Announcing Our Fall 2022 Grantee Partners
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides an unparalleled opportunity to advance community-driven projects that reduce climate and other pollution while simultaneously building health, wealth, and power in historically disinvested communities and regions. At the same time, its provisions present new challenges for groups working to slow and stop the expansion of dirty energy and petrochemicals. Many of our fall 2022 grants focus on helping groups rise to both opportunities and challenges, and ensure that the promise of this historic climate legislation is realized in ways that move us closer to justice.
Our fall grantmaking also includes increased support for several civic engagement groups whose year-round work to grow deep roots of power through education, organizing, and sparking imaginations is the foundation for durable and systemic climate progress.
Georgia
Sustainable Georgia Futures is a nonpartisan grassroots organization dedicated to creating green economy pathways for Black people and other people of color. It is a Black-woman-led collective of expert organizers and community leaders working to build power in Georgia’s marginalized communities to advance an inclusive economy and promote environmental justice.
Additional grants to current Georgia grantee partners
Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute builds power in marginalized, predominantly Black communities. They believe that the key to effective civic engagement and community power is understanding, respecting and supporting local infrastructure.
The Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda’s mission is to improve the quality of democratic governance in the state of Georgia, and other parts of the South, through a more informed and actively engaged electorate that seeks to hold elected officials accountable.
New Georgia Project focuses on voter registration, integrated civic engagement and advocacy in Georgia's communities of color.
ProGeorgia is Georgia's nonprofit civic engagement table, bringing together the power of existing nonprofit groups to work in a more strategic way, with new tools and technology, to change the policies of the state.
North carolina
Photo by Myles Green and Eman Mohammed, Survival Media Agency
Founded by frontline activists Dr. Crystal Cavalier-Keck and Jason Crazy Bear Keck, 7 Directions of Service is an environmental justice and community organizing collective based on Occaneechi-Saponi lands in rural North Carolina. Guided by the 7 Directions Teachings, they effect change by building power and solidarity across Indigenous and marginalized communities through education programs, community projects and campaigns.
Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN) is located in Sampson County, North Carolina, and focuses on educating the local community about the health impacts of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and other industrial operations in the county. EJCAN is working to address the extractive energy industry built to justify and perpetuate the legacy of the lagoon and sprayfield system that continues to create adverse health impacts on the communities, predominantly Black, Latino, and Indigenous people, living near these operations.
The mission of Franklinton Center at Bricks, Inc. (FCAB) is to provide a nurturing home to local, national, and global programs and organizations seeking liberation. FCAB imagines and manifests a world where systemic oppression does not exist; the whole divinity of a person is realized; the memory, contribution and resilience of our ancestors is embraced; and the environment is healed. FCAB is transforming the world through nature, history, food, hospitality and education.
The North Carolina Clean Energy Fund is a not-for-profit financial institution that utilizes its capital to catalyze investments in clean energy, energy efficiency, and green projects in the state. It operates on the “Green Bank” model successfully pioneered in other states, including Connecticut, New York, and Michigan. The fund’s mission is to accelerate investment in clean and efficient energy solutions and increase climate resilience in North Carolina, particularly to the benefit of underserved populations. It partners with public and private investors, foundations and other nonprofit organizations to deploy sustainable financing solutions that will create long-lasting environmental, economic and social benefits.
South carolina
Organized Uplifting Resources & Strategies (OURS) was founded by Erniko Brown in McCormick County, SC to empower Black and Brown people and increase the resources going to rural communities for environmental justice. The organization has a track record of educating BIPOC folks about sustainable agriculture and climate adaptation. OURS is growing its ability to empower rural, BIPOC and low-income women to become leaders in the transition from extractive, polluting industry to a green economy built on renewable energy and economic justice.
Texas
Galvanize USA is a nonpartisan civic empowerment organization designed to help strengthen our democracy and build the durable, multi-racial majority needed to advance progress across many issues. Galvanize focuses on the 26 million moderate White and Latina women who want a country that works better for everyone, but who are not yet reliably using their civic power to help achieve that. The organization employs a one-of-a-kind, research-driven approach to deeply understanding their core values and what is driving their civic behavior, and helping them stand up for their values and become agents of change in their communities. Galvanize has previously worked mainly in the Midwest, but in 2023 is expanding into Texas.
Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend is an intertribal community group in Corpus Christi Texas whose mission is to preserve, conserve, and cultivate their culture in the Coastal Bend area, where all their ancestors once lived together. The organization is playing a key role in halting the expansion of the largest oil export terminal in the United States and stopping desalination plants proposed to support industrial expansion in the region.
Additional grants to current Texas grantee partners
The Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe preserves, maintains, protects, and offers services that will better tribal communities’ ability to overcome the erasure of the Original People of Texas. The tribe partners with regional organizations working to stop proposed new oil and gas facilities in South Texas, and works to regain control of tribal lands near the proposed border wall.
Regional
Photo by Cornell Watson
EnerWealth Solutions believes the abundance of the sun’s energy is matched only by the power of people together. They love the places rural Americans call home. They believe in the inner strength of rural people. They develop projects that celebrate and elevate the inner wealth of rural communities by reinvesting in those communities.
Scalawag Magazine is a Southern, Black-led and centering, digital first media organization that works in solidarity with oppressed communities in the South to disrupt and shift the narratives that keep power and wealth in the hands of the few. Online and in person, Scalawag explores the complex intersections of culture and place, race, and systems of power and privilege. Through meaningful engagement with readers and supporters, they reimagine the roots and futures of the place they call home.
National
The African American Alliance of CDFI CEOs supports and empowers Black CDFI CEO members to lead and grow their institutional operations, teams, and social impact. They do this through a Women-Led Initiative supporting their Women CEO members, an Equity Scorecard, and Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GHGRF) advocacy efforts. They are anchoring a national coalition of Black and Brown financial institutions working to ensure that a substantial portion of grants, loans, technical assistance from the GHGRF flow to the underserved communities.
Additional grant to current national grantee partner
Inclusiv's mission is to help low- and moderate-income people and communities achieve financial independence through credit unions. Inclusiv’s Center for Resiliency and Clean Energy has built a network of community-based financial institutions that are scaling green lending solutions that address climate and energy justice in low- and moderate-income communities and communities of color.
Strategic approaches
Grantee partners use several key strategic approaches to meet climate, racial, and gender justice goals. Visit our grantmaking page to learn more.
