2025 Grants
Our Grassroots Grants program supports underfunded organizations and communities addressing a myriad of environmental and social justice issues, with a focus on fights over water privatization and plastic pollution.
The Descendants Project:
reuse promotion at new café
The Descendants Project is an organization committed to the intergenerational healing and flourishing of the Black descendant community in the river parishes of Louisiana. The Story of Stuff Project’s media production partnership with The Descendents Project will help them profile the organization, leadership, and reuse practices at a newly set up Fee-Fo-Lay Café.
Movement Rights:
The Convening of the Four Winds
Movement Rights, an Indigenous- and women-led organization, works with Tribes across Turtle Island to strengthen tribal sovereignty, recognize the natural Rights of Nature and Rights of Rivers, and protect Mother Earth. This grant supports Indigenous frontline participants in the 4th Convening of the Four Winds—a platform for Indigenous wisdom keepers, enthusiastic young activists, concerned community members, and Indigenous allies to unite and share ceremony, skill-building, and strategies for inter-tribal leadership and coalition-building as water protectors and land defenders.
Bay Area Youth Climate Summit (baycs):
fall 2025 climate summit
Bay Area Youth Climate Summit (BAYCS) is an organization grounded in climate justice and equity, centered around the narrative of frontline communities. This grant will support need-based sponsorships for a climate summit during the fall of 2025. Their annual, day-long event is complete with workshops, panels, and activities that connect youth with a broader network of activists and educational opportunities.
Houston Climate Justice Museum (hcjm):
Cane River Gardens Community Organizing
The Houston Climate Justice Museum & Cultural Center’s (HCJM) mission is to educate and inspire action on climate and environmental issues through art, exhibits, and programs. In 2024, the Houston Climate Justice Museum and Earth Clinic re-opened Cane River Gardens as a permaculture education and community organizing hub in Fifth Ward. Since launching the project, HCJM has found multiple community leader partners seeking to advance organizing goals to fight back against creosote contamination caused by Union Pacific.
Charleston Climate Coalition:
Environmental Justice Community Profile
Charleston Climate Coalition focuses on environmental justice and how injustices not only directly impact people’s lives, but also indirectly exacerbate other challenges they have. The Environmental Justice Community Profile (ECJP) is a digital platform with the primary goal of democratizing existing environmental-justice-related data, helping communities explain, explore, and quantify their exposure to environmental and other justice-related harms.
Great Plains Restoration Council (GPRC):
Fort Worth Prairie Park Restoration Program
The Great Plains Restoration Council (GPRC) helps people take care of their own health through restoring and protecting native ecosystems, particularly damaged prairies, plains, and waters. GPRC teaches ecological health practices and principles around the country by using literary arts and other media to broaden awareness and community engagement. This grant will support new restoration efforts of yet unprotected endangered native prairie, and next-stage ecological restoration of lands existing within the current protection zone.
People of Red Mountain:
Protect the McDermott Caldera Billboard Campaign
Atsa Koodakuh wyh Nuwu (People of Red Mountain) formed a grassroots group to protect their ancestral homeland from Thacker Pass Lithium Mining near the McDermitt Caldera. Located in the Northern Nevada and Southeast Oregon area, this remote and mostly untouched part of the sagebrush steppe is declining in millions of acres per year due to human development. For the energy transition away from fossil fuels, copper and nickel are being mined, mostly within thirty miles of sacred Indigenous lands. People of Red Mountain aim to educate communities and share their knowledge of what is really happening as a part of this lithium push.
paddle for peace:
Juneteenth Event
Paddle for Peace is dedicated to breaking down barriers that limit access to the ocean for diverse groups, including low-income and BIPOC individuals. This grant will bolster their campaigns by strengthening their networks and social channels to promote environmental stewardship among BIPOC youth, including awareness campaigns about ocean conservation and plastic pollution. Their annual Juneteenth event helps kids fall in love with the coast so they’ll be inspired to protect it.
Save Our Forest Association (sofa):
Legal Fee support
The Save Our Forest Association (SOFA) is an all-volunteer organization in California that protects the mountains from development and industry. SOFA is facing ongoing legal fees as they continue actively engaging in their suit against the U.S. Forest Service for allowing BlueTriton to wreak environmental havoc in San Bernardino National Forest.
waste-free advocates:
Reuse Coalition
Waste-Free Advocates empowers and connects Oregon communities to minimize
over-consumption and waste. They plan to initiate a pilot subsidy program to support the passing of reusable foodware policy in Portland. The goal of their reuse coalition is to harness the collective effort and energy of individual advocates, reuse businesses, and other aligned organizations to support new and existing reuse legislation.
