The Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice raises funds and makes grants to organizations that have historically lacked access to funding and are essential to making progress in addressing intersecting climate, gender, and racial justice crises in the U.S. We support groups with multi-year general support that are advocating for strong policies, building social movements, facilitating civic engagement, and conducting creative communications efforts to move hearts and minds. A majority of Hive funding is awarded to groups in the South, where pollution levels are higher and philanthropic funding levels are lower than other regions of the country.
Supporting organizations that are resisting immediate harms and threats—including polluting facilities, voter suppression, and state violence; transforming flawed law-making and legal systems by working for change inside and out; and transcending extractive and patriarchal economies by imagining and building new ways of living rooted in Indigenous sovereignty, Black liberation, gender equity, and sustainable economic paradigms. We make grants across the U.S., with a predominant focus on the Southeast, a 10-state region responsible for nearly a third of U.S. global warming emissions. In the Southeast, women of color are playing vital roles in building civic power to change the systems that allow excessive pollution and other injustices. Yet foundations invest only 11 cents per person for structural change work in the Southeast for every dollar per person nationally. Only 5 percent of all foundation funding in the South goes to programs focused on women and girls, and less than 1 percent flows to those focused on Black women and girls.
Addressing these crises 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 and their organizations are skilled, sophisticated, and visionary campaigners for justice, and among the most successful champions of climate action. Many of their organizations work by multi-solving: building civic power and addressing many problems affecting their communities at once. Without an equity orientation, climate solutions risk perpetuating and exacerbating these same unjust systems at the root of the problem and, thus, undermining the potential for broad public support for rapid and enduring progress. To succeed in shifting funding practices over the long-term and at a large enough scale, funders will need to be intentional about interrupting the status quo to adopt grantmaking practices and strategies that are anti-racist and center gender equity.
Connect with Us
Erin Rogers, Co-Director
erin@hivefund.org