Bread & Roses Community Fund, with support from the William Penn Foundation, is launching a new three-year Climate Justice Organizing Fund. The fund will move money to community-led grassroots groups and leaders in the Philadelphia region. The two-track fund will support grassroots groups organizing to change the policies, practices, and processes that create and maintain climate inequities. It will also provide grants for community-based groups to strengthen their capacity to organize or develop a climate justice organizing strategy.
What is Climate Justice?
Climate Justice addresses the inequitable impact of climate change by centering the needs, voices, and leadership of impacted communities in developing climate justice policies and practices. By sharing the benefits and burdens of climate change, climate justice seeks to rectify systemic and historic inequities—rooted in patriarchal, capitalist, settler-colonialist, and white supremacist systems—at the root of environmental racism and climate inequities. Climate justice integrates human rights, Indigenous people’s rights, racial, gender, and economic justice. It recognizes that those least responsible for climate change and environmental destruction —communities of color, low-income households, rural folks, and Indigenous peoples—bear the heaviest burdens.
Climate justice calls for investments in infrastructure, leadership, policies, and education that eliminate disparities and repair historical harms. It builds power within impacted communities to advance policies and practices. Climate justice honors community-based solutions for living harmoniously with the earth to foster a sustainable and regenerative future for all.
At its core, climate justice aims to advance:
- Equitable Processes: Ensure impacted communities have a pathway to provide meaningful input and leadership in decision-making about climate policies, solutions, and clean energy projects. Demanding that decision-makers partner with impacted communities in measurable and meaningful ways.
- Equitable Climate Benefits: Access to healthy air, clean water, climate mitigation tools, the green economy, climate project financing, and all clean energy technology and approaches that support human and environmental well-being.
- Systemic Accountability: Hold governments, corporations, and other institutions responsible for climate harm accountable. Redirect priorities from profit and exploitation to regeneration and care for people and the planet.
About the Climate Justice Organizing Fund
The Climate Justice Organizing Fund will provide resources to groups organizing to advance climate justice in a variety of issue areas. This may include interconnected issues like:
- Racial Justice and Climate Justice: Environmental disparities stem from historical redlining, disinvestment, and discriminatory policies that have placed polluting industries, hazardous waste sites, and inadequate infrastructure in predominantly Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and low-income neighborhoods. As climate change increases, these neighborhoods also lack adequate tree canopies, are in floodplains, and continue to grapple with being left out of decision-making.
- Food Security and Climate Justice: Extreme weather caused by climate change (fires, floods, and extreme heat) disrupts food supply chains, which leads to higher and unpredictable prices and more food scarcity for communities that often live in food deserts or lack resources to access healthy food, compounding pre-existing environmental and economic injustice.
- Affordable Housing and Climate Justice: Populations most at risk for climate impacts are the ones experiencing the most significant housing affordability, maintenance, and displacement issues. For instance, Black, Latinx, and Native households spend between 25-45 percent of their income on energy costs. This is referred to as energy poverty. As extreme heat increases, so does energy poverty. These same communities are less likely to have the funding to weatherize homes or invest in clean energy solutions that decrease energy costs and are more likely to be displaced by predatory development practices.
- Health Equity and Climate Justice: Climate change disproportionately harms communities facing systemic health disparities—who bear the most significant health burdens from pollution, extreme weather, and environmental hazards.
- Public Transportation and Climate Justice: Public transportation is critical in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving air quality, and promoting climate resilience. However, disparities in transit access disproportionately affect communities also the most impacted by climate change.
The Fund will make grants through a two-track funding approach.
Track One: Climate Justice Capacity Building and Strategy Development ($15,000 grants)
Track One is designed to strengthen the foundational work necessary for effective climate organizing, ensuring that movements have the preparation and strategic alignment needed for long-term success. These grants will:
1. Support capacity-building activities through climate justice organizing training for community-based organizations, community members, coalitions, and/or other stakeholders. The organizing and training funded by these grants must result in a strengthened capacity for actually implementing a climate justice organizing strategy.
Example activities could include:
- Hire a trainer or consultant who will increase the effectiveness of future organizing activities by training and educating staff, volunteers, youth, and/or community members in community organizing, online organizing training, climate justice, environmental racism, or climate change.
- Provide community organizing 101 and/or climate justice training to community members, youth, or community-based organizations to increase their capacity, knowledge, and organizing skills to address climate justice issues.
- Build relationships with technical experts, climate justice researchers, or policy leads to strengthening the organization’s climate justice strategy and organizing effectiveness.
2. Support community-led organizations in developing a climate justice strategy. Climate justice organizing strategies should leverage Bread & Roses’ sample organizing tactics, which include facilitating community meetings and listening sessions to unearth community climate justice needs and build relationships with technical experts and policy analysts. The outcome of this activity must be a clearly defined climate justice strategy and plan for implementation.
Track Two – Implementing a Climate Justice Organizing Strategy ($25,000 grants)
This funding track is designed to support grassroots, community-led organizations working in the climate justice space. It is intended for groups that have already developed a climate justice organizing strategy and need financial support to sustain, implement, or scale efforts. Unlike funding for planning or preparation as outlined in Track One, this funding track focuses explicitly on implementation.
Example activities could include:
- Implementing direct action activities that address particular climate justice concerns
- Launching a climate justice campaign
- Coalition building or cross-organizational collaboration
- Offsetting costs to train and mobilize communities to attend public hearings, townhalls, and other engagements with policymakers
Eligibility for Both Tracks
- An annual operating budget of $500,000 or less.
Note: The Community Grantmaking Committee will preference smaller grassroots organizations that are often overlooked in funding opportunities and sometimes lack dedicated grant-writing staff. - Leadership must reflect the organizational membership base, include people directly affected by the climate crisis, and represent communities affected by the climate crisis.
- Eligible organizations must use or plan to use community organizing that centers the experiences and voices of climate-impacted communities. Specifically, eligible organizations build power by and with grassroots communities to hold corporations and policymakers accountable to impacted communities.
- Eligible applicants should demonstrate that they understand climate justice and environmental racism and how the issues they are organizing around promote climate justice.
Additional Track One Eligibility Criteria
Eligible applicants include new organizations focusing on climate justice or existing grassroots organization expanding their work to focus on climate justice.
Additional Track Two Eligibility Criteria
Eligible organizations:
- Have a track record of community organizing tactics that drive change in legislative or regulatory policies or institutional practices.
- Invest in community engagement to ensure their strategies are informed directly by community members impacted by climate change.
- Have a track record of basebuilding, e.g., growing the number of communities and residents supporting climate justice issues by bringing in new people or groups.
What Makes an Application Competitive?
A competitive application will demonstrate how the applicant uses or intends to use community organizing to address specific climate justice issues. It clearly illustrates how impacted community members are central to strategy development and decision-making. The application should also demonstrate a clear plan for delivering on their climate justice organizing goals and illustrate a track record of achieving results.
For track two, special consideration will be given to coalitions or individual organizations prioritizing collaboration with other groups and stakeholders to expand the cohesiveness of the movement.
Applications to the Climate Justice Organizing Fund will be accepted through March 26, 2025.
For more information about eligibility or the review process, please contact Bread & Roses at grants@breadrosesfund.org. You can also view the virtual information session recorded on February 20, 2025 here.
Click here to apply.
Application Support
For all of our grantmaking programs, we offer optional 15-minute appointments to provide help with the application. Click here to access the calendar and book an appointment.
Join the Community Grantmaking Committee
Because Bread & Roses is a movement fund, all decisions about grants are made by people most impacted by the issue being addressed. Grant awards through the Climate Justice Organizing Fund will be made by a new Community Grantmaking Committee (CGC) composed of movement leaders, organizers, people who have been most impacted by climate change, allies, and donors. We are committed to assembling a group that reflects the full diversity of our communities.
If you are interested in being a part of the CGC for the Climate Justice Organizing Fund, please fill out this application by Monday, March 31.