Community-Led Movements are Driving Climate Action

11 Trends in Philanthropy for 2026 report cover

This article was first published in our 11 Trends in Philanthropy for 2026 report. Explore the full report here.

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The Johnson Center first highlighted the issues of climate change and disaster philanthropy in our 2020 Trends report (Behrens & Martin). In 2023, Layton, Peterson, and Dietz examined how the sector was adjusting to the new reality of bigger, more frequent disasters by increasingly adopting community-rooted, community-first strategies and shifting focus toward resilience over mere response. Going into 2026, this momentum continues as nonprofits, grassroots movements, and the philanthropic funders that support them pursue sustained climate action.

Now, these organizations and partnerships are making changes and working to strengthen systems and activism amid enormous shifts in federal policy and funding.

Increasing Frequency and Intensity

According to the World Meteorological Organization (2025), 2024 was the warmest year on record and the first to exceed the 1.5°C threshold set by the Paris Agreement. This single-year breach underscores the escalating urgency of a global response, as the climate crisis intensifies and our population experiences its effects on community health, infrastructure, and ecosystems everywhere (Ripple et al., 2024).

Floods, hurricanes, and other natural disasters displaced 45.8 million people worldwide in 2024 — more than double the average of the past 15 years (International Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2025). And, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information (2025), climate-related disasters in the U.S. alone that year accounted for $182.7 billion in damages.

“If philanthropy alone were tasked with disaster recovery, it would require nearly 31% of all U.S. giving.”

At the same time, the most recent Giving USA report estimates that total charitable giving in 2024 amounted to $592.5 billion (p. 17). If philanthropy alone were tasked with disaster recovery, it would require nearly 31% of all U.S. giving.

Community Solutions are Leading the Way

The frequency of climate disasters is accelerating, and the loss of federal support is pressuring philanthropy to step up. Accordingly, grassroots groups are leading the way with community-led, systemic solutions (Gersigny, 2025; Greenberg et al., 2025). These groups adopt a holistic approach, weaving intersectionality and long-term thinking into their strategies. They consider every phase — preparation, prevention, and rebuilding — while addressing disparities across social and geographic lines and strive to balance immediate needs with the goal of building a just and thriving future.

For example, community members are developing local knowledge and solutions to drive systems change, working between local, state, and national mitigation strategies. The Changing the Game report highlights 15 cases of community-based strategies, including Acadia Center’s advocacy work in Maine, which helped the state become the fastest adopter of heat pumps — a cleaner alternative to fossil fuel heating. These cases highlight measurable contributions to carbon mitigation and broader benefits for democracy, health, and equity.

The U.S. South and Appalachia

Community-led networks demonstrate how relationships enable equitable climate disaster response. CoThinkk, a North Carolina giving circle, quickly mobilized during Hurricane Helene thanks to decades of built trust with residents. CoThinkk’s 2024 year-end newsletter highlighted the importance of understanding philanthropic investment across response, recovery, and rebuilding; elevating BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) leadership; and supporting deep relationships, such as cross-generational collaborations and collective decision-making.

Coordinating to ensure equitable response, funder networks and mutual aid efforts are using data for recovery and rebuilding. Hurricane Helene, which hit the U.S. South and Appalachian region in September 2024, resulted in $78.7 billion in economic losses (Ramirez, 2025). The Appalachia Funder Network launched the Appalachian Helene Impact Explorer tool in October 2025, a dashboard mapping gaps in equitable resource allocation across the region’s many communities. Developed after promises from FEMA and other federal agencies fell through, the network has leveraged the tool to bolster its efforts to secure and release funds for long-term recovery (Ramirez, 2025).

Leveraging Indigenous Knowledge

Organizations are amplifying Indigenous knowledge, leadership, and sovereignty as climate solutions. Indigenous communities are not just holders of traditional knowledge — they are on the frontlines of climate advocacy, experiencing some of the most severe impacts and spearheading systemic responses (Chiblow et al., 2025).

At the Boston Museum of Science’s Indigenous Knowledge and Climate Change: The Keys to Our Future series, leaders from the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), Mashpee Wampanoag, Shinnecock Nation, Gabrielino-Tongva Indian Tribe, and Klamath Tribes shared how Traditional Ecological Knowledge informs wildfire mitigation strategies, including cultural burning practices that restore ecosystems and reduce catastrophic fire risk (Huntington, 2025).

Similarly, in the Arctic, the Alaska Arctic Observatory and Knowledge Hub collaborate with Iñupiat observers to track sea ice loss, erosion, and wildlife shifts (Glenn, 2023). This data is crucial for tribal planning and food security while challenging colonially-rooted research norms. These examples demonstrate how Indigenous knowledge is indispensable for building climate justice efforts and driving effective solutions.

Funders have honored their commitments in this space in big ways. A $1.7 billion pledge made in 2021 to support Indigenous land tenure reached its goal with one year to spare. At COP30 in November 2025, the Forest Tenure Funders Group renewed the pledge, committing $1.8 billion by 2030. “Not that this commitment has been without its challenges,” writes Michael Kavate for Inside Philanthropy (2025b). “The funders have struggled to get money directly into the hands of Indigenous peoples and local communities…with just 7.6% of funding in 2024 going directly rather than via intermediaries. The renewed pledge signatories promise to continue trying to increase that share.

Learning from Hurricane Katrina

Movement-building organizations are centering historical lessons that drive structural and cross-movement approaches. Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, recovery remains incomplete, and it has become evident that disasters compound existing inequities, leaving marginalized communities behind. Project South, a Georgia-based nonprofit that coordinates regionally across the South and nationally, hosted the Katrina 20 People’s Movement Assembly in August 2025 to connect these lessons to current climate efforts and address structural barriers (Project South, 2025).

Youth-Led Action

Centering their futures and long-term stewardship, youth-led movements are establishing legal precedent for systemic climate protections. Young advocates, supported by Our Children’s Trust — the only nonprofit public interest law firm of its kind — secured landmark rulings in Held v. Montana (2024a) and Navahine v. Hawaii. These rulings affirmed the constitutional right to a livable climate (2024b), setting precedent as federal protections erode.

In the first Trends article on philanthropy’s relationship with climate change, published in 2020, Teri Behrens and Tory Martin identified four categories of work that broadly captured the field’s activities:

Responding to disasters that are more frequent and more powerful as a result of climate change,
Incorporating the impacts of climate change into strategies for issues already being addressed,
Advancing innovative programs for mitigation and prevention, and
Continuing to lead on advocacy efforts for climate-focused policy change.

The 2026 analysis demonstrates that these categories are still accurate today. If anything, the work has become even more cross-cutting — as highlighted in the second category — and even more urgent as the federal infrastructure for supporting state, local, and network infrastructure has disappeared.

The Funding Landscape is Heavily Concentrated

As mentioned above, philanthropy does not have the funds to step in whenever and wherever government retreats. This limited capacity is evident in disaster funding: although climate disasters have trended upward over the past decade, these efforts represented only 1.4% of all private and community foundation giving in 2022 (Center for Disaster Philanthropy, 2024).

This funding gap becomes even more acute at the grassroots level, where funders severely underfund grassroots groups working on climate and disaster action. The Just Returns Project found that among 50 key climate funders, only 3% of the total $2.7 billion reached grassroots organizations (Climate Justice Alliance, 2025). Giving is also highly concentrated. Just five funders (the Hewlett Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Freedom Together Foundation [formerly JPB Foundation], MacArthur Foundation, and Gates Foundation) provided 40% of funds, and a fifth of all funding went to just five organizations: the U.S. Energy Foundation, ClimateWorks Foundation, Sierra Club Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The majority of resources go to these larger mainstream organizations, market-based solutions, and technocratic fixes, leaving environmental and climate justice groups with a small fraction of the funding. Youth-led movements received less than 1% of grants from the largest climate funders from 2022 to 2024, despite their critical role in the legislative progress (Youth Climate Funding Study, 2025). Indigenous opposition to fossil fuel development has prevented emissions equivalent to one quarter of the annual U.S. and Canadian totals — yet Indigenous Peoples receive less than 1% of all U.S. philanthropic funding (Near, 2024).

Shifts on the Horizon

Pathways for change are increasingly available. In 2024, the Environmental Grantmakers Association awarded $805 million to advocacy, organizing, and movement building — its top-funded strategy (Toles O’Laughlin et al., 2024). Governed by grassroots leaders, the Fund for Frontline Power, Seventh Generation Fund, and the Environmental Justice Resourcing Collective offer models for sustaining momentum and investment (Near, 2024; Begaye & Battle, 2024; Kostishack & Seta, 2025).

Another example comes from the Swift Foundation, which is sunsetting by the end of 2028 to redistribute its endowment to Indigenous land and knowledge keepers, including seed-funding for the Indigenize Fund and tmixʷ Land Trust (Swift & Benally, 2025).

And even as billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates retreated from the climate advocacy space this year with the slashing of his Breakthrough Energy team (Gelles & Schleifer, 2025), others stepped forward at COP30 in Brazil — including a $300 million pledge from the collaborative Climate and Health Funders group and commitments from Bloomberg Philanthropies to address methane emissions (Kavate 2025b).

As the federal government eliminates its climate commitments, it is imperative that philanthropy does not overlook grassroots solutions. Whether philanthropy will correct its underinvestment in frontline organizations remains to be seen.

“We’re talking about building something that would last,” said Dr. Robert Bullard, considered by many to be the “father of environmental justice” (Funes, 2023). That is the heart of this work — lasting impact that is rooted in lived experience and led by those most affected.

Enormous Shifts in the Federal Landscape

U.S. federal policy is actively shifting on climate action, with an array of policy, funding, and regulatory changes. Noteworthy events from 2025 include:

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump ordered U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, hampering global efforts to mobilize $1.3 trillion in annual climate finance (Goldberg & McGlinchey, 2025).

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) froze or rescinded $29 billion in climate grants in 2025 (at the time of this writing), many of which were awarded to first-time grantee nonprofits. The cuts face ongoing legal battles, namely a class action lawsuit from a national coalition of nonprofits (Baddour, 2025). The withholding of funding, banning of words, and threat of loss of tax status are part of ongoing concerns about a “chilling effect” on philanthropy when doing climate work and addressing the disproportionate effects on vulnerable populations (Colman, 2025; Bryan et al., 2025; Kavate, 2025a).

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on the Clean Water Act in March 2025 marked a significant rollback in regulatory oversight (U.S. EPA, 2025). Additionally, the EPA’s 31-point plan to dismantle key regulations includes eliminating crucial data reporting on greenhouse gas emissions (Franklin, 2025).

Federal cuts to workforce, budgets, and research efforts, such as at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and NOAA, are expected to hinder climate and disaster preparedness and response (Ndugga et al., 2025).

These rollbacks emphasize the growing burden on philanthropy and the impacts to come on communities.

REFERENCES

Baddour, D. (2025, September 17). New map shows $29 billion in climate and environment grants canceled or frozen by Trump. Inside Climate News. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17092025/trump-stops-29-billion-in-grants-for-environment-climate-renewable-energy/

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Behrens, T., & Martin, T. (2020, January 13). Philanthropy will be on the front lines of climate change. 11 trends in philanthropy for 2020. Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University. https://johnsoncenter.org/blog/philanthropy-will-be-on-the-front-lines-of-climate-change/

Bryan, K., Pilling, D. & Chu, A. (2025, April 18). US climate philanthropies fear Trump blow from loss of tax-free status. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/498c6a98-bfce-4e69-8c58-24fdb082904d

Center for Disaster Philanthropy. (2024). 2024 state of disaster philanthropy. https://disasterphilanthropy.org/cdp-resource/measuring-the-state-of-disaster-philanthropy-2024/

Chiblow, S., Oof, M., Kaptoyo, E., Cerda, J. (2025, April). State of the world’s Indigenous Peoples, Volume VI: Climate crisis. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. https://desapublications.un.org/publications/state-worlds-indigenous-peoples-volume-vi-climate-crisis

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Franklin, S. (2025). US supreme court’s clean water act decision. Center for Health, Environment & Justice. https://chej.org/us-supreme-courts-clean-water-act-decision

Funes, Y. (2023, September 19). The father of environmental justice exposes the geography of inequity: Robert D. Bullard reflects on the movement he helped to create. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-father-of-environmental-justice-exposes-the-geography-of-inequity/

Gersigny, B. (2025, October 13). An architecture of hope: Why funding grassroots climate justice movements defends democracy. Alliance. https://www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/architecture-of-hope-funding-grassroots-climate-justice/

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Community-Led Movements are Driving Climate Action

Increasing Frequency and Intensity

Community Solutions are Leading the Way

The Funding Landscape is Heavily Concentrated

Shifts on the Horizon

Philanthropy Will Be On the Front Lines of Climate Change

Disaster Philanthropy is Transitioning for the Long Haul

Philanthropy is Entering a New Era of Engagement with Native Communities

REFERENCES