2016 ORLP – LWCF Participation numbers

The following, submitted by NPS shows the number and amount of grants requested by the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Program, administered and funded through a special allocation of LWCF funds in 2016.

This year NPS had excellent nationwide participation for the $12 million in the Land and Water Conservation Fund Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership Program (LWCF-ORLP) funding. Overall we received 60 applications from cities across 34 states. Of the states participating 26 were represented in the inaugural ORLP grant round while 8 states were first time participates.

Of the 60 ORLP applications submitted, 56 are valid* submissions requesting a total of $30.3M federal grant funding to be matched by $82.2M in local partner funds. Of these, 51 applications were acquisition/development of outdoor recreation opportunities in urban areas and 5 are planning grant proposals piloted for the first time this year.

The FY16 ORLP competition increased the maximum grant request from $500,000 to $750,000.  As a result, NPS saw a $12.8M (73.1%) increase in total requested funding from $17.5M in 2014 to $30.3M in 2016.

* The 4 invalid submissions were comprised of 2 directly submitted to NPS (bypassing the State LWCF agency as required), 1 in which the application asked for too little funding (did not meet the $250K competition minimum), and 1 with several ineligibility concerns.