How communities of color lead on climate solutions — and ways to support them

Murray dreams of a day when she can pay her team a living wage and do even more for the city she loves: “Volunteers are great, but when you’re able to hire a team that can work on these various programs full-time, then you’re able to do more on behalf of the communities that we serve. We know that there is just so much more that needs to be done, but we have to be realistic about those tasks that we can take on.”

Organizations like ACTS — which center the needs of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color in their work — are making big strides on climate action. These efforts range from advancing strict truck pollution regulation in California to pushing the federal government to adopt an “all of government” approach to supporting equitable outcomes to partnering with labor leaders to help Oregon pass the sweeping Oregon Climate Action Plan. But despite a track record of success, these organizations also face some of the steepest financial hurdles. In the U.S., a gap of more than $2.7 billion of funding sits between white-led groups and those led by people of color, like Murray, according to the Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity in Environmental Philanthropy (InDEEP) Initiative. That difference in funding has a dramatic impact on what groups led by people of color can accomplish. Organizations led by people of color describe the challenges caused by such funding inequities — a lack of resources to conduct analysis, staff burnout, having to scale back their level of ambition, and much more.

These facts reflect a history of underinvestment, but that doesn’t have to be the future. For donors who, like the Hewlett Foundation, want to do more to advance climate action, as well as gender and racial equity, new intermediaries are helping get resources, support, and capacity to groups led by people of color that are advancing the climate cause.

Intermediaries aim to fill the climate justice funding gap

The Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, a key Hewlett Foundation grantee and partner, began providing financial resources to multi-issue community organizations in just two states. Six years later, the fund provides support in 13 states. Despite the specificity of its name, the Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund doesn’t only help groups with energy or climate agendas. It also funds organizations with track records of success in other social justice issue areas, including immigration, labor, housing, and reproductive rights.

“Our theory is that if these organizations are already winning in these other issue areas, and they already work with the communities most impacted by climate change, then these are the folks who should be receiving the bulk of funding in the climate sector,” says Lydia Avila, a program officer focused on the Southwest at the Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund.

The intermediary has been working to advance racial, environmental, and economic justice for several years in New Mexico, which is one of the most diverse states in the nation and third in the U.S. in oil production, after Texas and North Dakota. Avila works predominantly with communities of color that are exposed to the toxic air pollution resulting from oil production. The communities are also highly dependent on the industry for financial stability and jobs, so her team has prioritized funding groups that work on education and knowledge sharing to help residents in oil-dependent communities understand how transitioning to clean energy can provide economic opportunities that won’t pollute their neighborhoods.

“Our grantees are not necessarily talking to people about climate change explicitly,” Avila says. “They’re talking to people about jobs and about the dangers of being hyper-dependent on the oil and gas industry.”

After two years of door knocking and coalition building, Avila’s grantees recently celebrated a win. In 2019, the state passed the Energy Transition Act, which accelerates New Mexico’s clean energy transition and provides economic and workforce support for communities impacted by coal plant closures. A state task force — which includes representation from many groups deeply connected with New Mexican communities and supported by the Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund — will soon begin to identify new economic opportunities for the state and drive public investment toward them. But Avila and the community see this as just the beginning.

“That was a really good win, but we need to build off of that,” Avila says. “Once we get a win, we need to keep the funding going to ensure good practice.”

Investing in women of color to drive climate action

In the U.S. South, the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice is another intermediary spurring new approaches to philanthropy. Launched in 2019 with $12 million in seed funding from Hewlett, it supports organizations, primarily led by women of color and others on the frontlines, that are taking on big players, like the fossil fuel industry that run oil refineries and petrochemical plants that pollute the air and endanger the health of neighboring communities.

The Hive Fund chose the South because of the sheer scale of impact of fossil fuels to communities of color in the area. The region is home to some of the highest greenhouse gas emitters in the country. Texas alone released more than 823 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels in 2019, more than three times the next three highest-emitting states combined. Recognizing that many leaders in the region were women of color — and that they received only a tiny share of overall funding — the Hive Fund committed specifically to supporting those tackling the climate crisis with a lens on gender, race, and class.

“One of the really important things we need to break through is this idea that we can solve the climate crisis and then deal with justice or race later,” explains Melanie Allen, co-director of the Hive Fund, which funds ACTS. “That’s just not true. … If we’re not dealing with them in this enmeshed way and if our solution set is not considering all of them, then we’re not going to be able to solve these complex and difficult problems.”

A growing Gulf South climate movement

The Coalition for Environment, Equity, and Resilience (CEER) works toward a cleaner, healthier future. It was born after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, which killed at least 88 people. The Houston-based coalition is made up of 28 member organizations working to build power to prevent such a tragedy from hitting their people again.

Iris Gonzalez was CEER’s first paid, full-time staff member, and is now working for the EPA. Gonzalez says the coalition could do so much more with more funded positions and better-resourced partners. Funders can provide connective tissue through long-term grants and resources focused on operations and capacity.

“Organizations can’t work in coalition if they don’t have what they need to really keep going and to grow along with us, so we can only scale if we all scale together,” Gonzalez says.

Nelson is not alone in seeing an opportunity to make a difference on the philanthropic side.

The Donors of Color Network (DOCN) launched the Climate Funder’s Justice Pledge with a goal of supporting groups led by Black, Indigenous, and people of color in the climate cause, because they saw it as both a just and smart commitment. The network, a cross-racial community of donors, has called on climate funders to increase their funding transparency and dramatically increase funding to groups led by and serving people of color. Nineteen funders have fully signed the pledge, which includes sharing funding totals and committing 30% of funding to organizations led by Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. An additional four, including the Hewlett Foundation, have signed the transparency portion of the pledge.

“It’s not effective to be essentially fighting something as big as climate change with only a portion of your team on the field,” says Sharon Chen, a board member for DOCN who helped launch the campaign. “It’s not a winning strategy, and it would be better for everyone — white people included — if we were fighting this problem with everybody appropriately funded.”