We are excited to announce a new partnership between Bread & Roses Community Fund and the William Penn Foundation to establish a three-year Climate Justice Fund that will move money to grassroots groups organizing to change the policies, practices, and processes that create and maintain climate injustices.
What is Climate Justice?
Climate change is already impacting our daily lives, disrupting our food, health, safety, housing, and education systems among others. Climate injustices, ranging from extreme heat and storms to supply chain disruptions to lack of access to clean water, are borne disproportionately by people of color, poor and working-class people, people with disabilities, women, and LGBTQIA+ people. We know that extreme heat leads to increased violence, including gun violence; that lands most vulnerable to flooding are often the same historically Black neighborhoods that banks redlined; and that consumer-facing programs, such as subsidies for clean technology, often fail to fairly benefit those most marginalized.
What is the Climate Justice Fund?
Given how interconnected climate change is with so many other issues—and how little has been gained historically by isolating “environmental” issues in their own silo—the Climate Justice Fund will provide resources to groups organizing to advance climate justice in many forms. Like all of our grant funds at Bread & Roses, community members will drive the design of the fund and distribution of the grants, and the fund will focus on issues prioritized by communities suffering most acutely from the climate crisis and the policies and practices causing it.
In response to growing public pressure to address the climate crisis, the federal government now plans to invest billions of dollars to combat and prepare for climate change. The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, and a Biden executive order committing 40% of upcoming federal climate and clean infrastructure funds to “disadvantaged communities,” all have the potential to bring historic investment to the Philadelphia region.
With this unprecedented climate spending on the horizon, grassroots community organizing is more essential than ever to ensure that grant-funded projects and programs directly invest in community-driven, reparative solutions for a better future.
The fund will also be a platform for building community among its grantees and creating opportunities for them to support and learn from each other. Bread & Roses will convene grantees to identify common barriers and challenges and to make recommendations to funders and policymakers on how to continue, adapt, and expand support for climate justice.
Who will design the Climate Justice Fund ?
Bread & Roses is recruiting community members to serve on the Community Advisory Committee, which will design the fund, identify eligibility criteria, and determine grantmaking priorities. Applications for the first round of funding will open in late 2023. We anticipate awarding more than one million dollars in three rounds of funding in 2024, 2025, and 2026.
Contribute to the Climate Justice Fund
Individuals or organizations interested in contributing to the fund should contact Caitlin Quigley.
Want to know more?
If you are interested in helping to design the fund, participating in grantmaking, or hearing other fund news, please fill out the interest form below.