Rural Funders Urge Philanthropies to Let Communities Lead the Way

Make an Impact for Climate Resilience In the South

Giving Compass' Take: • The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy delivers some do's and don'ts when it comes to investing in climate resilience for Southern communities. • Due to the catastrophic storms that have hit the South in recent years (including Hurricane Florence), it's worth looking at ways to make resources more accessible to grassroots orgs and putting more "skin in the game." • Here's why community foundations are helpful for more impactful disaster relief. Climate resilience is an opportunity for philanthropists to make a lasting impact on communities. Southern communities are on the front lines of an ongoing global climate crisis, one whose threats grow in scope and magnitude each day. More intense storms, hastening sea level rise, agricultural disturbances and other climate factors present an existential threat to Southern communities and an uncontainable, exponential one for the country. Many Southerners know this; they understand the threats and their enablers in concentrated, reactive, corporate-backed power. Although many of those same Southerners are organizing and mobilizing around a resilient and just new future, foundation investment in Southern communities does not match that reality. Here are a few recommendations to guide the way to high-impact philanthropy: Identify opportunities to fund climate, economic and social resilience and solutions in the South within current grantmaking priorities or expand priorities to include those strategies. Deploy your financial, human and political capital to ensure underrepresented communities — those most impacted by environmental injustice — are meaningful partners in climate resilience conversations. Seek reparative, healing, honest relationships between grantee and grantor and within grantee communities. Make a healthy, resilient social change infrastructure a strategic priority. Read the full article on climate resilience in the South at National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy