Hive Fund Statement on Advancing Community Self-Determination in the Data Center Boom
The unprecedented expansion of AI data centers is rapidly reshaping land, water, and energy infrastructure across the South. Recent polls have consistently found that more than 70% of people in the US oppose data centers being built in their communities, and exit polling from the November 2026 midterms found that nearly 90 percent of voters factored the issue into their congressional votes.
Building on this momentum demands a coordinated response from philanthropy that ensures communities have a meaningful say in decisions affecting their futures. As a member of the Alliance of Environmental and Democracy Collaborative Funds*, Hive Fund has significant concerns about the Responsible Data Center Development Collaborative, a new initiative bringing together funders, policy and advocacy groups, and hyperscale tech companies to create a shared national framework for data center development.
As currently designed, the initiative risks undermining work already underway in communities across the country. Hive Fund grantee partners have spent years advancing local strategies and building broad coalitions to confront the data center boom in ways that center community input.
The initiative also risks replicating the dynamics behind the data center buildout itself — rushed timelines, a top-down process that sidelines Black, Brown, rural, and low-income communities bearing the greatest costs of data center development, and an imbalance of power toward the industries responsible for the harms.
Hive Fund is not participating in or aligned with this formation. Our focus remains supporting community self-determination and ensuring that communities have the power, resources, and capacity to decide if, when, and how data centers are built.
Learn more about Hive Fund’s approach to supporting communities facing data center buildout.