November 7, 2024

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Note: In late September 2024, Hurricane Helene caused widespread flooding, catastrophic damage, and loss of life across the Carolinas and in two Cohort communities, Pickens County and Canton. AFC is working closely with these communities and across Western North Carolina as they respond to and recover from the storm to support the impacted communities and reassess how the storm will affect projects under development.

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It’s been nearly three years since the federal government passed the bipartisan infrastructure law, a once-in-a generation investment in US infrastructure and flood resilience. Even with this historic investment available, many communities — especially small, rural ones — are struggling to secure these funds, missing out on the opportunity to build resilient infrastructure that can save lives and reduce the impacts of flooding.

While these communities are eager for funding, federal grant processes are too complicated and technical. To tackle this challenge, the American Flood Coalition launched the Flood Resilient Communities Cohort. The Cohort brought together five under-resourced communities in the Carolinas, each in partnership with a local community-based organization (CBO), to identify and advance community-driven flood resilience projects. These communities worked with AFC to pinpoint burdensome and confusing grant processes and produce actionable reforms to simplify the federal funding process. AFC also launched a similar effort in Iowa, where we connected four communities and community partners to identify and prioritize flood resilience projects eligible for federal funding.

The Cohort lasted two years and included four localities from North Carolina (Wallace, Whiteville, Canton, and New Bern) and one from South Carolina (Pickens County). With the partnership of these municipal governments and CBOs, we were not only able to advance 18 specific flood resilience projects, but also identify six grounded and actionable fixes to improve federal funding programs.

Finding solutions on the ground

AFC spent time in each community to see their challenges first-hand, understand their individual needs, provide technical support in real time, and help prepare grant applications.

We connected 15 municipal staff with five local CBOs to proactively identify flooding challenges, develop community-driven projects, and navigate the federal grant process to secure funding for flood solutions.

We helped communities identify 18 specific flood resilience projects across the five communities, totalling over $10 million in potential grant funding. AFC subject matter experts provided guidance each step of the way to strengthen those projects by incorporating community input and understanding which federal programs can fund those projects.

Through the cohort process, municipal staff and CBOs built relationships with their peers and shared learnings and anecdotes about their experiences with flooding, and deepened their expertise and capacity to identify community-driven projects and navigate the federal funding landscape. Through this process, the local governments and CBOs are now in a much better position to continue to work together on future community-driven resilience efforts.

By convening cohort meetings with municipal staff and their CBOs and hosting individual community meetings focused on community-specific problems and potential projects, we were able to dramatically improve each community’s understanding of flood risk, improve their confidence that they can address this risk, and gather critical insights into the federal funding process.

Federal funding is too complicated and burdensome

Since the beginning of our work at AFC, our coalition members have raised concerns about the difficulty of navigating the federal funding landscape. Many members have told us they are not even able to apply for funding given limited capacity. While the broad challenges are widely known, transformational change requires being able to point to specific examples and put forward specific fixes.

Our work on the ground allowed us to better understand each community’s unique experience with the federal funding process and exactly where red tape keeps them from building resilience.

We knew going in that navigating the system is a challenge. But we found that there are several barriers that make it almost insurmountable, including confusing and overly technical application language and limited feedback from grant reviewers on how to improve applications. Accessing federal funding through competitive programs is overwhelming and often out of reach for under-resourced communities due to these strenuous requirements. While larger cities typically have dedicated staff to pursue federal funding, smaller communities may have only one person doing this on top of many other responsibilities.

Here are key themes from the cohort work, which have been validated with our broader coalition of over 450 members:

Eligibility is confusing 

The sheer number of federal funding programs can be overwhelming with assistance spread across 30 uncoordinated federal agencies, and eligibility limitations only make things worse. Few communities can easily identify which federal programs their flood projects are best suited for. For example, a community may have a project that is a fit for the Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA) grant program but is not competitive because the project scope doesn’t demonstrate enough benefit to National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)-insured properties.

Communities face exceedingly cumbersome application processes

Applications are overly difficult to navigate and burdensome — they almost seem designed to frustrate applicants. For example, the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) application is over 600 pages long and applicants cannot download and review it section-by-section. This makes it very difficult to prepare responses ahead of time and know what to expect. This complicated process can ultimately discourage communities from applying.

Communities struggle to allocate funding for projects 

Communities have limited budgets and often need to plan years in advance to fund projects. Even with outside resources, like technical assistance or support from AFC, many communities do not have the budget to come up with the cost share required for some grants. Local budgets only cover a limited number of projects, meaning in many cases flood resilience projects may have to wait. For example, programs like BRIC run on a reimbursement system so communities would have to put up millions of dollars in upfront funding that they may not have. This disproportionately hurts the lowest-income communities who do not have the capital for reimbursable grants.

Put simply, current processes for accessing federal funds are fractured across dozens of federal agencies and programs, with barriers to access at nearly every turn. And because this system is so difficult to navigate, capacity-strapped, limited-resource communities have little incentive to willingly enter this process.

Our findings resonated with members of Congress, agency officials, and key partners when we shared these experiences and our actionable fixes at our Local Elected Leaders Summit and with local governments across North Carolina.

Recommendations for a more equitable process

As a result of our work, AFC also developed six specific policy recommendations for FEMA to improve the application process for communities seeking federal funds. These recommendations are easy to implement and will lead to a fairer, faster process for tens of thousands of communities all across the country to build better projects that save lives and protect communities from flooding. We highlighted two of the six below because they are straightforward, actionable fixes that could be implemented quickly.

Make applications publicly available

FEMA should publish full BRIC and FMA applications online so communities can download and review them before applying. Currently, applicants must click through each section in the FEMA system — an unnecessarily time-consuming step that makes it harder for applicants to prepare responses ahead of time.

Develop template for users

FEMA should create templates that allow applicants to upload information as one document into FEMAGO. Currently, users must go through a time consuming process of manually entering each individual step of their project’s schedule or budget.

We shared these recommendations directly with FEMA, which is working on ways to simplify grant processes and ensure broader access to its programs. 

Building resilience beyond the Cohort

AFC was proud to work on the ground with these five Cohort communities, gathering valuable insights into the federal grant process and elevating them to relevant federal agencies. We strengthened each community’s understanding and confidence in addressing flood risk, we built durable partnerships with CBOs and their local governments focused on resilience, and we produced actionable policy recommendations to simplify the federal process. By launching and working with the Cohort on systematic reform that reduces the need for technical assistance, AFC will make it easier for communities all across the country to independently tackle federal applications and build resilience.

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Caption for photo at top: Whiteville City officials and AFC staff discuss the proposed Soules Swamp Wetlands Expansion project, which would reduce flooding in downtown Whiteville by restoring and expanding wetlands. The project would also create recreational space around Soules Swamp.