Investment Priorities

Through its competitive grant process, EDA evaluates all project applications to determine the extent to which they:

  • Align with EDA’s investment priorities,
  • Effectively address the creation and/or retention of high-quality jobs, and
  • Document that the applicant can or will leverage other resources, both public and private, and demonstrate the applicant’s capacity to commence the proposed project promptly, to use funds quickly and effectively, and provide a clear scope of work that includes a description of specific, measurable project outputs.

EDA’s investment priorities provide an overarching framework to ensure its grant investment portfolio – ranging from planning to infrastructure construction -- contributes to local efforts to build, improve, or better leverage economic assets that allow businesses to succeed and regional economies to prosper and become more resilient. Competitive grant applications will be responsive to the evaluation criteria listed under each individual funding announcement, including at least one of the below investment priorities.

  1. Critical Infrastructure: Economic development planning or implementation projects that support development of public facilities, including basic public infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, or telecommunications infrastructure.
  2. Workforce: Economic Development planning or implementation projects that –
    1. Support job skills training to meet the hiring needs of the area in which the project is to be carried out and that result in well-paying jobs; or
    2. Otherwise promote labor force participation.
  3. Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Economic development planning or implementation projects that –
    1. Support the development of innovation and entrepreneurship-related infrastructure;
    2. Promote business development and lending; or
    3. Foster the commercialization of new technologies that are creating technology-driven businesses and high-skilled, well-paying jobs of the future.
  4. Economic Recovery Resilience: Economic development planning or implementation projects that enhance the ability of an area to withstand and recover from adverse short-term or long-term changes in economic conditions, including effects from industry contractions or economic impacts from natural disasters.
  5. Manufacturing: Economic development planning or implementation projects that encourage job creation, business expansion, technology and capital upgrades, and productivity growth in manufacturing, including efforts that contribute to the competitiveness and growth of domestic suppliers or the domestic production of innovative, high-value products and production technologies.