The Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) “Rural Energy for America Program” (REAP) is unusual because of the size of the program (which grant writers will note): it has $1 billion dollars available for up to 9,000 grants—but with an award ceiling of just one million. One million? That’s for grants only, however, and loan guarantees go much higher. In other words, a lot of organizations are going to apply for REAP funding and and many will be funded. Still, the “Rural Energy for America Program” (REAP) is doling funding out over six quarters, rather than all at once. I’m not wholly sure why USDA chose this structure, but it seemingly has. There’s no formal deadline, because the Dept. of Agriculture will accept REAP applications throughout the year, but that can leave applicants in the dangerous position of deciding that they’ll do their application “next month” forever. The “we’ll do it next month” thing is one of the essential challenges with open application of the “first come, first served” variety. Applicants who see a Notice of Funding Opportunity (“NOFO,” which is USDA-speak for RFP) like this can face a dilemma: if you apply early, the project concept may not be “cooked,” but if you wait too long, the funding pool may become exhausted.
If you’re thinking about applying to the “Rural Energy for America Program” (REAP), call us at 800.540.8906 ext. 1, or contact us: we’re grant writers, and it’s our job to help make your USDA REAP proposal preparation process simple. Few small businesses or agricultural producers are familiar with the grant-seeking and grant-making processes, but we sure are, and we’ve worked on a variety of USDA clean energy and rural-focused projects. One favorite recent project in the agricultural-services sector involved a hog-processing plant in the Midwest; our client knew a huge amount about slaughtering hogs and selling ham but nothing about grants. We learned a lot about hogs, and our client learned a bit about grants, as we helped them submit a technically correct and compelling proposal with a minimum of fuss and bother on their part. To stretch the hog analogy a bit, Seliger + Associates is the fully cooked ham of grant writers: just heat ‘n serve—or, I should say, just hire ‘n submit.
In terms of REAP, one slight downside to the program is cost sharing: applicants need to contribute at least half of the total project budget. As we’ve written about before, however, matching funds for grants are often not all that hard to find. The actual eligible REAP activities are variable: they include doing “energy audits” (which is a classic “process” activity that is close to free or “walkin’ around” money), but also the installation of actual energy improvements and energy efficiency systems. That last one is probably where the bulk of the money is.
Eligible applicants must be either “agricultural producers” or, alternatively, “rural small businesses.” The relevant federal regs at “§ 4280.112 Applicant eligibility” also cite site control as being important. So REAP is a very specific and very targeted funding program (wise grant writers check eligibility requirements carefully), but a lot of farms, other agricultural producers, and rural small businesses are looking into solar, batteries, and related systems anyway. Geothermal is probably not quite at the stage where smaller organizations can deploy it, and ditto for wind, so I’d guess solar is likely to be the main beneficiary of REAP right now.
Another peculiarity of the USDA’s “Rural Energy for America Program” (REAP) program is that applicants need to get the application package itself “by contacting the RD Energy Coordinator” for the applicant’s home state. That’s an unusual choice; normal federal grant applications make the application package readily available on grants.gov or elsewhere. Still, with $25 million maximum loan guarantees and $1 million maximum grant requests, dealing with unusual structures will be worthwhile for many applicants.