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JESSICA KUTZ | THE 19TH MARCH 3, 2022

Women of Color Are Leading Climate Justice Work They’re also struggling to find funding.

Demonstrators march to stop climate change in November 2021 in New York

Cit (Ph t b J h L ki/N Ph t i AP)

O

City. (Photo by John Lamparski/NurPhoto via AP)

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riginally published by The 19th

When winter storm Uri hit Houston last February, widespread power outages resulted in

residents going days without heat and electricity. Almost half of Texans lost access to clean

drinking water.

In the neighborhood of Pleasantville, that meant families needed bottled water – and lots of it.

“Because we are in an older community, a lot of people, including myself, experienced pipe

damage,” said Bridgette Murray, a community advocate. “Some folks had to turn o� water in their

homes.”

Murray’s organization, Achieving Community Tasks Successfully (ACTS), purchased a truckload of

water to distribute in her neighborhood and surrounding communities in the days a�er the storm.

Pleasantville, where Murray lives, has a long and proud history of community organizing. In the

1950s it was one of the few places where Black Americans were allowed to purchase homes in the

city. Like many other communities of color, it also became the place where policymakers allowed

the permitting of a disproportionate amount of industrial uses, including chemical storage

facilities.

In an e�ort to understand how those acts of environmental racism impact the health of residents,

ACTS facilitated a community-led air monitoring program over the last three years to measure the

amount of dangerous pollutants in the neighborhood.

The work that Murray does is directly related to climate justice — a critical component of addressing

the disproportionate impacts climate change has on communities of color. But it can be hard for

organizations like hers to secure grant funding through traditional foundations. In recent years,

some organizations are making pledges to fund this on-the-ground climate work, speci�cally

centering groups led by women of color.

In a report released in 2021 by Green 2.0, a nonpro�t that tracks diversity in the environmental

movement, foundations that responded to the report funded White-led environmental

organizations at nearly double the rate of those led by people of color. And, in an analysis

completed by The New School, of the $1.34 billion dollars distributed by national environmental

grant makers between 2016-2017, only 1.3 percent was awarded to environmental justice

organizations. The disparity is also gendered: Between 70 to 80 percent of philanthropic funding

goes to organizations run by men.

In recent years, grant-making organizations like The Solutions Project and The Hive Fund for

Climate & Gender Justice are working to direct philanthropy dollars to grassroots work led

speci�cally by women of color. As the climate crisis worsens, and funding for climate action grows,

they believe that addressing both gender and climate justice together will strengthen solutions

being implemented on the ground by those already in frontline communities.

“Women of color are super underfunded, but are doing so much of this work. Let’s commit to

them,” said Sekita Grant, vice president of programs with the Solutions Project.

The work the Solutions Project funds is wide ranging, focused on community-led renewable energy

projects, regenerative land work and addressing longstanding environmental injustices like

polluted air and contaminated water. Grant said the decision to focus on women’s leadership was

made a�er realizing that, by nature of their positions in their communities, they were already

leading many of these grassroots e�orts. “(When the) solutions project pivoted, to be more in

relationship and collaborative with grassroots organizing, and the climate justice movement,it was

a lot of looking around like, ‘Wow, like this is really being led and carried by women of color,’”

Grant said.

The reasons for the current funding gap are multifaceted. From the perspective of organizers like

Murray, just having access to either grant writers or developing a skill set in grant writing is

expensive. The applications themselves are complicated, lengthy and time consuming to complete

for both private and federal grants. In an oversight hearing held in February by the House

C i N l R di i i d i l i i i i d h

Committee on Natural Resources on diversity equity and inclusion in grant giving and the

environmental movement, Keya Chatterjee, executive director of the US Climate Action Network,

provided written testimony describing the process of securing a federal grant as “demoralizing and

characterized by a lengthy application process (100 pages long in one instance) with very technical

jargon that is di�cult to understand.”

On the philanthropy side of things, there is also an inherent bias in what projects, or organizations

foundations deem worthy of funding.

“There is a lack of understanding in philanthropy around what change and transformation truly

look like,” Grant said. “There is a very narrow sense, in my view that’s recreating the same mess

that got us into these problems, where you have this very technical top down approach.”

For these reasons it is also di�cult to get funding for advocacy work, said Zelalem Adefris, who

works with two Miami-based organizations that received grants from the Solutions Project. Since

1997, one of the nonpro�ts she works with has sent community members to Tallahassee, Florida’s

capital, to advocate for their position on various pieces of legislation. Over the years they were able

to cobble together community donations for the bus trips, but it wasn’t until 2020 when they were

able to secure a grant for the work. This year they testi�ed in support of the creation of an energy

equity task force and against a law that would disincentivize roo�op solar panels.

”When it comes to systems transformation, and the long, hard slog it takes to change policy and to

change culture, it is a challenge to get everyone in philanthropy to understand and to support

that,” Adefris said.

There are ways to make grant giving more equitable. The Solutions Project — which acts as an

intermediary between large grant funders and grassroots organizations — has a simple application

process, few reporting requirements and has committed to investing 95 percent of its resources to

leaders of color, with at least 80 percent going to organizations led by women.

They also distribute multi-year operational grants, which allows grassroots leaders to be more

responsive to the needs in their communities and to plan for growth within their organization.

“Not having to worry about funding as o�en de�nitely creates an environment where organizations

are able to actually focus on the work and less on keeping the doors open,” said Adriane Alicea,

G d di

Green 2.0 deputy director.

When Murray received a multi-year grant from the Hive Fund, she was able to secure an o�ce space

and is planning to nearly double her small sta�. “Generally, grants have to be very targeted to

di�erent programs and projects. So it becomes a big assistance to organizations like ours to be able

to have some �exibility in how those dollars are used,” Murray said.

But there is a huge disparity in who receives these grants. According to the Green 2.0 transparency

report card, on average, organizations led by people of color received less than 1 percent of the

multiyear operational budget grants doled out in 2021.

Grant hopes that foundations will come to understand that funding grassroots organizing is central

to addressing climate change.

“You’re going to get very rich and high-quality solutions from individuals that are historically,

currently, and in the future, committed to that community,” she said. “We can really see the high

value and e�cacy of this climate justice work.”

Back in Pleasantville, Murray is already working on her next set of grant applications. This year,

she hopes to purchase air monitors that can better detect cancer-causing pollutants, which are used

by the local government in other parts of the county.

“When you are a smaller organization you are using these low-cost sensors, and that data has to be

matched by a regulated monitor so that it can be actionable,” Murray said. “When we are all

working from the same type of equipment it strengthens that working relationship [with o�cials]

and gives our program a greater voice.”

Disclosure: The Hive Fund for Climate & Gender Justice has been a �nancial supporter of The 19th.

More from The 19th

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Proposed bill would cover breastfeeding support for families �eeing natural disasters

‘You leave everything behind’: As bases end housing, Afghan women detail life as refugees

in the United States

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Jessica Kutz is The 19th's gender, climate and sustainability reporter. Prior to

joining The 19th, she was an editor and reporter at High Country News, a

regional nonpro�t that covers the Western United States. Her work has been

republished in many outlets including The Guardian, Slate, Mother Jones and

The Atlantic. She is based in Tucson, Arizona.

TAGS: CLIMATE CHANGE, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

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