2025 Innovation in Environmental Resilience Award

Get A Reminder about the 2025 Nomination Period

The Innovation in Environmental Resilience Award recognizes a park or recreation agency that is leading an innovative project or program that creates a localized solution for addressing global or regional environmental challenges.

The nomination period is January 3, 2025 to March 28, 2025.

Eligibility Criteria:

• Must be a current member of NRPA (Membership can be as an agency member, the agency director, or program director)
• The agency:
  • Is leading a project or program that creates a localized solution for addressing a global or regional environmental challenge
  • Demonstrates a commitment to environmental stewardship and long term health of the environment
  • Demonstrates a commitment to educating and activating the public around environmental resilience and conservation concerns
  • Use best environmental resilience practices within the project or program
• All programs or projects submitted with this application must have been implemented since January 1, 2024 -- i.e. between January 1, 2024 and the submission deadline of March 28, 2025.
• Innovation Awards are presented to Parks & Recreation agencies for a program, facility or project. Submitting Master Plans are discouraged, but not expressly prohibited.

Required Materials:

• Completed application form
• Testimonial from a community member (non-staff) about impact of project/program.

Optional Materials:

• One additional supplemental item which highlights the effects and achievements of the project/program.
• Relating photograph(s)

Submission Instructions:

• All submissions must be received by NRPA no later than 11:59 p.m. EST on March 28, 2025. NRPA will not return any materials submitted with the application.
• Use of AI (Artificial Intelligence) to create award submissions is not prohibited, but is highly discouraged.  AI generated content often sounds artificial and quite similar to other AI generated content which is likely to be detrimental to your submission.
• The official NRPA application form must be used in submissions.
• Applicants must have or create an NRPA login account to complete an application.
• All materials must be submitted electronically using this survey format.
• Supplemental material file types include .pdf, .doc, .docx, .jpg or .jpeg as noted on form.
• Each project or program can only be submitted for one of the four innovation awards.
• Submission is automatically disqualified if it does not meet criteria, submission instructions, or if the responses are over the word limit.
• This format has a save and continue feature that is located in the banner at the bottom of the question pages.

Terms and Conditions:

• NRPA reserves the right to disqualify an application if in NRPA’s sole discretion it determines that the application does not contain truthful information, is contrary to the standards or policies of NRPA, or violates applicable laws, or if the nominee acted contrary to the standards or policies of NRPA, or violated applicable law or could reflect negatively on NRPA.
• NRPA reserves the right to revoke any award or prize if in NRPA’s sole discretion it determines that the awardee acted contrary to the standards or policies of NRPA or acted in violation of applicable laws or could reflect negatively on NRPA.

For more information, contact the NRPA Awards Program at awards@nrpa.org.

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