© Rachael Warriner | Sunrise Movement
What exactly do youth-led climate justice initiatives need from the funding community, and how does this differ from their experience of funders and fundraising today?
For this study, we interviewed young people from a range of initiatives chosen to reflect the diversity of youth-led climate justice action. Some of their organisations are registered charities, others informal grass roots groups. Most are less than five years old, some have a small paid staff and almost all rely heavily on a small corps of regular volunteers.
Our interviewees converged on a number of key messages to funders. These are distilled into the three-part call to action below. For each element, we have suggested a solidarity statement that funders may wish to reflect on or adapt for their own use, regarding what action they can take to improve the quantity and quality of support for youth climate justice movements.
In future, it may be possible to develop the call to action into a fuller funder pledge, with a published list of signatories plus mechanisms for convening, coordinating and measuring progress across a community of pledgers. Any foundations or individual donors who would like to participate in a discussion around this, please contact us at info@youthclimatejusticestudy.org
Around the world, we can see the impact that youth-led action is having. Young people are influencing policy, setting legal precedents and attaching new urgency to how people think about climate change. Many youth-led organisations have relatively modest funding needs, and have proven capable of extracting maximum value from every grant dollar. However, only a tiny fraction of philanthropic giving makes its way to youth-led groups, especially those based in regions most vulnerable to climate impacts. The movement’s strong tradition of volunteerism often serves to amplify its power, spontaneity and reach, but the scarcity of financial resources can prove untenable in the longer term, contributing to burn-out and limiting participation among young people who are unable to donate their time for free.
Suggested solidarity statement:
“As funders, we recognise that youth-led climate justice initiatives are chronically underfunded, and that this is a key factor preventing them from reaching their full impact and potential. We will commit more resources to youth-led groups.”
A lot of youth-led climate action takes place at grass-roots level, carried out by small, new or informal organisations that are often in a state of flux as leaders transition or age out. This dynamism is consistent with the movements’ organic growth, but can make it challenging for youth-led groups to access funds – especially from grantmakers whose practices are set up to support larger civil society groups. As well as making themselves more accessible, funders can invest in networks or other movement infrastructure that serves to nurture, sustain and connect individual groups. They can also think carefully about how their grant and governance processes foster trust, participation and other values of importance to youth-led organisations.
Suggested solidarity statement:
“We recognise the limits of much philanthropic practice today in terms of distributing funds to youth-led climate justice groups. We commit to becoming more responsive partners to youth-led organisations in the round – in our direct grants and via partnerships with intermediary funds.”
Young people from climate justice backgrounds are not well-represented on the staff or boards of most philanthropic organisations. For funders, this is a missed opportunity to learn from a generation of activists whose understanding of intersectionality and collaboration runs deep, because they have often worked in these ways themselves. At a time when the environmental movement urgently needs to expand its skills, mindset and demographic reach, it is essential that young people see the sector as a viable place to build a career. Given that younger generations will bear the heaviest impacts of environmental harm, it is also right that climate-focused philanthropies define their strategies and priorities with the active input of youth.