Three Years On: What We’ve Learned About Climate Funding That Centres Equity
In 2022, we launched the Climate, Health and Community Fund, a collaboration between Do it Now Now and Impact on Urban Health. The aim was clear: to support Black and Brown-led organisations working at the intersection of climate, health and community wellbeing in Lambeth and Southwark.
We knew that many of these organisations had been doing work relevant to climate resilience for years, even if they didn’t describe it that way. We also knew that access to funding in this space remained deeply unequal.
What we didn’t yet know was just how much we’d learn by taking a community-centred approach to climate funding. Three years later, the answer is clear: when we fund with equity at the centre, everything changes, not just who gets the money, but what becomes possible.
Equity isn’t a theme, it’s the structure
From the beginning, our focus wasn’t just on what we funded, but how. We wanted to create a funding model that removed barriers rather than reinforcing them.
That meant:
Offering unrestricted grants so organisations could respond to their communities' real needs;
Using Health Checks to guide tailored capacity support, not to screen people out;
Creating opportunities for 1-2-1 application support, which many applicants said helped them feel seen and understood;
And ensuring our grantmaking panels included people with lived experience, who could bring valuable insight to funding decisions.
The result wasn’t just a more inclusive process. It was a stronger one. We were able to support 20 organisations doing powerful work, from air quality to housing to food justice, that speaks directly to the climate and health challenges their communities face.
But just as importantly, we built relationships, surfaced insights, and laid the foundation for something more long-term.
Listening to what the sector is telling us, and what communities have been saying all along
Around the time the fund launched, Bayo Adelaja, our founder, wrote in Philea that:
“We must shift away from extractive funding models that tokenise lived experience and toward approaches that meaningfully share power.”
That message has only become more urgent.
The Invisible Women report by Impatience Earth, released earlier this year, reminds us that women, especially Black and Brown women, are often on the frontlines of climate impact and response, but still face significant barriers to accessing funding and being recognised as climate leaders.
What stood out most to us in the report was how often women-led organisations were told they weren’t “climate enough”, even when their work focused on clean air, energy access, or community food systems. This aligned with what we saw during our own grant cycle. Many applicants were already delivering vital climate resilience work, they just weren’t calling it that, because they hadn’t been invited into the space.
This insight has shaped how we think about outreach, language, and support moving forward. It also affirmed something we already believed: the communities most affected by climate change are already leading the way in creating solutions. The funding system just hasn’t been set up to meet them there.
What’s worked, and what we’re building next
Three years on, we’ve seen lasting outcomes from the Fund. Several of the organisations we supported have gone on to grow their reach, build new partnerships, and strengthen their infrastructure. We’ve been proud to offer follow-on funding and continued support to some of those grantees.
But we also know that real transformation doesn’t happen in one-year cycles.
That’s why we’re now developing a comprehensive funding model, designed to provide long-term, tailored support for equity-rooted organisations working on climate and health. This includes:
Unrestricted grants based on organisational stage and need;
Tiered capacity-building across five growth pathways;
Critical Friend coaching, diagnostics, and peer learning;
Embedded accessibility and emergency support;
And participatory processes shaped by lived experience from the start.
Our goal is to create a system that doesn't just fund good ideas, it helps build the kind of lasting, community-rooted infrastructure that’s needed for real climate resilience.
A growing community of practice
We see it as a growing community of practice, one that’s already being built by organisations across the UK who are placing justice, trust, and shared learning at the centre of climate work.
What we’ve learned over the past three years is that the potential is already there. What’s missing is the long-term commitment, the systems that allow these organisations to move from crisis response to future-building.
We’re excited to keep playing our part in that shift, and to keep learning from the organisations, communities, and partners that make it possible.
