General information
IMPORTANT – Do not use Artificial Intelligence to write your application. We do not accept applications that are written by AI. If this language is a problem for you, feel free to write it in your own language or the language you’re most comfortable with. We also don’t mind spelling or grammar mistakes, as long as your application is clear and to the point.
About the Climate Justice Grants
Het Actiefonds offers two different types of funding: the regular grants and the Climate Justice Grants. The regular grants support direct actions only.
The Climate Justice Grants fund more than just direct actions. They provide seed funding for movement building to frontline activists, communities, and collectives within the climate justice movement. The maximum grant size is €2,500 per project. We do not give ongoing support. A same group can receive one Climate Justice Grant maximum per year.
Download our brochure to learn more about the Climate Justice Grants:
Current and upcoming application rounds
The Climate Justice Grants are disbursed quarterly. Our regional specialists meet for the decision-making process for the Climate Justice Grants every three months except for the month of August. The key dates for the current rounds of funding are:
- Opening date for submitting applications: October 20th, 2025
- Application submission deadline: November 16th, 2025
- Decision announcement: before December 12th, 2025
Key dates for next round of funding are:
- Opening date for submitting applications: November 17th, 2025
- Application submission deadline: February 1st, 2026
- Decision announcement: before March 20th, 2026
If your application is urgent and does not fit this timeline, please indicate it in your application under the “urgent application” box. We will do our best to consider your circumstances, but we cannot guarantee that your application will be processed in due time.
Funding criteria for the Climate Justice Grants
What we fund
- Grassroots activist groups, communities and collectives that strive for a sustainable and socially just world in which people and the environment are valued above economic interests
- Projects that formulate a coherent and clear strategy aimed at movement building for climate justice
- Politically controversial and radical projects and groups that have difficulty finding funding elsewhere
- Projects with a total budget of less than €20,000
- We have a strong preference for organizations with an income of less than €100,000 per year
What we do not fund
- Applications that are written by AI. If language is a problem for you, feel free to write it in your own language or the language you’re most comfortable with. We also don’t mind spelling or grammar mistakes, as long as your application is clear and to the point
- Groups that try to exclude other progressive movements
- Groups that have access to larger funding sources and to institutional funders
- Political parties or religious organizations
- Humanitarian projects, healthcare or emergency aid projects
- Project that solely focus on education or awareness.
- Micro-credit programs or income generating projects
- Structural organizational costs, e.g., wages, rental costs not tied to specific activities
- Requests submitted through third parties; we want to cooperate directly with the groups we support
What do we mean by movement building?
We loosely define movement building as “the process of organizing and activating the will and capacity of people and groups to work sustainably collectively toward a vision they all share”. Some key aspects of movement building are:
- Creating awareness on your issue
- Strengthening political formation and alignment
- Strengthening the capacity of movement organizational structures
- Mobilizing and training individuals and collectives for direct action
- Building agendas, strategies and tactics for the climate movement
- Forming strategic alliances and cross-movement learning
- Building defence strategies against attacks (by governments, companies, media, etc.)
- Building resilience, recovery and care strategies for the movement
Of course, this list is not complete, and movement building can take many shapes depending on local contexts. The groups we fund are already building movements but often lack the funding for specific movement building efforts and activities. The Climate Justice Grants are there to support doing just that.
What do we mean by climate justice?
We do not have a strict definition of climate justice, and we would love to read yours. But the issues that the Climate Justice Grants support include (list non-exhaustive):
Resistance to:
- to greenhouse gas emitting, intensive and extractive industries, their projects, their infrastructures and their lobbies (fossil fuel, agrobusiness and livestock farming, construction, military, transport, etc.)
- to laws, policies and plans that worsen climate change, and to the governments and administrations that uphold them (subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, unsustainable economic plans, etc.)
- false climate solutions (greenwashing, carbon offsetting, climate smart agriculture, nuclear energy, etc.)
- maladaptive, undemocratic or colonial “climate-friendly” infrastructures (large scale windfarms, controversial high-speed rail, massive agricultural water reservoirs, etc.)
Resilience by:
- Growing and strengthening the climate movement, building long-term strategies and theories of change, building alliances within and across regions
- Building defence strategies when attacked (by governments, companies, media)
- Building recovery and care strategies for the people within the movement
Regeneration by:
- Building alternatives (e.g. agroecology farming projects, affordable and ecological housing)
- Imagining radical futures
- Promoting people’s power, democracy and intersectionality in solving the climate crisis (local and grassroots actions; democratic and participatory processes)
What types of activities do we fund?
This list is not exhaustive. In your proposal, you can include more than one activity, as long as they are coherent and lead to movement building. Note that we do not fund projects taht solely focus on education or awareness.
- Internal capacity building, training and workshops
- Community mobilisation and awareness raising activities
- Education and learning activities
- Research
- Meet-ups, climate camps, festivals, gatherings
- Digital and physical security activities
- Public relations and media coverage
- Building regenerative solutions and inventing desirable futures
- Legal support
- Direct actions (non-violent confrontational protests)
- And more
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