A digest of infrastructure news and funding opportunities. 

The What Works Plus (WW+) funder collaborative is a partnership coordination hub across philanthropy, government, and nonprofits to advance equity and climate resilience through thoughtful implementation of historic federal infrastructure funding. WW+ is a project of Freedman Consulting, LLC, which provides strategic consulting services to foundations and nonprofit organizations.

OPPORTUNITIES TO ENGAGE WITH WW+

A snapshot of learning events and high-impact federal infrastructure funding implementation-related opportunities in need of philanthropic support. For more information about these opportunities, please contact info@whatworksplus.com.

Engagement Opportunity: Federal Climate & Infrastructure Funding Data Resources Survey

Over the last year, the White House has released a number of data products to maximize transparency, awareness, and understanding of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, including the information on Build.gov. We invite you to provide feedback on existing resources in order to help improve future iterations to better suit your organization’s information needs. Your responses are critical to shaping current and future data resources. What Works Plus will share survey insights directly with government partners responsible for data design and maintenance. Please click here to complete the brief survey by Friday, February 3.

Funding Opportunity: Jobs With Justice - “Delivering Equity Through BIL and IRA”

The Gap: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are unparalleled opportunities to provide marginalized communities with access to lifelong climate careers (not just jobs) in transit, construction, manufacturing, and other sectors that will expand from these federal investments. These funds also provide an unprecedented opportunity to build bridges between often divided communities, traditional (predominantly white) labor unions, and immigrant and BIPOC communities. But the promise of these massive federal investments falls short without the work necessary to ensure both job quality  and that communities’ climate resilience needs are met.

The Opportunity: Jobs With Justice seeks to 1) Build community capacity to raise priorities at the local and state level to influence how BIL and IRA funding is spent; 2) Elevate jobs created by federal funding into lifelong careers through apprenticeship opportunities, opening the door to underrepresented people in the trades and building their leadership as rank-and-file union members; and 3) Support efforts by Jobs With Justice coalitions to form partnerships with local public authorities, unions, and other stakeholders to apply for federal competitive grants for infrastructure projects deemed valuable by the community. To address these goals, Jobs With Justice is raising funds to hire a full-time Infrastructure & Resilience Coordinator and to support at least four local campaigns in specific locales. Read the full proposal here.

January Spotlight: News from Core Members & Friends

Have a notable infrastructure-related investment, partnership, or event coming up? Let us know at info@whatworksplus.com and we’ll feature it next month.

• Accelerator for America and Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners announced a new partnership to expand the Innovative Infrastructure Initiative (I3), which will bring together a group of cities and infrastructure partners focused on developing local capacity to implement innovative, tech-enabled solutions through procurement, private financing, and transformative infrastructure project delivery.

• The James Irvine Foundation recently granted: 

  ￮ $2 million to the Foundation for California Community Colleges to support the creation and expansion of inclusive, equitable, and accessible apprenticeship programs for Inland Empire residents facing barriers to opportunity, particularly women and BIPOC communities.

  ￮ $1 million to the Humboldt Area Foundation to support the Redwood Region Climate and Community Resilience Hub (CORE Hub) in fostering community engagement, providing technical assistance, and prioritizing equity and justice as the region transitions to a climate resilient and decarbonized future.

• The Milken Institute Center for Financial Markets announced the launch of their 10,000 Communities Initiative, a year-long campaign that will work to facilitate the “effective and equitable distribution” of resources to traditionally underfunded communities, support long-term infrastructure resilience, and build a pipeline of investment-ready projects. 

• This week, Brookings Metro hosted “Accelerating federal, state, and local investments in the U.S. Infrastructure Workforce” to build on the findings of their recent report. Representatives from the U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Department of Commerce, and the U.S. Department of Transportation joined infrastructure experts in the non-profit space to discuss the challenges and opportunities to accelerate infrastructure workforce development needs. A recording of the event can be found here.

• The Local Infrastructure Hub is hosting “Blending and Braiding BIL and IRA Funding Streams for Green Infrastructure Projects”: a webinar on how federal funding streams from BIL and IRA can be integrated or complement one another in different types of infrastructure projects, particularly green infrastructure projects. The webinar will take place on Tuesday, January 31st at 2pm ET. See here for more information and to register.

• The Community Builders of Color Coalition, a group of 11 organizations led by the African American Alliance of CDFI CEOs, released guidance for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ensure minority communities receive equal benefits through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The group suggests the EPA lead with equity, prioritize a just energy transition, use energy efficiency as a strategy, leverage public and private resources, and direct funds to community lenders including CDFIs to reach low-income communities.

INFRASTRUCTURE NEWS UPDATES

A snapshot of this month’s key infrastructure news. 

Climate:

• The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) released its updated Guidance on Consideration of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate Change to improve federal agencies’ assessment and disclosure of climate impacts when conducting environmental reviews of clean energy and other infrastructure projects. The updated guidance includes social costs in the reporting of climate impacts, which will improve the clarity and transparency of the emissions reporting process. The CEQ is accepting public comment on the updated guidance through March 10, 2023.

• The Biden-Harris Administration announced $7 million from BIL will be allocated to the WaterSMART program, which supports states, Tribes, and localities in actions to increase water supply. The investment will support 82 community-based, small-scale water efficiency projects in 14 states in the Western U.S.

• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the largest amount of environmental justice grant funding ever offered by the Agency. The EPA will provide $100 million through the IRA for Environmental Justice Grants to support communities overburdened by pollution and historic disinvestment. Requests for Applications for this funding are open through two grant programs: The Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving Program (EJCPS) Cooperative Agreement Program and The Environmental Justice Government-to-Government (EJG2G) Program. The EPA will host webinars to answer questions about the grant application process. The first webinar, focused on EJCPS, will take place on January 24th, 2023. The second webinar, focused on EJG2G, will occur on Thursday, January 26th, 2023. Register for the webinars here and here, respectively.

• The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has implemented a free technical assistance program for communities and organizations pursuing clean energy projects on current and former mine land. 

Transportation:

• The U.S. National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization, a landmark strategy for reaching the goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, was released by leaders in the departments of Energy, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Environmental Protection Agency. The Blueprint provides insight on how to ensure all Americans see the benefits of a well-planned transition to a decarbonized transportation system, including well paid manufacturing jobs, better air quality, and lower transportation costs.

• The outage of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system on January 11th – which led to a more than 90-minute nationwide grounding of planes that disrupted more than 11,000 flights, the first such halt since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks – highlighted the vital need to upgrade the aviation sector’s century-old communication infrastructure. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg announced that NOTAM upgrades will require a new FAA funding bill beyond the $5 billion air traffic control allocation provided by BIL.  The system meltdown also underlined the need for the FAA to fill key leadership positions (the agency has been without a permanent administrator since March 31st, 2022). While the House of Representatives passed several bills on January 25th to strengthen the reliability and effectiveness of the FAA’s NOTAM system, President Biden’s nominee for the head of the FAA still faces a stalled Senate confirmation process. 

Workforce:

• Politico reports that two-year community colleges are well positioned to produce the technicians needed to fill the 40,000+ manufacturing jobs created by the CHIPS and Science Act given that industries most concerned under CHIPS require a high number of jobs that require more than a high school diploma but less than a bachelor’s degree. The report notes, however, that schools will need support and funding to build capacity for workforce training.

• In order to create a more diverse, inclusive workforce in the broadband industry, Brookings recommends in a new report that agencies create branches of broadband jobs, focus on job creation for people without college degrees, standardize credentialing and training programs, and create union jobs with diverse leadership and childcare to support families.

Broadband:

•  The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced its second broadband data collection filing window for the national broadband map, which displays where internet service is—and is not—across the U.S. The filing window for service providers and local governments to report where they provide broadband access closes on Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 — a tight timeline that presents challenges such as incorporating a large amount of corrected data, lack of state resources to file challenges, and state broadband map contracts with data vendors that restrict data sharing. 

New Resources:

• The Equitable and Just National Climate Platform released a Justice40 resource guide and a funding finder tool. The resource guide provides an overview of the Justice40 initiative, answering frequently asked questions and providing implementation guidelines. The funding finder tool filters through Justice40 categories to identify funding opportunities by state or community, including eligibility, deadlines, and other important information.

• Ann Florini, Gordon LaForge, and Hollie Russon Gilman from New America published an op-ed in The Hill discussing how IRA funding can be leveraged to meet environmental justice goals while strengthening democracy. 

• Results for America announced the release of their Job Quality Playbook, a guide for relevant agencies to learn more about the components of a good job and ways that they can support both employers and workers. 

• The New York Times published an analysis on the profound impact that the CHIPS and Science Act, IRA, and BIL will have on the labor market by the end of 2025. 

WW+ Infrastructure Bulletin: January Edition