts.
Requests must be for $10,000 to $40,000.Grants will vary in size, duration and scale. In general, smaller-scale, one-year projects will be eligible for grants up to $20,000. Two-year, larger-scale projects will be eligible for grants up to $40,000. We anticipate the average award will be $20,000 to $25,000.
Projects should be completed within one to two years of award.
Partnerships should include at least five organizations ("Five Stars") that contribute to project success through funding, land, workforce support, technical support and/or other in-kind services. These partners often include:
- Government agencies: State, Local and/or tribal governments (e.g., boards of county commissioners, departments of planning, environment or parks and recreation, and government natural resource and environmental agencies of all levels of governance);
- Youth groups: schools, youth conservation corps, Boy and Girl Scouts, civic and environmental clubs; etc.
- Academics, universities and local cooperative extension districts;
- Resource Conservation and Development Councils and Soil and Water Conservation Districts;
- Local, regional, and/or national businesses or corporations;
- Conservation organizations or local citizens groups;
- Local environmental consultants, ecologists, and others that offer technical and design expertise, and;
- Foundations or other funders.
While partnerships are encouraged to include state and federal agencies, they should only serve as the grantee if the community partners demonstrate that the state or federal agency is best suited to coordinate the community-based project.
Organizations or projects that have received funding under this program are eligible to reapply; however, preference will be given to those that have not previously received support.

What is Not Eligible

Projects involving only research, monitoring, or planning are not eligible for funding.
Projects involving only environmental education are not eligible for funding.
Projects that are part of a mitigation requirement, compliance agreement requirement, or otherwise required by law, are not eligible for funding.

Assistance with Applications

NFWF has adopted a new online application system so even if you have prepared proposals for NFWF in the past, you should consider accessing useful information for applicants, including videos that demonstrate the Easygrants online system by visiting www.nfwf.org/applicantinfo.

How to Apply

When you are ready to begin the application process, go to www.nfwf.org/Easygrants to register in our new Easygrants online system. Enter your applicant information and then select Five Star/NRT from the list of programs and follow the instructions. Once you get started, you may save your application in progress and return another time to complete and submit it.

For consideration, you must submit your online application using NFWF's new Easygrants system on or before Monday, February 16, 2009.

Tips for Completing the Easygrants Application (Refers sequentially to specific sections and fields)

PROJECT INFORMATION

Grant Amount Being Requested from NFWF: Minimum is $10,000. Maximum is $40,000.
Matching Contributions Proposed: The Five Star Partnership strongly encourages the applicant to have a group of partners and donors in place that have pledged to provide funding and/or in-kind goods and services before applying for a Five Star grant. Projects that can leverage the amount of funds requested with significant cash or in-kind contribution from project partners are much more competitive. On average, competitive projects are usually able to demonstrate partner contributions of at least 1:1 and often significantly higher (e.g., >2:1).
Projected Grant Start Date: Projects should begin between July and December 2009.
Projected Grant End Date: Projects should be completed within one to two years of the start date.
Project Title/Name: Please don't call your project "Five Star Restoration Project". Give it a short, descriptive name that will distinguish it from the competition. (60 character limit)
Project Description: This two sentence project summary should use the first sentence to describe what your project will achieve and the second sentence to describe what is special about your project. (200 character limit)
Project Abstract: Provide a more detailed description of your project, including proposed activities, outcomes and partners. (1500 character limit)
Keyword(s): You are encouraged to use the "Help" feature in Easygrants to identify Keywords. Most applicants' Keywords will include: Conservation Action, Conservation Threat, and Major Habitat Type.
Sub-keyword(s): You are encouraged to use the "Help" feature in Easygrants to identify Sub-keywords. The definitions of these categories may not be apparent from their titles.

PROJECT LOCATION

Project Location Country(ies): All Five Star/NRT projects must occur within "North America - United States".
Project Location State/Province: Please select all states and territories that apply. If your project will take place in California, please remember refer to additional guidelines for project locations within PG&E's service utility district at www.nfwf.org/NRT.
Project Location U.S. Congressional District(s): Please select all U.S. Congressional Districts in which the proposed project will take place.
Project Location Description: Please include the county/city where the project will occur as well as the most appropriate scale of watershed. Longitude and latitude are especially helpful. (200 character limit)

PERMITS and APPROVALS

If Permits and/or Approvals are required for this project, describe them in the space provided.

BUDGET

This section provides budget detail for the "Grant Amount Being Requested from NFWF." It should not include matching funds. Please note that no part of the budget (neither NFWF funds nor match) may include: general administrative overhead, indirect costs, contingencies or miscellaneous costs; advocacy/lobbying; fundraising; litigation; terrorist activities; nor activities in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

MATCHING CONTRIBUTIONS

List each source of matching contributions separately in the space provided. Matching contributions may include both cash and in-kind contributions. Please note the restrictions on use of matching funds above.

UPLOADS

To complete your application, you must upload a number of files into Easygrants. The most important is your actual proposal narrative. The Five Star Proposal Narrative may be downloaded from Easygrants at any time and completed at your leisure. It must be uploaded back into your Easygrants application before your application may be submitted. The narrative may not exceed five pages in total length.
In addition to your narrative, several other files should be uploaded. They include:

Required	Optional
Five Star/NRT Proposal Narrative (5 page limit)	Letters of Support
A-133 Audit	Photos
Board of Trustees	Maps of Project Site and Location
GAAP audited financial statements
Statement of Litigation
IRS Form 990

CONTACTS:

Carrie Clingan
cclingan@naco.org
National Association of Counties
25 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 942-4246

Lacy Reimer Alison
lacy.alison@nfwf.org
National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
1133 15th Street, NW, Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 857 0166

For more information on the Five Star Restoration Program, please visit NFWF's Five Star website at www.nfwf.org/FiveStar or EPA's Five Star website at www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/restore/5star

Five Star Restoration Program 2009 Request for Proposals