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Community Environment Fund

The Ministry wants to work with you to help make a positive difference to the environment.

The purpose of the Community Environment Fund (CEF) is to provide funding to ensure that New Zealanders are empowered to take environmental action. It also ensures that:

partnerships (relating to practical environmental initiatives) between interested parties are supported and strengthened
community-based advice and educational opportunities are increased
awareness on environmental legislation and issues is heightened.

Each year there will be two opportunities/funding rounds to submit an application to the fund. The second funding round closed on 5 September 2011. The third funding round will open for applications in early 2012. This third funding round will be a minor round targeting operational costs for Environment Centres. If you require more information please contact CEF@mfe.govt.nz

All applications are assessed against the CEF eligibility criteria, the Ministry’s key priorities for the financial year, funding principles and their merit compared with other applications. The Ministry’s Statement of Intent has further information about the priorities.

Not all projects that meet the funding criteria will receive funding.

What you need to know

Overview of the Community Environment Fund funding process

A successful application will go through each of the following stages in the CEF funding:

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Check eligibility online

Potential applicants check their eligibility using the Online Eligibility tool, and if eligible, are sent a link to the:

the application form
this guide
the draft Funding Deed.

Apply for funding (Stage I)

Applicants complete the CEF application form and submit it to the Ministry. As applications are received, the Ministry checks for completeness, and ensures that eligibility criteria are met.

Applications that do not meet the criteria will not be assessed further and the applicants are sent a decline decision letter.

An Assessment Panel then reviews and assesses the applications, and makes recommendations to the Ministry.

The Ministry makes the final decision about which projects are invited to proceed to Stage II of the funding process. An invitation to Stage II is not approval for funding.

Develop project plan (Stage II)

Applicants who have been invited to proceed to Stage II are allocated a Funds Analyst from the Ministry’s Funds Team to support them during the project plan development phase. Applicants complete their project plan, using the template and guide provided in Stage II.

Applicants have one month to complete their plan, before submitting it to the Ministry for review and a final funding decision.

The panel may decide to grant less funding than the applicant has requested. This means that the scope and scale of the project may need to be reviewed and amended.

Sign Funding Deed

Applicants, who are successful in completing Stage II and receive funding approval, are required to enter into a Funding Deed with the Ministry. This agreement describes the obligations and rights of the contracting parties and is based on their project plan and agreed performance measures.

The Funding Deed details:

Start project

Successful applicants begin work on their projects and report on milestones as they are met.

The Ministry monitors and assesses each project against the stated performance measures and conditions within their Funding Deed. Agreed payments are made once milestones are met and deliverables are completed.

Funding principles

The following funding principles underpin the management of the CEF:

Principle	CEF funding supports projects that...
To support Ministry and Government strategic priorities	align with Ministry priorities, work programmes and desired outcomes.
To empower New Zealanders to take environmental action	empower New Zealanders to collectively take ownership of environmental problems and solutions, encourage positive behaviour change, and result in real results on the ground.
To support evidence-based policy development	test policy implementation to assess if policy is achieving the desired outcomes. All projects will provide data that is robust, transferable and can be used to develop evidence-based policy.
To focus on tangible outcomes and demonstrate value for money	provide a positive return upon investment, demonstrate value for money, and have a financial commitment from other funding partners.

Criteria for the Community Environment Fund

Eligibility criteria

The CEF has set eligibility criteria that a project must meet before an application may be submitted to request funding. Note that meeting the eligibility criteria does not guarantee that your project will be funded.

The following table provides the eligibility criteria.

Eligibility criteria
1	Preference will be given to applicants who demonstrate that their project will support more than one of the following objectives: raise awareness and involvement in resolving environmental issues involve the community in practically focused action to improve environmental quality support and strengthen collaboration between environmental groups, business/farmers, industry, iwi and local authorities on finding community solutions to environmental challenges provide improved community-based advice, educational opportunities and public information about environmental legislation and policy provide wider economic, social or cultural benefits.
2	Projects should be for a discreet timeframe of up to three years. After this the project objectives will have been achieved and, where appropriate, the initiative will have become self-funding. Preference will be given to projects that collectively give the largest net benefit over time.
3	The Community Environment Fund is particularly focused on supporting community initiatives that contribute to reduced greenhouse gas emissions, improve freshwater management, coastal management, improved air quality, protecting biodiversity and some waste management initiatives. For projects where alternative, more suitable, Ministry for the Environment funding streams are available (such as the Waste Minimisation Fund or the Contaminated Sites Remediation Fund) applicants should apply to these funding sources before applying to the CEF. Applicants, should apply to alternative, more suitable, government (or other) funding sources before applying to the CEF, where this is available.
4	Projects will be assessed for their strategic value in achieving the purposes of the Fund. Strategic value means the likely ability of projects to act at catalysts that enhance and extend the uptake of good environmental practice.
5	The applicant must be a legal entity.
6	The level of funding from other sources will be taken into account. Shared funding is preferred.
7	The minimum grant available is $10,000, and the maximum is $300,000. All amounts are exclusive of GST.
8	The applicant must demonstrate: their ability to deliver the project the likelihood of success of the project and how the project will achieve its goals how the effectiveness of the project will be monitored, evaluated and reported if the funding is for the establishment phase of a longer-term project, how the project will continue after funding ends and become self sustaining.

Background information

The Ministry for the Environment historically administered several grants that aimed to involve New Zealanders in environmental initiatives.

The Ministry reviewed its operation of the Grant Programme, The purpose of the review was to undertake a holistic examination of the grants, to explore how they operate, the initiatives they support and how they align with the Ministry and Government’s priorities.

The grants that were reviewed included the:

Sustainable Management Fund
Resource Management Act Education and Advisory Services Fund
Environment Centre Fund.

A number of issues were identified that triggered the need for the review:

Government and Ministry priorities had evolved and there was a need to ensure that grants aligned with the priorities
The value for money offered by the grants needed to be assessed
There were varied controls and strategies for the distribution and ongoing management of the grants
The administration costs were inconsistent across the grants, and significant in some areas
Work was required to enable effective measurement and evaluation of the outcomes that were being achieved by the grants
The demand for grants has increased in some areas
There was a need to more clearly support the gathering of data to support the Ministry’s evidence base.

The review found that there were similarities in the scope of a number of the funds. Therefore, to ensure consistency the Ministry combined the funds that support environmental initiatives at the community level.

The Community Environment Fund is an amalgamation of the Resource Management Act Education and Advisory Fund, the Environment Centres Fund and the Sustainable Management Fund, into one flagship fund. The merging of the funds means that the programme will be more streamlined, and that there will be more flexibility to meet Government priorities. It will also be easier to administer alongside the Waste Minimisation Fund.

Last updated: 14 September 2011

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