The Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice is regranting intermediary funding at the intersection of climate, racial, and gender justice. Their work is geared toward accelerating the transition to cleaner renewable energy by elevating women of color leaders, specifically those in the US South who often go unrecognized and underresourced. That work is vital, yet it is full of the now familiar traumas of being a woman leader of color. This led the Hive Fund to create the Healing Justice and Holistic Security grantmaking program—aimed at providing BIPOC women leaders and their communities with tools and practices needed to heal and combat threats to digital, physical, and psychological safety.

When the Hive Fund launched in 2019, it was a time when young people, primarily young women, were leading strikes and climate advocacy movements all across the nation, explains Melanie Allen, the codirector of the Hive Fund. However, when she and her team looked at philanthropic budgets and funding, BIPOC women-led movements were almost invisible. This pushed the team to create a grantmaking program that prioritized people accomplishing vital work but treated as an afterthought by other philanthropists.

With a deep dive into the research, they identified the US South as the place to focus their efforts. “That was not only kind of a philanthropic blind spot, but where we…saw so much opportunity and also so much activity,” Allen explains. They recognized that women of color in the South have often been the momentum behind many of the major movements in this country.

“So, we began to really ask better questions about what was happening in organizations, what was happening with leaders, and then what are the systemic impacts that particularly women of color are experiencing as they are doing this work that is really saving the community, and shaping a future for all of us,” says Allen.

Read the full article about the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice by Daelin Brown at Nonprofit Quarterly.