SCC is improving the way it does business. We’ve heard from conservation districts and other partners that SCC has opportunities to improve its processes and programs.
We are working on a variety of projects with the end goal of providing the best possible service to conservation districts, while increasing efficiency, transparency, and accountability.
This is about much more than adopting a new technology to replace an outdated one. This is about ensuring that SCC has the capacity to deliver on the increased number of conservation resources entrusted to it.
Please note that to be considered for the next roundtable meeting, your topic must be submitted at least five business days before the meeting.
Our monthly roundtable meetings are an important way for conservation districts and SCC to share information and stay connected. In an effort to make sure these meetings are better serving the communication needs of conservation districts, we’ve developed a tool to source topics for the roundtables.
Use the tool above to add your topic idea to an upcoming roundtable, which can include subjects for focused discussion. Please take time to list any questions you may have about the topic as well. Use the “thumbs up” feature to up-vote other topic ideas. Topics with the most votes will be incorporated into upcoming meetings. We will reach out to topic submitters to plan out any conversational sessions.
The Ombuds Working Group met on Feb. 11, 2026 to prioritize the feedback received so far on the Grants Manual, and to create workplans to resolve the feedback. The assembled feedback was sent to the entire conservation district community for concurrence in January to ensure that these items were valid and active for resolution.
Guided by topic-area worksheets, working group members have broken into smaller “tiger teams” to work through and prioritize comments, research and gather information, and provide recommendations on how to resolve the feedback. The tiger teams will meet with SCC staff during weekly dedicated office hours, and once monthly as a group to share progress made toward recommendations.
Work is slated to be complete by January 2027.
Ten years ago, SCC administered about $35 million in grant funding from two fund sources to conservation districts and other partners. Today, we administer about $100 million from eight fund sources, and our systems and processes have not kept pace with growth. We scaled up our capacity to deliver essential grant dollars quickly to conservation districts but did not transform our processes to reflect the greater complexity of our funding and programs.
SCC is working to improve our grant program administration and is partnering with conservation districts to make sure our new processes center on district experience.
