2025 grant cycle
The next round of community choice grants begins in January 2025.
Metro’s Nature in Neighborhoods community choice grants allows community members to imagine, design and choose parks and nature projects using the principles of a participatory budgeting process. Your ideas and votes have the power to help shape the future parks and natural areas in your neighborhood. Community choice grants are a participatory pilot of the capital grants program.
In 2023, Metro invested $2 million in projects imagined by you and your neighbors. The first round of community choice grants was for Metro Council District 4. District 4 includes all the urban areas in Washington County north of Oregon Highway 8 and areas west of Cornelius Pass Road.
The grants fund community-led parks and nature projects that benefit communities of color, Indigenous communities, people with low incomes and other communities that have been ignored or harmed by governments. The projects will connect people to nature close to home, improve fish and wildlife habitat, and make our region more resilient to climate change, making a better region for everyone.
These grants are available thanks to voters choosing to invest in parks and nature when they approved Metro’s 2019 parks and nature bond measure.
How it works
Nature in Neighborhood’s community choice grants give community members like you a chance to be part of every step of the process. And it’s not just for adults. Kids 11-years-old and older can vote on their favorite projects.
- Metro collects project ideas from community members, both online and in community workshops.
- Metro hosts workshops to bring together community members and local park planners to develops those ideas into conceptual illustrations.
- Community members vote for their favorite projects.
- Metro hosts another round of workshops with community members and park planners to develop this narrow slate of ideas into conceptual site plans.
- Community members vote for their plans, which are sent for approval by the Metro Council.