Grantmaking In and Beyond the South
The urgent and generational work to address deeply enmeshed problems requires connective tissue to help groups become more than the sum of their parts. Sharing ideas, analysis, data, and stories of successes and setbacks allows grantee partners to learn faster, feel less isolated in their work, and build momentum that spurs more progress. The Hive Fund is supporting structures that connect leaders and organizations across the region, as well as organizations whose work spans multiple states. The Hive Fund’s emerging Climate Finance initiative is also supporting groups that create the conditions under which billions and even trillions in public and private capital can flow toward regenerative projects in ways that provide immediate benefits and long-term power to communities.
Southern Region
Although each state has its own unique systems, structures and legal and regulatory frameworks that shape our grantee partners’ specific issues and approaches, their work is interconnected across state and regional lines, and collaboration at this scale helps build power for large-scale solutions.
Advancing Equity and Opportunity is a regional organizing platform that sustains engagement through collaboration, while also advancing the core campaign work of individual organizations. The AEO Collaborative works across eleven states in the South - Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Black Girl Environmentalist (BGE) is a national community dedicated to empowering Black girls, women and gender expansive people in the climate movement. BGE creates pathways for emerging climate leaders of color to thrive across environmental disciplines.
Gulf South Fossil Fuel Finance Hub connects the Gulf South frontlines with national and international finance campaigns targeting banks, asset managers, private equity firms and insurers. It currently includes 35 active organizations and over 100 Gulf-based frontline activists, organizers, national and international finance campaigners, LNG experts, fossil finance experts, researchers, lawyers and advocates.
Scalawag Magazine is a Southern, Black-led and centering, digital first media organization that works in solidarity with oppressed communities in the South to disrupt and shift the narratives that keep power and wealth in the hands of the few. Online and in person, Scalawag explores the complex intersections of culture and place, race, and systems of power and privilege.
Southeast Climate & Energy Network believes that local organizations are best positioned to bring about equitable and sustainable energy systems across the Southeast when they share a common vision and collaborate with a broad range of partners. The network aims to leverage its collective power to provide members with leadership development, training, funding and support rapid response mechanisms to environmental threats.
North Carolina-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) works to challenge barriers to voting access and efforts to gerrymander across 10 Southern states — accounting for over 56.5 million of the more than 168 million people registered to vote in the United States. SCSJ works to challenge state voter suppression laws and tactics and oppose unconstitutional Congressional, legislative, and local gerrymanders.
The Southern Power Fund is a collaborative initiative, anchored by Agitarte, Alternate ROOTS, Highlander Research and Education Center, The Ordinary People Society, Project South, People’s Advocacy Institute, The Smile Trust, and Southerners on New Ground, that resources people of color-led and multiracial organizations who support the vision and leadership of communities most directly impacted by generations of structural inequality in the South.
Image: The Urgency of Now by Karla Rosas and Fernando Lopez, created for ROOTS Week 2020, featuring C. Gypsi Lewis. Click here to read the artists statement.
National
Roughly 20% of the Hive Fund’s resources are invested in organizations doing important work to promote climate, racial and gender justice across many areas outside of the Southeast and at the national level. Many of these grantees engage artists, storytellers, and culture-makers to help us reimagine what is what is possible, and crystalize ideas in ways that spark social change.
The African American Alliance of CDFI CEOs supports and empowers Black Community Development Finance Institution (CDFI) CEO members to lead and grow their institutional operations, teams, and social impact. They are anchoring a national coalition of Black and Brown financial institutions working to ensure that a substantial portion of grants, loans, technical assistance from the GHGRF flow to the underserved communities.
Capital B News is a first-of-its-kind, Black-women-led, local and national nonprofit news organization for Black audiences. They aim to combat misinformation that has run rampant as quality local news declines, whether that be coordinated political disinformation campaigns aimed at suppressing the Black vote or misinformation about COVID-19 that endangers lives.
Center for Progressive Reform works to prevent and repair climate-induced harm to disenfranchised communities, redress societal inequities, and ensure that all people can fully participate in and benefit from our transition to a carbon-free economy.
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund and its project, the Center for Protest Law & Litigation, bring high impact constitutional rights cases nationwide, advancing the free speech rights of movements for environmental, racial, and social justice and defending activists from police violence and suppression. They work in partnership with affected communities to create meaningful change and dismantle systems of repression.
Clean Energy Works accelerates inclusive utility investments to open the clean energy economy to all. Inclusive utility investments overcome the barriers of upfront costs of clean energy upgrades to create jobs, cut pollution, and lower energy bills for everyone. The organization centers racial equity, while accelerating progress at the speed and scale required to meet climate goals.
Deployment Gap Model Education Fund is a public education and analysis project that helps organizers, advocates, and others prioritize key geographies for clean energy deployment and shut down of fossil infrastructure.
The Fund for Frontline Power is an autonomous fund fully governed by grassroots leaders, supporting frontline-led climate solutions toward a multiplicity of Just Transitions. The Fund is a deconstructing and reconstructing experiment in how dollars flow - an exercise in collective self-governance of capital where grassroots leaders decide what grassroots-led climate solutions are funded.
Inclusiv's mission is to help low- and moderate-income people and communities achieve financial independence through credit unions. Inclusiv’s Center for Resiliency and Clean Energy has built a network of community-based financial institutions that are scaling green lending solutions that address climate and energy justice in low- and moderate-income communities and communities of color.
Jobs to Move America works to transform public spending and corporate behavior using a comprehensive approach that is rooted in racial and economic justice and community organizing.
Leadership Reimagined will create a safe, joyful, and generative space for social justice leaders from diverse movements to be in community with each other, share strategies, and deepen their liberatory leadership practices in service to social justice movements.
National Bankers Community Alliance (NBCA) is the nonprofit arm of the National Bankers Association (NBA), the leading trade association and advocate for Minority Depository Institutions (MDIs) whose membership includes Black, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, and Women-owned and operated banks across the country. NBCA launched its Climate Lending Initiative to support MDIs with green financing and technical assistance for climate adaptation, mitigation, and resilience efforts.
The St. Croix Foundation advocates for and mobilizes around a community vision rooted in environmental justice, placing a historically marginalized community in charge of decision-making around energy supply, environment, health, workforce, and community development.
Sunrise Movement Education Fund is the game-changing youth movement making the climate crisis an urgent priority across the nation. Sunrise is focused on training a new generation of young leaders, massive deployment of digital communications and decentralized organizing, and bringing people into the streets through global climate strikes.
We Make the Future (WMTF) aids state and national groups in building alignment and amplifying empirically-based narratives that addresses race and class within their particular issue lens. WMTF offers specialized support to a growing cohort of climate justice organizations across Texas and the US South within this broader narrative work.
The Women's Earth and Climate Action Network is a solutions-based organization engaging women and feminists worldwide in policy advocacy, on-the-ground projects, direct action, trainings, and movement building for global climate justice.