Participatory Climate Initiative

A case study that powered our Participatory Philanthropy Toolkit

Our participatory grantmaking initiative was created to involve people impacted by climate change in the funding and policy decisions that affect them. We convened participatory design and grantmaking teams comprised of people with lived expertise and/or relevant knowledge of climate change in the U.S .to develop and execute a participatory grantmaking plan.

Kōlea Gathering 2023
Kōlea gathering participants

How We Did It: A Step-by-Step Look at Shared Insight’s Participatory Climate Initiative

The Participatory Climate Initiative took place in four phases from its inception, beginning in earnest in 2020, and continuing through implementation in 2022 and beyond:

1. Planning Phase

Fund for Shared Insight’s Advocacy/Policy Committee defined the scope of the initiative, engaged consultants, and set goals and requirements; outreach began.

The Participatory Climate Initiative was first conceived by Fund for Shared Insight’s Advocacy/Policy Committee (‘the Committee’) in 2019, in response to a landscape scan by the Aspen Institute, which identified participatory grantmaking as a key strategy to better inform policy and advocacy decisions. The Committee decided on an exploratory initiative focused at the intersection of participation, climate change, and policy/advocacy work, engaging two consultants with expertise in participatory philanthropy in February, 2020: Katy Love and Winifred Olliff (‘the Consultants’). COVID-19 lockdowns pushed the decision to make the initiative an entirely virtual process. 

The Consultants spoke with about 40 people from across the U.S. and Territories who were connected with communities impacted by climate change and often excluded from traditional philanthropy spaces, with an emphasis on including Black and Indigenous people and other people of color. These conversations informed the plan in significant ways (e.g., leading to rejecting an open application process and using language other than “climate change.”) and led to a stakeholder map that included potential participants.

The Committee convened to collaboratively design a scope for the initiative, approve a plan for the Design Phase, and define the broad parameters of the initiative.

April 2019

Aspen scan published

April 2019

July 2019

Idea conceived by funders

July 2019

February 2020

Consultants hired

February 2020

March 2020

COVID-19 lockdowns begin in U.S.

March 2020

July 2020

Scope & plan approved & Outreach begins

July 2020

Outcomes from Implementation Phase

  1. Consultants engaged
  2. Scope created (including Learning Goals and Requirements & Recommendations)
  3. Detailed plan for the design phase approved, with stakeholder feedback included
  4. Stakeholder map created and expanded to include future participants and partners

Design Phase

12 participants from communities impacted by climate change across the United States and Territories along with one funder representative collaborated to define the initiative’s purpose and share their ideas for how the Grantmaking Phase should work.

Design Team Formation

The Committee and the Consultants invited 12 partner organizations (intermediary funders and climate policy/advocacy groups) to select Design Team members. Although they were provided with some guidance, partner organizations had the autonomy to select members without the input of the Consultants and were compensated. Partner organizations were invited based on the recommendations of people who were consulted in the planning phase, and with an eye to ensuring that a diversity of races, geographies, ages, genders, and other identities and perspectives were present on the Design Team. They selected 12 Design Team members who hailed from communities across the U.S. and Territories. Design Team members were compensated and were joined by one funder (a representative from Shared Insight’s Advocacy/Policy Committee), who was not compensated.

Participatory Design Process

The Design Team met virtually over 10 weeks between October 2020 and January 2021. Members were asked to commit 30 hours to activities like joining virtual meetings, responding to prompts, reviewing materials, and engaging in learning and reflection activities. The Consultants worked to carefully manage the process to ensure that experiences matched expectations.

The Design Team did not make any funding decisions. They considered questions like:
1. Where will grants be made?
2. What will grantees be able to do with the funds?
3. How will decisions about grants be made?
4. Who will make decisions about grants?

The Design Team’s recommendations were shared in November 2020, and a plan for the Grantmaking Phase was approved by the Committee in early 2021. Two of the Team’s key contributions were the creation of a Purpose Statement for the grantmaking fund and the selection of two geographic focus areas. The Design Team also made important recommendations, including taking a holistic approach to climate change, using an expansive definition of policy/advocacy, and being guided by a set of values rooted in grassroots organizing and trust-based practices.

Nearly all of the Design Team members chose to continue their involvement with the initiative during a bridge phase before the Grantmaking Phase began to offer their insights and provide accountability as their ideas were implemented.

July 2020

Committee approves plan

July 2020

October 2020

Design Team members selected by partner organizations

Design Team agrees on values

October 2020

December 2020

Design process concludes

December 2020

January 2021

Committee approves grantmaking plan

January 2021

Participatory Grantmaking Design Team

Nome, Alaska
Austin Ahmasuk

Austin “tusauna” Ahmasuk is a kingikmiu inupiaq born and raised in Nome, Alaska, who works as a Marine Advocate for Kawerak, Inc, a tribal consortium for the Bering Strait region. Mr. Ahmasuk is a lifelong hunter, trapper, and mariner, and he has been an environmental and tribal advocate since 1997.

Haleleʻa, Kauaʻi, Hawaii
Billy Kinney

Billy Kinney is from the rural, coastal, fishing communities of Kauaʻi, Hawaiʻi. He has joined this committee because his work is centered in understanding pilina (relationality), akua (the divine), and kilo (traditional observational practices) for Hawaiian place-making and planning.

Santa Fe, New Mexico
Cynthia Naha

A member of the Hopi Tribe from Northern Arizona, and of Tewa and Dakota lineage, Cynthia joined the committee because she is interested in assisting others to build capacity around communicating climate change, especially within our Pueblo and Tribal communities.

Thibodaux, Louisiana
Donald Bogen

Donald Bogen is the Co-Director of Bayou Interfaith Shared Community Organizer. Louisiana finds itself facing sea level rise and coastal land loss, which threatens livelihoods and local cultures. Donald joined this committee to make sure funders get it right when addressing the needs of vulnerable populations.

Cheyenne River Reservation, South Dakota
Elsie DuBray

Elsie is a young Oohenunpa Lakota, Nueta, and Hidatsa woman who has grown up on the Cheyenne River Reservation. She spent her life watching and learning from the Buffalo first hand and being passed knowledge and seeks to bring holistic health to the people, animals, and land in her community and this Earth.

Southwestern Virginia

Garett is a 21-year-old living in the Appalachian Mountains. In the past few years, they’ve taken part in a number of advocacy campaigns on behalf of their communities which are undergoing a period of economic and social transition resulting from the long-term impacts of the coal industry in the region.

Minnesota
Janiece Watts

Janiece is joining the committee to dream about better ways for participatory grantmaking to service and support environmental justice work. Environmental justice solutions that come directly from people most impacted have gone un-funded for too long.

New Orleans, Louisiana
Jayeesha Dutta

Jayeesha Dutta is a tri-coastal, tri-lingual Bengali-USAn interdisciplinary artist, cultural organizer, pop-ed facilitator, and healing justice practitioner. She is a co-founding member of Another Gulf Is Possible (AGIP) Collaborative, catalyzing the use of art, culture, media, direct action, healing and transformative justice towards just transition solutions for our people and the planet.

Menlo Park, California
lindsay austin louie fund for shared insight strategic advisor

Lindsay Louie is a Program Officer for Philanthropy Grantmaking at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. It is a privilege to join this committee with a diverse group from across the country to design a participatory grantmaking process to support and enhance listening to those who are most affected by climate change in the United States and whose voices have not historically been heard and elevated.

Florence, South Carolina
RReverend Leo Woodberry

Reverend Woodberry became involved in environmental work in the 1990s and he has and continues to work in the areas of water, air, as well as renewable and sustainable energy issues. Reverend Woodberry is the pastor of Kingdom Living Temple, Executive Director of New Alpha Community Development Corporation in Florence, SC, and a member of the SC Environmental Justice Network.

Washington State
Rosalinda Guillen

Rosalinda is a farmworker and food sovereignty/solidarity economy organizer.  She works to build a broader base of support for rural communities and sustainable agriculture policies that ensure equity and healthy communities for farmworkers.

Puerto Rico
Soledad Gaztambide Arandes

Soledad Gaztambide-Arandes is the Policy and Government Relations Coordinator at the non-profit organization Para la Naturaleza. She joined the committee to experience participatory grantmaking and add value to the design team and process, considering Puerto Rico’s challenges and our experience as a small island territory in relation to the impacts of climate change.

Participants joined as individuals, not formal representatives of their communities. Their participation does not indicate that they are affiliated with participating funders beyond this initiative or that they are representing or endorsing the actions or statements of the funders.

Outcomes from Design Phase

  1. Selected values and outlined design principles rooted in grassroots organizing and trust-based practices

  2. Made recommendations including taking a holistic approach to climate issues and an expansive view of policy/advocacy

  3. Wrote purpose statement and established geographic focus for the fund

Purpose Statement 
This program will fund grassroots groups that implement climate justice or environmental justice work in their communities that centers traditional and/or local ecological knowledge and connection with Mother Earth. The work of these groups will demonstrate approaches to adaptation that may also be applied in other contexts and influence policy.

Geographic Focus
The fund’s work will be focused in the Southeastern U.S. and Territories and in the Kōlea Region, which includes Alaska and Hawai’i.

Values Selected by the Design Team

  1. Trust people with lived experience​ to make decisions that affect them and to identify their own needs and priorities. Trust in the knowledge of people with lived experience and in their ability to steward their own resources.
  2. Center communities​ that are directly impacted by climate policy in funding decisions rather than centering the needs and perspectives of those in power.
  3. Solidarity​ around shared interests, not hierarchy, builds collective power without creating structures that empower specific individuals over others: “No emperors, no masters, no prison guards!” Where possible, consider alternative structures that are less hierarchical and that focus on building shared power.
  4. Challenge power ​by centering the perspectives of people most impacted by climate change and least heard, even when these perspectives are critical of the people and institutions that currently hold power, including funders. Embrace the potential of participatory approaches to shift power, and resource those programs substantially and meaningfully.

Grantmaking Phase

14 participants from communities impacted by climate change in each focus region made decisions by consensus about how to allocate $2 million in grants. They were joined by two non-voting funder representatives.

Grantmaking Portfolio Creation

The Consultants launched the Grantmaking Phase with a new round of regionally focused outreach to gather feedback with a regional lens and to identify potential grantees, nominators, and decision-makers (Grantmaking Group members). Participants in this phase of outreach were offered compensation for sharing their time and expertise. In this way, thousands of dollars were distributed directly to frontline communities, illustrating how money can be moved quickly to communities beyond the grants process.

Of the 35 grantees ultimately selected, eight came into the process through nominators (who were part of the regional feedback outreach), three through other grantees, and 24 through Design Team or Grantmaking Group members.

Pie chart showing the source of recommendations for groups invited to participate.

The portfolio of potential grantees was reviewed by participants before they were formally invited to join the process. Groups invited to participate were guaranteed a $10,000 minimum grant for completing a questionnaire with three short-answer questions and participating in a phone call. Of 38 groups invited to participate, 35 chose to engage in the process.

Beyond essential information (such as names, contact information, and legal structure), the three questions included on the questionnaire were:

  1. How is your group’s work related to the purpose statement?
  2. How is your group led, managed, and supported by people from the communities you work in?
  3. Tell us about your group’s long-term vision, or what your group would like to achieve in the long term.

Participatory Grantmaking Process

Grantmaking Group selection was finalized in September 2021. This group included seven members from the Southeastern U.S. and seven from the Kōlea Region, which includes Alaska & Hawai’i. Grantmaking Group members brought strong ties and in-depth knowledge and networks in the region. In the Kōlea region, the group was composed of Native and Indigenous people and those with close ties to these communities, as climate change has a disproportionate impact on Native communities, including those in Alaska and Hawai’i. This group included people from different islands in Hawai’i and various areas of Alaska, which was very important in the context of these regions since it is often the case that communities on smaller islands in Hawai’i or in more remote areas of Alaska are not included. In the Southeast, the Grantmaking Group was majority Black, Indigenous, and people of color, whose communities have also been disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis. Both regions included a funder representative from Fund for Shared Insight, who participated as a learner and observer, but did not decide about the grants. Of 16 Grantmaking Group members, seven members had also served on the Design Team previously, ensuring plenty of continuity between these two phases of participation.

The purpose of the Grantmaking Group was to work together to make decisions by consensus about how $1 million (ultimately doubled to $2 million) will be allocated across a portfolio of about 20 grantees (ultimately 35 grantees) in Alaska and Hawai’i. This meant that all Grantmaking Group Members had to reach unanimous agreement in how to move forward with grant decisions, through an intensive deliberative process. Grantmaking Group Members were asked to commit approximately 30 hours of engagement between September and November 2021, and were offered compensation that was on par with the fees Shared Insight pays consultants. Grantmaking Group members in each region met together virtually and worked asynchronously over 10 weeks.

The Grantmaking Group reached decisions by consensus in both regions after weeks of extensive discussion and deliberation. Facilitators used a tool called the Gradients of Agreement2 that allows for a nuanced discussion around each group member’s precise level of support for a particular outcome along a spectrum. The Group ultimately awarded 17 grants in the Southeastern U.S. and 18 grants in the Kōlea Region, for a total of $2 million dollars across both regions. The total allocation was doubled from the original $1-million fund based on a request from the Grantmaking Group to support more efforts. The groups receiving funding were all community-led grassroots groups, largely led by Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color. The Grantmaking Group also shared observations and insights with funders and set intentions for the next phase.

January 2021

Committee approves grantmaking plan

January 2021

March 2021

Regional outreach begins

March 2021

September 2021

Grantmaking Group formed, decision making begins

Grantees invited to participate

September 2021

November 2021

Final deliberation results in decisions about grants

November 2021

December 2022

Grantmaking decisions are ready to be implemented

December 2022

Grantmaking Group - Kōlea Region (Alaska & Hawai’i)

Lodi, California
A-dae Briones

A-dae is Kiowa/Cochiti, and is the Director of Programs for the Native Agriculture and Food Systems Initiative at First Nations Development Institute.

Nome, Alaska
Austin Ahmasuk

Austin “tusauna” Ahmasuk is a kingikmiu inupiaq born and raised in Nome, Alaska, who works as a Marine Advocate for Kawerak, Inc, a tribal consortium for the Bering Strait region. Mr. Ahmasuk is a lifelong hunter, trapper, and mariner, and he has been an environmental and tribal advocate since 1997.

Haleleʻa, Kauaʻi, Hawaii
Billy Kinney

Billy Kinney is from the rural, coastal, fishing communities of Kauaʻi, Hawaiʻi. He has joined this committee because his work is centered in understanding pilina (relationality), akua (the divine), and kilo (traditional observational practices) for Hawaiian place-making and planning.

Juneau, Alaska
Crystal Yankawge Nelson

As a Community Development Specialist for The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Emerald Edge Program, Crystal Yankawgé Nelson focuses on sustainable economies, ecological stewardship capacity, and healing and racial equity for Indigenous and local communities in Southeast Alaska. She is Tlingit, Raven-Coho from the Humpback Whale House in Dry Bay, and she grew up in Juneau, Alaska. Crystal is currently completing her Master of Arts in Rural Development at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and spent six years as an apprentice Chilkat weaver with the late Tlingit master weaver Clarissa Rizal.

Lower Tanana Dene Lands (Fairbanks)
Dewey Kk'ołeyo Hoffman

Kk’ołeyo se’ooze’. Tleeyegg’e hʉt’aan eslaanh. Bedzeyh te hʉt’aan eslaanh. Uvaƞa Putyuk. Tinaaġmiuġuruƞa. My name is Dewey Hoffman. My Denaakk’e name Kk’ołeyo means “walking.” My Iñupiaq name Putyuk means “pinch.” I am Koyukon Athabascan, Caribou People, originally from Ruby living in Fairbanks. I currently serve as Tanana Chiefs Conference’s Deputy Director of Tribal Government & Client Services, as well as on several Alaska-based advisory boards and working groups.

Hoolehua, Molokai
Kilia Purdy-Avelino

Kilia is a 4th generation Hawaiian Homesteader of Hoolehua, Molokai, an educator of Hawaiian language and Hawaiian studies, and an advocate for issues that impact our people and environment.

Funder representative
Photo of Melinda Tuan

Melinda serves as managing director of Fund for Shared Insight, a national funder collaborative working to improve philanthropy by promoting and supporting ways for foundations and nonprofits to listen and respond to the people and communities most harmed by the systems and structures we’re seeking to change with our work. In this role, Melinda guides and facilitates Shared Insight’s operations, communications, grantmaking, evaluation, and more. Melinda was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii and currently lives in Narberth, Pennsylvania and tries to get back to the islands as often as possible. Melinda serves as one of two funder representatives.

Waipi’o, ‘Ewa, O’ahu
Miwa Tamanaha

Miwa Tamanaha has served as the Executive Director of local advocacy non-profit KAHEA: The Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance, and a co-founder and co-director of KUA, a network-building organization serving communities around Hawaiʻi engaged in biocultural resource stewardship. She serves on a number of non-profit Boards and is a proud member of the ʻEwa Limu Project. She is currently on sabbatical.

Grantmaking Group - Southeastern United States

Eastern Kentucky
Annie Jane Cotten

Annie Jane Cotten is an artist, storyteller, herbalist, and an organizer for the Letcher County Culture Hub in Eastern Kentucky, currently anchored within Appalshop. As a community development worker, Annie Jane is passionate about organizing efforts that seek to utilize arts and culture to foster a shared vision of a vibrant, community owned economic future.

Grand Rapids, Michigan - Funder Representative
Ciciley Moore

Ciciley (CC) Moore is the program officer for the Office of the President at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, where she provides leadership for strategic investments that address systemic barriers and create conditions for historically excluded communities, families, and children to thrive. Her work includes support collaboratives to increase locally-driven philanthropy by and for communities of color and embedding racial equity in philanthropic practice. Previously, she worked with community to develop places of belonging for BIPOC – LGBTQ communities. CC is one of two funder representatives.

Thibodaux, Louisiana
Donald Bogen

Donald Bogen is the Co-Director of Bayou Interfaith Shared Community Organizer. Louisiana finds itself facing sea level rise and coastal land loss, which threatens livelihoods and local cultures. Donald joined this committee to make sure funders get it right when addressing the needs of vulnerable populations.

Windsor, North Carolina
Fix Cain

As a Tuscarora seedkeeper, Fix founded the Alliance of Native Seedkeepers where he works to reconnect lifeways and cultural bonds of ancestral seeds with Indigenous people. He also has years of various experience in public health work and disaster relief.

Southwestern Virginia

Garett is a 21-year-old living in the Appalachian Mountains. In the past few years, they’ve taken part in a number of advocacy campaigns on behalf of their communities which are undergoing a period of economic and social transition resulting from the long-term impacts of the coal industry in the region.

New Orleans, Louisiana
Jayeesha Dutta

Jayeesha Dutta is a tri-coastal, tri-lingual Bengali-USAn interdisciplinary artist, cultural organizer, pop-ed facilitator, and healing justice practitioner. She is a co-founding member of Another Gulf Is Possible (AGIP) Collaborative, catalyzing the use of art, culture, media, direct action, healing and transformative justice towards just transition solutions for our people and the planet.

Puerto Rico
Katia R. Avilés Vázquez

Katia Avilés-Vázquez holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Texas at Austin where she studied the Cultural and Political Ecology of small-scale farmers in Puerto Rico. After María she has focused her work on local capacity building and the distribution of resources
for local entities securing more than $12M for projects by and for Puerto Rico residents. Her work and activism has been highlighted in local and international news outlets, she has received the EPA Environmental Champion Award and the ESF Graduate of Distinction Award, and directs the Institute for Agroecology in PR.

Florence, South Carolina
RReverend Leo Woodberry

Reverend Woodberry became involved in environmental work in the 1990s and he has and continues to work in the areas of water, air, as well as renewable and sustainable energy issues. Reverend Woodberry is the pastor of Kingdom Living Temple, Executive Director of New Alpha Community Development Corporation in Florence, SC, and a member of the SC Environmental Justice Network.

Participants joined as individuals, not formal representatives of their communities. Their participation does not indicate that they are affiliated with participating funders beyond this initiative or that they are representing or endorsing the actions or statements of the funders.

Outcomes from Grantmaking Phase

  1. Geographically and thematically diverse portfolio of 35 grantees is selected.

  2. Decisions about distributing $2 million of grants across 35 organizations are made by consensus by people with lived expertise from each region

  3. Recommendations are submitted to funders about a learning community for grantees and participants

Implementation Phase

35 grantees in the Southeastern United States and in the Kōlea Region (which includes Alaska and Hawai’i) received funding for their advocacy work (expansively defined) around climate change (holistically defined); a “learning community” for participants was established.

Implementation Phase: Next Steps and Learning Community

Grantmaking Group members directly notified the 35 grantees of their grant awards during November and December, 2021; in many cases, calling them to deliver news on the phone. All the grantees accepted the funding and many began implementing their grants in January 2022. Following the grant awards, and based on the recommendations of participants, Fund for Shared Insight created a Learning Community of participants that met virtually three times and then gathered for an in-person meeting in January (Kōlea region) and April (Southeast region) in 2023. The in-person gatherings were designed by the goals of participants. Shared Insight is also sharing what we learned from the initiative with the philanthropy sector and the wider world.

Outcomes from Implementation Phase

  1. $2 million grant funding is distributed to and put to use by 35 organizations

  2. Tools are developed to share our learning with the wider philanthropy community

  3. Participants connect to share learning and deepen insights

Related Items