Partners for Places

Community gardens that produce fruits, herbs and vegetables for low-income communities. Vibrant and sustainable public spaces brought to life by transforming abandoned roadways, under-used waterfronts — and even an old golf course. Affordable housing that is better equipped to weather extreme storms and climate-related disasters, and homeowners equipped with the skills to ensure their homes are energy efficient and free of highly toxic lead.

These are just a few of the projects that have received funding through Partners for Places, a matching grant program that improves U.S. and Canadian communities by building partnerships between local government leaders, frontline communities, and place-based funders. National funders invest in local projects developed through these partnerships to advance efforts to create communities that are sustainable, prosperous and just.

These sustainability efforts take place from coast to coast, in communities both large and small, and focus largely on empowering and engaging low-income neighborhoods.

Collaboration and partnership are at the heart of the Partners for Places program. Since 2012, the matching grant program has helped foster dozens of new partnerships between local government sustainability leaders and place-based funders across the U.S. and Canada — relationships that often continue long after the original Partners for Places project has been completed.

Partners for Places aims to enhance local capacity to build equitable and sustainable communities in the United States and Canada.
These matching awards support the planning and implementing of urban sustainability and green stormwater infrastructure projects.

To date, Partners for Places has awarded more than $12 million across North America in this successful matching grant program, leading to more than $25 million in investments.

TFN and the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN) launched the Local Sustainability Matching Fund in 2012. Now called Partners for Places, the program is managed by TFN  and supported by Freedom Together Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, and the Pisces Foundation.

For the latest round of Partners for Places grants, these matching awards provide partnership investments between $45,000 and $100,000 for one-year projects, or between $75,000 and $150,000 for two-year projects, with one or more local foundations required to provide at least a 50% matching grant.

Racial Equity and Frontline Communities

Through Round 16, the primary partners were local governments and local foundations. The Partners for Places 2018-2023 strategy leads with racial equity and a sharper focus on how best to advance equitable and sustainable communities. Starting in Round 17, the primary partners also include local frontline community groups. This collaborative governance model is intended to more deeply embed the values and practice of racial equity into local community decision-making processes.

What is a frontline community? Partners for Places defines frontline communities as those most impacted by systems of oppression and injustice, economic disadvantage, and environmental harm.

Federal Funding Assistance

In July 2023, Partners for Places issued a targeted invitation to apply to 23 grantee partnerships that had been funded through grant rounds 17-19 over the past three years, later extended to current grantees as well. The Invitation aims to support prior grantees to connect and align around an application for federal infrastructure funding that advances equitable climate action and/or green stormwater infrastructure projects. The P4P support (of up to $30,000) will help strengthen the relationships between applying collaborative partners and provide direct assistance as they coalesce around and develop a federal funding proposal together. The nine grants awarded to date totaling $267,700 in awards are listed here. These grants are intended to provide rapid assistance and do not require a local match.

The Partners for Places Jobs and Inclusive Infrastructure Initiative, a project of The Funders Network, is a matching grant program that helps community partnerships unlock public dollars, increase opportunities for small businesses, and create career pathways for local workers.

These grants support communities that are advancing work on infrastructure projects supported by federal, state or other public dollars. This funding is not for the physical infrastructure itself, but for the human infrastructure needed to create meaningful collaborations and center community engagement.

Through the Partners for Places Jobs and Inclusive Infrastructure Initiative, grantee communities receive investment and technical support to effectively and equitably ensure public infrastructure projects improve frontline and low-wealth communities through job creation, workforce development and training, equitable contracting, and other economic benefits.

This new initiative is part of TFN’s broader Partners for Places community-centered matching grant program, which focuses on projects that foster long-term local relationships that make communities of all sizes more prosperous, livable and vibrant.

This pilot initiative grew out of the collaborative efforts of funders engaged with TFN’s Inclusive Economies and Urban Water Funders working groups. The initial round of grants, awarded in November 2025, are supported by the generosity of Spring Point Partners. In all, six communities will receive $1.5 million in matching grants through the Partners for Places Jobs and Inclusive Infrastructure Initiative to effectively and equitably implement public infrastructure projects across the U.S., including in rural counties, large urban cities and on Tribal lands.

•  Partners for Places Jobs and Inclusive Infrastructure Initiative: TFN recently launched a new pilot funding opportunity that will leverage infrastructure funds to ensure projects benefit underserved areas, including training and expanding career pathways for local workers in critical industries.
  • • The application period for this grant closed Sept. 15, 2025.
    • Learn more about the  Partners for Places Jobs and Inclusive Infrastructure Initiative here.

• Partners for Places: Applications for the Partners for Places general matching grant program are currently closed.