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Windward Fund

Washington, D.C.

Grants

2024 (2 years)
$3,000,000

Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice

The Windward Fund incubates and hosts initiatives that pursue solutions to environmental challenges by elevating the voices of those most impacted by environmental degradation. The award supports the Windward Fund’s Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, which helps organizations and networks on the frontlines work to address the climate crisis in the American South. Without an equity and racial-justice orientation, climate solutions risk perpetuating and exacerbating previous unjust patterns, thus undermining the broad public support needed for rapid progress on the climate crisis. The Hive Fund supports organizations that advocate for women, people of color, and under-invested communities participating in developing and implementing climate solutions.

2024 (1 year)
$750,000

Heartland Fund

Heartland Fund, a fiscally sponsored project of Windward Fund, is a funding collaborative built to support and connect local leaders and organizations working for progress across diverse communities in rural areas and small cities. It invests in civic engagement, issue advocacy, community organizing infrastructure, and sustainable urban-rural coalitions. Heartland also supports rural groups through convening, research, and communications, all in an effort to build a stronger democracy and advance shared prosperity. The Rural Democracy Initiative of Heartland Fund invests in groups that expand nonpartisan civic participation and inform rural policy solutions so as to strengthen rural engagement in democracy.

2021 (3 years)
$10,000,000

Global Methane Hub

The Windward Fund incubates and hosts initiatives that pursue solutions to environmental challenges by elevating the voices of those most impacted by environmental degradation. The award supports the Windward Fund's Methane Hub, which is a $300 million initiative that enables funders to coordinate their giving to support the field of methane work, including communications, advocacy, technical assistance, diplomacy, monitoring and verification, and research. It serves as a pooled fund and as a resource for the field to ensure that we leverage the momentum and political will of the moment and reduce anthropogenic methane, which is one of the most cost-effective strategies to rapidly reduce the rate of warming and contribute significantly to global efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C.

2020 (3 years)
$3,000,000

Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice

The Windward Fund incubates and hosts initiatives that pursue solutions to environmental challenges by elevating the voices of those most impacted by environmental degradation. The award supports the Windward Fund’s Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, which supports organizations and networks led by Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color on the frontlines working to address the climate crisis in the United States. The impacts of climate change exacerbate existing health and other inequities faced by women, people of color, and under invested communities. Without an equity and racial justice orientation, climate solutions risk perpetuating and exacerbating these same unjust patterns, thus undermining the broad public support needed for rapid progress on the climate crisis.  The Hive Fund makes multi-year general support grants to organizations based mostly in the Southeast that are conducting advocacy and movement-building. The award helps these organizations build their capacity to engage effectively in advocacy on climate policy initiatives. 

2016 (3 years)
$1,724,559

The Climate Resilience Fund is a project of the Windward Fund that aims to mobilize the technical and financial resources necessary to build a climate resilient society. The Climate Resilience Fund does this by aligning financial resources around targeted efforts to build the technical capacity needed to begin meeting the demand for support of climate action locally and regionally. Over three years the Climate Resilience Fund is using this award to identify strategic investment opportunities for its members, develop a re-granting program and process, and grow philanthropic support for climate adaptation. This award supports core operations for three years, and initial capitalization of the Fund.

2015 (1 year 4 months)
$400,000

The Windward Fund provides an efficient and cost-effective platform to launch and operate charitable projects focused on climate change. This award is supporting the development of a national Climate Resilience Fund to address the imperative for coordinated and strategic climate adaptation in the United States. The Fund is being established as a re-granting facility to aggregate and mobilize strategic investments in climate services for the benefit of communities in the United States, and the natural systems on which they depend. During the project’s 12-month development phase it is engaging philanthropic, public, and private sector leaders in a collaborative effort to design operations, establish grantmaking priorities, and secure up to $200 million in funds. The project is simultaneously engaging NGO and academic leaders and mapping existing service networks to enable the Fund to make strategic investments that support the growth of a coordinated system of climate services.