Rockefeller Family Fund

The Equation Campaign

This award provides general operating support to the Equation Campaign, which is a fiscally sponsored project of the Rockefeller Family Fund. The Equation Campaign is a new ten-year funding initiative to bring about a safe and just future by enhancing the power of movements to keep oil and gas in the ground. In pursuit of this goal, Equation Campaign has established the Frontline Environmental Justice Fund to make grants to frontline communities, ensuring they are getting the resources that they need to carry out effective campaigns. Grantmaking is guided by a strategy that prioritizes shifting financial power away from the oil and gas industry, elevating frontline stories, providing legal support and defense, and lifting individual campaigns toward building a larger movement.

The Just Transition Fund (the Fund) is a philanthropic initiative housed at the Rockefeller Family Fund that is designed to support communities across the United States as their local economies diversify away from being primarily dependent on coal and its related industries. The Fund supports the creation of alternative economic and workforce development plans that rely significantly on community engagement by resourcing local organizations with grants and technical assistance. Grants provide affected communities with resources to explore and invest in activities and projects that help make regional economies less dependent on extractive industries, prioritize human capital formation, and promote local enterprises. General operating support helps ensure the Fund continues serving communities in Appalachia, the Midwest, and the West where coal industry-related facilities, such as mines and power plants, are discontinuing operations.

In 2015, the Rockefeller Family Fund and the Appalachia Funders Network launched the Just Transition Fund (the Fund), a philanthropic initiative designed to support coal-impacted communities across the United States as their local economies diversify away from being primarily dependent on coal and its related industries. The Fund supports the creation of alternative economic and workforce development plans that rely significantly on community engagement. These plans provide affected communities pathways toward achieving more resilient regional economies that are not dependent on extractive industries, prioritize human capital formation, and promote clean energy policies. Priority communities include the coal-producing regions of Appalachia and other economically distressed localities where coal-fired power plants are closing.

Established in 1967, the Rockefeller Family Fund (the Fund) is a family-led public charity that initiates, cultivates, and funds strategic efforts to promote a sustainable, just, free, and participatory society. Under its Juvenile Justice Fund, it oversees the National Campaign to Reform State Juvenile Justice Systems (the Campaign). This award supports the final year of a public policy campaign to bring about significant juvenile justice systems reform in up to 15 states across the country. The Campaign’s operations and activities include a central office that identifies target states for policy reform and oversees state-based reform efforts and investments.

RFF will act as the fiscal agent for this project, which brings together RFF, The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Brodeur Partners, The Center for Climate Change Communications at George Mason University, The Yale Project on Climate Communications, Climate Central, and Climate Nexus, to develop and implement a climate science communications strategy in response to the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) fifth assessment report in September 2013. This broad messaging will set the stage for robust climate risk management discussions at every level of society.