Climate Justice Resilience Fund
A review of the Climate Justice Resilience Fund’s Phase I portfolio
Overview
The Climate Justice Resilience Fund (CJRF) was launched in 2016 to make grants that support women, youth, and Indigenous Peoples to create and share their own solutions to climate change through a climate justice approach. Between 2016 and 2023, CJRF pooled USD 25 million from funders such as the Oak Foundation, The Kendeda Fund, and the Robert Bosch Foundation to support more than 40 grant partners at the global level and in the Bay of Bengal, the North American Arctic, and East Africa.
In 2022, CJRF finished its initial six-year phase, and has launched its second phase of pooling funds and grantmaking for the 2023-2029 period. CJRF also transitioned from a donor-led fund to a fully participatory, movement-facing and constituent-led fund with a Governing Board comprised of nine activists and practitioners from around the globe. In its second phase of funding, CJRF aims to build towards climate justice through a greater focus on transformation and systems change, movement building, and capacity bridging. During Phase II, CJRF also aims to double the amount of their Phase I pool to USD 50 million. In this context, this portfolio evaluation seeks to inform: (1) CJRF’s ongoing strategic discussion about the future of the fund and (2) external funders in the climate justice space to support CJRF’s fundraising and change in the broader climate justice philanthropy arena. The evaluation team does this by: taking stock of results and achievements from Phase I relative to transformation and systems change, movement building, and capacity-bridging; and, identifying ways forward for Phase II, with a particular focus on how to support transformation and systems change, whether to support cross-movement building, how to support inclusivity, whether to open up grantmaking beyond its current focal geographies, and if/how the organizational mix represented its grantmaking could be changed to better serve CJRF’s Phase II goals.
Citation: A review of the Climate Justice Resilience Fund’s Phase I portfolio (2023). Colorado, USA: ISET-International.
