2026 Urban Conservation & Community Catalytic Grant Recipients

The Conservation Fund remains committed to supporting bold, community-driven efforts that lay the groundwork for long-term impact, unlock future investment, and create lasting benefits for people and nature. 

This includes funding projects that are positioned to secure, steward, and activate land for lasting community impact. With our support, communities are gaining site control over land that provides multiple benefits – including urban farming, access to nature, public gathering spaces, and more.  

• Beloved Community at Evans Spring
  The Blue Ridge Land Conservancy will work with the Friends of Evans Spring, a local grassroots organization, to obtain a professionally–designed plan and community vision for the Evans Spring property in Roanoke, VA. Evans Spring is one of the largest undeveloped tracts of land in the city of Roanoke and contains a natural spring, a pond, several tributaries of the Roanoke River, woodlands, and successional forest. Located in a predominantly Black, urban neighborhood in the city’s northwest quadrant, recent government plans have called for big-box development of this natural area. This Catalytic Grant will fund an alternative development plan with input from the community focusing on Evans Spring’s natural amenities as well as exploring affordable housing through a community land trust model.
• Central Campbellton Park: A SW Atlanta Neighborhood Vision in Action 
  With support from The Conservation Fund, Cornerstone Atlanta will lead a community visioning and design process for a proposed 5.62-acre neighborhood park along Atlanta’s Campbellton Road corridor. Located within a historically Black community that has experienced decades of disinvestment, the project will explore the acquisition of three contiguous wooded parcels that have been impacted by illegal dumping for more than two decades, creating an opportunity to transform neglected land into a community-centered park focused on health, wellness, and recreation. Through community engagement, visioning sessions, and a professional design process, Cornerstone Atlanta will produce a comprehensive park master plan, conceptual designs, and an implementation strategy to guide future land acquisition and development. The project aligns with the City of Atlanta’s commitment to equitable reinvestment by ensuring residents have a meaningful voice in shaping a lasting public green space that reflects the community’s priorities for generations to come.
• Community Land Ownership for the Mon Valley East Shore
  NEBRS Community Land Trust empowers our community to steward vacant, underutilized properties. We improve community health and belonging by increasing access to outdoor spaces, while bringing land back to the commons. With support from The Conservation Fund, NEBRS Community Land Trust will lead a participatory design process that will produce a comprehensive land-use plan for the communities comprising the Mon Valley East Shore. Based on this process, we will develop actionable land acquisition strategies to implement our community plan. Our processes are designed to build grassroots strategies to both acquire, conserve, and design for vacant land in our neighborhoods: short- and long-term.
• Land for Healing in the Calumet
  The Southeast Environmental Task Force’s Land for Healing in the Calumet initiative will identify and evaluate vacant, underutilized, and ecologically significant properties across Southeast Chicago and the broader Calumet region for future conservation, restoration, and community stewardship. Through community engagement, environmental analysis, and land-use planning, the project will create a roadmap for protecting and restoring land that can support green infrastructure, habitat restoration, community healing spaces, and increased public access to nature. Together, we are helping ensure that the future of the Calumet region is shaped by community vision, environmental restoration, climate resilience, and local stewardship.
• Norfolk/Mascot Street Community Food Forest in Dorchester, MA
  Over the next year, the Boston Food Forest Coalition will transform two vacant lots at Norfolk and Mascot Streets in Dorchester (totaling 14,000+ square feet) into a public food forest park — providing fresh food and recreational green space to neighbors while mitigating heat, absorbing stormwater, supporting pollinators, and preserving biodiversity. The Norfolk-Mascot project will feature edible plantings including fruit trees and berry bushes, community gathering spaces, accessible pathways, educational signage, and site furnishings to serve the surrounding community. BFFC will lead a co-design process with neighbors to customize the space to their needs, establish a volunteer Stewardship Team to bring neighbors together around harvests and workdays, and protect the park in its community land trust to ensure long-term community ownership.
• The Urban Conservation Peer Network, The Land Trust Alliance
  This network offers opportunities for land trust staff, board members and their affiliates to connect around crucial urban conservation issues such as centering community voices, growing sustainable food systems, advancing climate solutions, avoiding ‘green’ gentrification and more. Support of this network will help more organizations grow in the skills, knowledge, and resources needed to pursue durable and lasting site control in their communities.