Since 2016, CJRF has supported communities and groups on the frontlines of the climate crisis to implement, share, advocate for, and scale their own climate justice solutions. During this time, we’ve learned that meaningful climate action requires significant shifts in economic systems, women’s empowerment, inter-generational equity, and long-standing racial and colonial injustices (among others). While we have spent years learning to fund these systems changes, now we are also working to embody such change as an organization. We are making changes that help us live into our values, not just in what we fund, but in how we do our work.
The new board now brings a wealth of wisdom, expertise, and lived experience to CJRF’s grantmaking strategy and other decisions. However, the board decided it should not be the only participatory mechanism at CJRF; they sought ways to include a larger set of activists, practitioners, and community members in deciding who receives CJRF funding and how it is used. To that end, they decided to embrace participatory grantmaking methods.
Participatory grantmaking is a growing ethos in philanthropy, where funders cede power over funding decisions to the people affected by those decisions. It may include a wide range of practices, such as co-creation of strategy and priorities, diversification of grant committees and review panels, or even crowd-sourced decisions and voting by large groups. These methods enable grantmaking to benefit from the expertise of those closest to the issue, often leading to more effective, innovative, and sustainable solutions. The growth and empowerment of community members through the grantmaking process can also be an important outcome, along with increased legitimacy and transparency for the grants made. The Participatory Grantmaking Community offers a wealth of resources for grantmakers and examples of how participatory grantmaking works.
CJRF decided to shift to participatory grantmaking through a “learning by doing” approach. At a retreat in February 2024, board and staff members designed a program of participatory grantmaking pilots that would allow us to try several methods and explore the appetite of our network members for engagement. In doing this, we were fortunate to be able to draw upon the experience of several leading participatory grantmakers close to our work. Board members Maria Alejandra Escalante and Diana Samarasan have worked respectively at FRIDA: The Young Feminist Fund and the Disability Rights Fund. Also, CJRF has funded some participatory regranters since 2019, namely FRIDA: The Young Feminist Fund; The Pawanka Fund; and Global Greengrants Fund.
CJRF is now implementing an 18-month strategy to deploy up to US$4M through a set of “pilots” that test different models of participation, including:
Global
We conducted a broad open call using an applicant collective process, where applicants reviewed each other’s proposals and voted to select awardees;
Bay of Bengal Region
Our L&D team is testing a network-based grantmaking process, where a cohort of current and former CJRF grantee partners are driving the grantmaking;
Mara-Serengeti Region
East Africa
Arctic Region (Under Development)
Small Grants (Under Development)
Global (Youth-led)
We have supported a third round of youth-led grantmaking through the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition.
By experimenting with these diverse models, CJRF is learning how to bring frontline communities into our decision-making processes. We have developed a learning framework to help us capture lessons from the pilots as they emerge, which will inform our board’s ongoing process of refining our strategic framework. In early 2026, we expect to articulate a new fund strategy that centers participatory grantmaking and supports the climate justice priorities of the communities in our network.
