Funding Futures:
Together We Decide
Partners for Climate Action (PCA) has worked in the Hudson Valley for five years. We see towns building consensus on their environmental priorities through community conversations. Some have even put financial mechanisms in place to fund those priorities. Through firsthand observation and listening to partners, we’ve noted elements of success, which we’re excited to help you adopt. Your town is unique, but there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. We’ll guide you through nonpartisan ways to dig in with your community and figure out how to preserve and protect the natural resources on which you rely. PCA sees this as the basis for strong communities and a healthy environment in the Hudson Valley.
Do you share these concerns?
Our society has lost muscle memory for how to come together, listen, and envision a shared future. National politics divide our country. At the same time, we all notice changes: 80 degree days in November, extreme storms and flooding, forests with no new growth, our favorite skating and ice fishing ponds that now rarely freeze. In too many of our communities, we’ve inadvertently degraded the environment through ordinary, cumulative actions, and a lack of dialogue about what really matters.
We can determine our future. How do we get started?
We can start by reconnecting—to each other and the places where we live. If we could set our differences aside, we could focus on what we have in common: our love for the beautiful Hudson Valley and our desire for a healthy, thriving future.
Apply for Funding Futures: Together We Decide,
a new training and grant program
PCA will train four Funding Futures Fellows, each from a different town, on how to work with their communities to set ecological goals and find funding for them. Funding Futures Fellows are concerned folks who are from or have partnered with a tax-exempt organization (this could be a Town’s local government or a school, library, community organization, faith-based organization, etc) and have a Letter of Support from their Town Board.
Grants of up to $22,000 are available to cover costs of staffing, events, and communications. Along the way, Funding Futures Fellows will be part of a training cohort to learn about existing self-reliant, untapped financial models that could fund the implementation of projects their communities prioritize. This one-year process will culminate in each community identifying priorities, potential projects, and funding mechanisms to support their town’s environmental resources.
Ready to spark the conversation?
Deadline: May 23, 2025
Eligibility:
Applicants must be from or have a willing partner at a tax-exempt organization able to receive the grant money (e.g., the local government of a town, a school, library, community organization, faith-based organization, etc).
Applicants must be based in the towns in the counties of Greene, Columbia, Dutchess, Ulster, Orange, or Putnam. (The scope and scale of Funding Futures works best for towns. Villages are encouraged to be involved as part of the larger town’s application. Counties and cities are not encouraged to apply to this pilot.)
A Letter of Support from your local government (Town Board) is required. Let us know if you need help with this.
No matching funds are required, but they certainly are not discouraged!
Application Process
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By May 23, 2025, interested applicants should complete the following five items. Applicants are encouraged to work on these as soon as possible and email pieces to paige@climateactionhv.org on a rolling basis.
Fill out the application form.
Letter of Interest: Use these prompts (Word.doc) when drafting your Letter of Interest.
PCA requires a Letter of Support or Resolution of Support from the Town Board. Town Boards will need to vote to approve this, so meet with your Town Supervisor and Board members as soon as possible. PCA staff can be available to speak with or present to Town Boards if desired. We also welcome town official attendance at our online info sessions. Here are some tips (Word.doc) on approaching your Town Board and an optional template Letter of Support (Word.doc) or template Resolution of Support (Word.doc) you could offer your Town Board.
Letters of Support from community organizations and stakeholders: PCA will favor applications that include Letters of Support from partnering organizations and community members. Here’s a Word.doc with examples and suggestions.
A budget for how the funds would be spent (budget Excel template)
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In late May, PCA will invite about 8-10 applicants to advance in the process. PCA will follow up with these applicants for an interview.
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PCA’s final decision on the four accepted applicants will be made by mid-June. A kickoff Zoom for accepted grantees will take place in late June.
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Zoom trainings on how to organize and facilitate community conversation processes in your respective towns
Peer feedback as we navigate the process together over the course of the program
Access to one-on-one consulting from people who have led their towns through the same process
Trainings by experts on nurturing community consensus as well as various financial models used to fund projects in other towns
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Represent as accurate a reflection of your town as possible
Nature-based volunteer development workshop for Fellows and stakeholders with a PCA-provided facilitator in August 2025 at an outdoor location of your choosing, ideally in a setting special to your town
Stakeholders assist in creating an outreach and event plan for community conversations
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Engage with as many folks from the community as possible
Host at least two community conversation events
Town-wide mailing to gather feedback on ideas
Host followup volunteer meetings
Grant funding of up to $10,000 can be used for mailings, materials, events space, childcare, food and drink
Communities can opt in for up to $12,000 in additional funds as part of the PCA grant, to pay for staffing
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Wrap-up presentations from each Funding Futures Fellow to their communities, Town Boards, as well as the Funding Futures cohort, sharing what they have learned from the process itself, priorities chosen by each community, and plans for moving forward
How the One-Year Program Works
July 2025 - June 2026
Goal
Each community emerges from this process with a grounded understanding of its priorities and agreement on desired financial models that can make their priorities a reality
Meet the Team
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Paige Ruane
Co-founder of PCA, co-director of Funding Futures. Prior PCA programs include Local Champions and Building Decarbonation Grants. Paige has a background as a therapist and currently serves on Austerlitz’s Climate Smart Communities Task Force.
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Vanessa Bertozzi
Co-director of Funding Futures. Prior PCA programs include Local Champions and Building Decarbonation Grants. Vanessa is also in her third term as Trustee on the Village Board of Rhinebeck, where she implements climate action on the local level.
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Jason Angell
Co-founder and Co-director of the Ecological Citizen's Project, serves on the Town Board of Philipstown. Jason is partnering with PCA on Funding Futures to provide coaching modeled on the Ecological Citizen’s Project’s Community Congress. Jason and Jocelyn also own and operate Longhaul Farm.
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Jocelyn Apicello
Co-founder and Co-director of the Ecological Citizen's Project, professor of public health and on the boards of Cold Spring’s farmers’ market and the local public school district. Jocelyn is partnering with PCA on Funding Futures to provide coaching modeled on the Ecological Citizen’s Project’s Community Congress. Jocelyn and Jason also own and operate Longhaul Farm.
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Joel Glanzberg
Joel is a founding partner of Regenesis Group. Joel will host nature-based kick offs for each of the four communities. Joel is an expert tracker and has decades of experience leading groups and working with Native Americans to deepen human connection to the natural world. His passion is using these experiences to inform how people think about living systems.
Why PCA is Piloting Funding Futures
PCA is a nonprofit focused on ecological repair, resiliency, and pollution reduction—all through local relationships and projects in the Hudson Valley.
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And it needs to happen "upstream" of conflict, rather than reacting in a confrontation. PCA has observed towns in the Hudson Valley make real progress when they start with what’s unique about their place and build community around an intention to preserve it.
We see so much potential in the towns of the Hudson Valley, each with its own promise. But we’ve observed something missing: our society has lost the ability to have civil community conversations. We’ve lost spaces where we get together and talk, where everyone feels included. This program will lead you through a process to engage with your community in a nonpartisan way. Only with this foundational buy-in and deep community work can we expect to build lasting efforts and ways of doing things.
We can’t guarantee everything will be fixed or healed by the end of the program, but at the very least, your community will have grown a deeper understanding of its identity, your connection to the land where you live, and how you envision a healthy future.
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We see a lot of great planning work that never gets to the implementation stage because of a lack of funding. PCA is offering this support to connect communities’ shared desires to financing vehicles that can make them a reality.
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It would be a heavy lift for a Town Board to run a process like this on their own, and it can be challenging to reach beyond the regulars who attend Town Board meetings.
Some of the greatest resources in rural towns are the natural assets—streams, forests, fields, aquifers. Combined, these make a place unique, tie back to its history, and provide quality of life.
A Town Board could find tremendous value in a listening campaign that reveals insights and generates volunteerism. Therefore, we hope that this pilot program meets a need and compels local governments to submit Letters of Support and encourage applications from their committees (Climate Smart Task Forces, Conservation Advisory Councils, Community Engagement Committee, etc) or local organizations.
Programs That Inspire Us
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Chatham's Community Preservation Plan & Fund
Chatham has diligently worked with the community to identify agriculture as one of its priorities. They passed a Community Preservation Plan and Fund to preserve farmland.
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Rosendale Heart and Soul
Rosendale is working with a national organization called Heart & Soul on grassroots town planning—by Rosendalians for Rosendale. Involve everyone. What matters most. Play the long game.
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Hudson Valley Alliance for Housing & Conservation
An Innovative Collaboration of Land Trusts and Affordable Housing Organizations Conserving Critical Landscapes and Responding to the Region’s Housing Crisis
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Hudson Valley Community Congress
An experiment in building new, post-partisan democratic institutions that give people the opportunity to say what they care most about, to identify shared priorities through a community vote, and to engage in becoming part of the solution
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Kingston Common Futures
Offering grants directly to the Kingston community, for the Kingston community, decided by the Kingston community
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Project Inside Out
An online hub providing tools for sustainable behavior change, based on social science research
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New Paltz Community Preservation Plan & Fund
A Community Preservation Plan (CPP) and a Community Preservation Fund (CPF) supporting preservation of Working Farms, Natural Areas, and Historic Properties
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Peekskill Community Owned Solar
Peekskill and Ecological Citizen’s Project are partnering with Working Power, a nonprofit that develops solar where the revenue can be leveraged by the community itself.
