It takes money to make money, as the saying goes. The same is true of raising money. Successful fundraising requires resources that are in short supply for many small, community-based nonprofits. That means many groups could miss out on new federal funding that is targeted to front-line, historically marginalized communities.
“We have such an amazing opportunity with federal funds coming from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act,” says Yeou-Rong Jih, program officer for the Kresge Foundation’s environment program. “And there’s an extreme lack of capacity on the ground to make sure that these funds go where they are needed most.”
An initiative called Frontline 360° is building that capacity. Frontline 360° draws on a multi-partner collaboration to help community-based climate and environmental justice groups apply for funding and make best use of it when it comes. Launched by Anthropocene Alliance, Frontline 360° is a partnership of the Environmental Protection Network, Thriving Earth Exchange, the Community and College Partners Program and the Center for Applied Environmental Science.
Kresge is an integral backer of the effort, having funded the Anthropocene Alliance, where it’s housed, since 2017. Other major funders include the Walton Family Foundation, the Water Foundation (an intermediary backed by several green funders), and Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, which all made six-figure grants in the past year or so.
By coordinating partners’ services, Frontline 360° is achieving significant impact: Since 2017, the initiative has channeled more than $40 million in funding and technical assistance to climate and environmental justice communities across the U.S. More broadly, Frontline 360° is equipping those communities with the information and tools they need to create a more equitable, climate-resilient future. And by linking grassroots groups nationwide, the initiative is nurturing a powerful movement for change.
“I’m dealing with a hurricane over here”
Hilton Kelley was living in a FEMA trailer in 2017 when he got a call from Harriet Festing, Anthropocene Alliance’s executive director. Kelley’s hometown of Port Arthur, Texas, had been devastated by Hurricane Harvey.
“About 80% of the city was flooded,” Kelley says. “We had three feet of water in our house, and all of our things were basically destroyed.” A long-time environmental justice activist, Kelley had become an outspoken critic of FEMA’s emergency response — and caught Festing’s attention.
“At first, I was like, ‘Give me a minute. I’m dealing with a hurricane over here,’” Kelley recalls. But Festing persisted, and soon persuaded Kelley to serve on the alliance’s Leadership Council. Through that association, Kelley met residents of other flood-prone communities and learned how climate change compounds other environmental threats. “My work revolved around refineries and chemical plants, pushing them to reduce their emissions and their impacts on our community,” Kelley says. “With Anthropocene Alliance, we started talking about how the flood waters wash contaminants into the community — in addition to the damage done by the water itself.”
To assess those threats, Anthropocene Alliance connected Kelley and his organization, the Community In-Power and Development Association (CIDA), with a team of pro bono experts including the Thriving Earth Exchange, Army Corps of Engineers, Texas A&M University, Lamar University, the Climigration Network and Buy-In Community Planning. Fortified with surveys and simulations, CIDA developed a plan to minimize flood risk and relocate residents from vulnerable areas. Then Anthropocene Alliance helped CIDA write grant proposals to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, which netted more than $700,000 to make that plan a reality.
Wraparound services
These wraparound services — coordinating with partners to provide technical assistance, networking, fundraising and pass-through grants — form the core of what the alliance now calls its Frontline 360° initiative. Services include scientific expertise provided by the Thriving Earth Exchange and Center for Applied Environmental Science, legal and policy consultations by the Environmental Protection Network, connections to university support via the Community and College Partners Program, and legal support from university legal clinics.
Those services are offered to the alliance’s 140 member groups, 84% of which represent low-income, Black, Latino, Indigenous and other marginalized communities. Three-quarters are led by women.
Camille Hadley of Melbourne, Florida, is among those leaders. Hadley started Little Growers, a youth-centered urban agriculture project, in 2016 to provide fresh food for her family and neighbors. Then, in 2017, Hurricane Irma tore through town, destroying her carefully cultivated community gardens. A board member told Hadley about the Anthropocene Alliance’s small grants program; Hadley applied for, and received, $1,000 in emergency funds.
That small grant had a big effect. Like Kelley, Hadley found that connecting to other flooded communities broadened her perspective. “If one storm could wipe out our entire program, then we really had to be thinking about a whole nexus of issues,” she said. “It’s not just an issue of food security, it’s an issue of environmental justice and climate change.”
Through Frontline 360°, Hadley connected to the Women’s Earth Alliance, where she learned about permaculture, storm water mitigation, and more. Hadley also partnered with Thriving Earth Exchange to study flooding issues in her community. “That data gave us the tools to fight with the city,” says Hadley. “And it’s allowed us to be educated and proactive versus reactive.” Frontline 360° also helped Hadley raise more than $100,000 to conduct community outreach and engage neighbors in designing solutions. They’re currently helping her submit a proposal to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for a $400,000 community planning grant.
Frontline 360° members learn from each other, as well as from technical experts. The group hosts a monthly National Leaders Forum; a listserv and Facebook group; and working groups on mutual aid, assisted relocation and climate resilience planning. Through these channels, members share lessons learned, offer support and solidarity, and come to understand the larger context for their work.
In short, Frontline 360° not only helps grassroots groups raise money; it provides them with information and connections to make good use of those funds. That’s what distinguishes this initiative from other efforts to fund grassroots work, says Amy Saltzman, program officer for the Walton Family Foundation.
“Their work to build capacity in community-based organizations is what’s really powerful about their model,” says Saltzman. “And it’s what will endure beyond the scope of our support.”
A bottom-up approach
Of course, challenging dynamics can arise when a national organization works with community-based groups. Grassroots groups have charged that national groups sometimes parachute in, misunderstand community needs, or worse, appropriate data and credit for their own purposes.
Yeou-Rong Jih of Kresge credits the team at Anthropocene Alliance for understanding and navigating those dynamics. Importantly, she says, “The Frontline 360° vision is not about building Anthropocene Alliance into a large, national-focused NGO. Their goal really is to empower local communities. They are really good at ensuring that there is equity and justice in the process of applying for these grants, that local leaders are consulted and deeply involved in these applications, so the projects meet the needs of communities.”
As Hilton Kelley puts it, it’s a “bottom-up approach.” “They are talking to people on the ground who are literally dealing with the issues and surviving climate change.”
That bottom-up approach applies to running the Anthropocene Alliance, as well. “Community leaders are at the table when decisions are made about how [the alliance] should function as an organization,” says Camille Hadley. For example, Hadley was a founding member of the mutual aid working group.
“It was the leaders of the community groups who came together and said, ‘This is how we want to fund mutual aid.’” She adds: “There’s never a time when I don’t know what’s going on at every level of the organization — how much money we have, where it came from, exactly who it went to. There’s no time when I’m in the dark.”
Benefits for funders
The Frontline 360° model offers notable benefits for funders. Today, more environmental foundations are recognizing the dynamism and power of grassroots groups. But the challenges of funding at the community level remain.
“It’s the same grantmaking process for us no matter the size of the grant,” says Amy Saltzman of the Walton Family Foundation. “So for us, developing small grants with many community groups presents a real capacity challenge. This is one way we can reach a lot of communities that need support.”
Frontline 360° also helps funders parlay a modest investment into substantial federal funding. Four-fifths of the $26 million in cash and direct support received by alliance members is from federal sources, including the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Philanthropic funding made that federal support possible.
At the same time, Frontline 360° is building a national constituency for equitable climate action. That’s especially crucial in red states that are home to powerful climate deniers. “Whether you believe in climate change or not, everybody believes in weather,” says Saltzman. “And places that didn’t used to flood are now flooding. It makes it very concrete when you point to how changing weather patterns are affecting people in the states where decision makers live.”
Now that constituency is poised to grow. Recently, the Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies awarded funding to the alliance to set up four Regional Centers for Resilience. Each center will be run by an existing community-based organization — including Hilton Kelley’s group, CIDA. Each of the regional centers aims to recruit 15 new community leaders and link them up to technical assistance and grant funding.
It’s an ambitious plan, and one that speaks to the scale of the need. “Community leadership is fundamental,” says Jih. “For decades, we’ve been hearing about the need for a strong base of community groups that are empowered to do policy and implementation work. We need more funders in this space who are willing to invest in local capacity and local leaders, and support them as fierce fighters in their own right.”