Earth Fund Grant Recognizes Critical Role for Women of Color in Climate Fight

The Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice is among a group of equity-focused climate re-granting organizations that received grants from the Jeff Bezos Earth Fund, a $10 billion effort to fight climate change. We are thankful for this investment in our grantmaking program. These grants signal the beginnings of a shift as many philanthropists start to recognize the critical role that frontline groups and leaders of color play in addressing the climate crisis.

The grant from the Bezos Earth Fund, totaling $43 million over three years, will help The Hive Fund expand grantmaking to organizations led by Black, Brown, and Indigenous women and other frontline leaders. The work these groups do is essential to addressing the intersecting climate, gender, and racial justice crises in the U.S. Hive Fund grantee partners are engaging a record number of people in democracy; elevating climate, racial, and gender justice issues to the top of policymakers’ agendas; and bringing creativity, culture, joy, and power to growing social movements.

According to the ClimateWorks Foundation, less than one percent of the approximately $1.6 billion in foundation climate funding in 2019 went toward grassroots organizing and other efforts to achieve climate solutions that center racial, gender, and economic equity.

The Hive Fund is working with philanthropic allies to close this gap. Addressing the climate crisis at a scale and in the time needed to avert disaster will require transforming the systems of power governing who pollutes, who profits, and whose lives are valued. Many Black, Brown, and Indigenous women have been fighting fossil fuel industries and the systems that prop them up for years, even generations --with budgets comprised of pennies on the climate philanthropy dollar.

The Bezos Earth Fund’s grant to The Hive Fund will allow us to put more resources into the hands of people who are building a more sustainable and equitable future across the US South, where climate pollution is worse and philanthropic funding is lower than any other region in the nation.

The Hive Fund’s mission is not just to move resources, but to move them in ways that shift power and redistribute wealth. You can read more about our fundraising principles here.