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.
Due to a high influx of applications from the Africa-region, the application proces for this region is currently invitation-only. With the exception of Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya.
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 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 €2,500 in Climate Justice Grant maximum per year.
Please note that the selection committee gets together every month except for the month of August. There is therefore no deadline to the application process, but do make sure to file the application in time and at least a month in advance of your action.
Download our brochure to learn more about the Climate Justice Grants:
Brochure
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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