When the Youth Climate Justice Fund officially launched last year during New York Climate Week, its organizers included several of the most accomplished young activists on the planet. Some were advising the United Nations, and many were founders of the world’s most successful youth groups.
But unlike many new climate fundraising giants, like Climate Imperative or Sunrise Project, the project has so far secured only two million-dollar-plus grants: $2 million from the Waverley Street Foundation and, most recently, $1 million from the Quadrature Climate Foundation.
On the eve of its one-year anniversary, the talented team is still working hard to secure the broad and ongoing support it needs not just to grow its own regranting, but to ensure much-needed philanthropic dollars reach youth groups and funds around the world.
“We see ourselves as creating the pipeline for philanthropy that can then potentially invest bigger amounts” in youth climate justice movements, said Nathan Méténier, the fund’s development director. “But to do that, we do need that funding continuously.”
The group recently completed its second grantmaking round, and once again, it was flooded with applicants. More than 2,500 organizations applied, up from 1,800 in its first call, even though the new call was limited to local and grassroots groups.
That overwhelming need shows why the fund aspires to help move more than $100 million to such groups by 2030 — and thereby supercharge an already massively influential youth climate movement that has been hindered by institutional underinvestment. Youth-led climate justice initiatives have received just 0.76% of all climate grants from major foundations in recent years, according to research by the group’s members and supporters.
Yet the team’s own experience shows the fundraising challenge that goal represents. Other than the Waverley and Quadrature grants, both of which are for two years, multi-year grants to the fund remain scarce and seven-figure awards even scarcer.
On the plus side, the fund has lined up a diverse range of supporters. It’s received new grants of $150,000 to $200,000 from funders like the Pisces Foundation and the Foundation for a Just Society. It also hopes to renew or extend past grants from the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the Oak Foundation and other early backers.
The team is also in demand for their expertise. The fund is advising grantmakers on directly supporting youth groups, and “that has proven quite successful,” Méténier said. The team has helped guide about $1.5 million since its launch last year.
With $800,000 in funding issued to date, and another $1 million committed this year, the fund will have reached over 90 partners across more than 40 countries by the end of the year. But its staff say both the fund — and the movement it represents — is only just getting started.
Funding first-time applicants
From its first round of funding, the Youth Climate Justice Fund hoped to reach groups outside of the funding mainstream — and it has succeeded.
“Some of them, it was their first time even trying to access philanthropy from philanthropy,” said Joshua Amponsem, strategy director of the fund, of its first round. “From this new cohort, there are a bunch of groups like that.”
Some applicants applied after peer groups, who had never received a grant before, received support from YCJF, he said. The fund has seen a rise in applications from groups in regions like the Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Francophone Africa, which had previously applied in smaller numbers. The ability to apply in multiple languages, a priority for the fund from the beginning, has also helped.
In its most recent round of funding, the fund sought to reach even further. It aimed to engage youth groups that have not yet been involved in climate and environmental activism. Those awards were of up to $20,000, and the fund also made multi-year grants of up to $80,000 for regional and international organizations.
It’s an approach that the regrantor’s own funders appreciate, underscoring the high appetite among big climate grantmakers to find effective intermediaries for their giving — particularly in areas like movement-building, where regrantors often have closer connections with front-line work and leaders.
“We believe that supporting youth-led movements is critical to achieving climate justice — it helps to reach new communities and groups, fosters access to the resources they need, and offers creative solutions,” said Alexandria McBride, senior program officer at the Waverley Street Foundation, in a statement. “Intersectional youth-led movements like the ones YCJF supports are also key to mobilizing next-generation solutions for further philanthropic investment.”
The team also wants to expand its connections with other intermediaries, not only with climate and environmental operations, but also feminist and LGBTQ+ ones. The fund hopes to do a test run of a regional convening next year, and it also recently joined Alianza Socioambiental Fondos del Sur, a network of Global South funds that I profiled earlier this year.
“To grow the pie, it’s important to work with philanthropy and high-net-worth individuals. It’s also important to work with the galaxy of regrantors and intermediaries all over the world,” Méténier said.
The fund is also looking for new partners. During this year’s New York Climate Week, the group will mark its one-year anniversary by joining a September 23 event hosted by the Ford Foundation, another new backer, on the rise of youth-led funds like theirs. A representative from a close partner, the FRIDA Young Feminist Fund, will join them on the panel, as well as climate elder and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson.
“We need to have more youth-led intermediaries”
The Youth Climate Justice Fund has sought since its launch not just to grow its own budget, but also create a whole ecosystem to support young activists. The fund is now building a coalition of youth-led funds, and hopes to spark more activity in countries like India, where there are many potential donors.
“To be able to grow the amount of funding that can come to young leaders… we need to have more youth-led intermediaries that are ready to receive funding,” Méténier said. “So we’re stepping up this work.”
The fund has also strived to take its supporters on a learning journey. For instance, every three months, the fund brings together 16 donors for online sessions that not only cover what the fund is doing, but also address concepts like just transition. The events are designed to allow program officers to bring their principals — i.e., living donors — or board members. While he knows not everyone would use this term, Méténier says, “we call ourselves a donor collaborative.”
The way the fund’s team sees it, those events might be the only time a youth representative gets in front of such funders. With very few grantmakers backing young leaders in the climate movement, every dollar counts — and the stakes are high.
“If they come in like, ‘Actually, we’re not completely satisfied with the way you do things,’ and [they] leave, that is not just a funder that will stop funding us, I think it’s a funder that will not fund youth movements at all in the future,” he said. “We take that responsibility very seriously.”
