Deadline: 5-Mar-25
Mosaic is inviting you to submit concept notes for the Building Bridges Grant Program.
Scope
- Building bridges across differences
- Mosaic’s 2025 grant cycle will support projects that expand the reach and influence of climate, conservation, and environmental health and justice movements by bridging across sectoral, political, ideological, demographic, and geographic divides. This includes:
- Building alignment across identities and sectors in ways that broaden the base of support for action and elevate a diverse set of voices and solutions.
- Creating or strengthening alliances to foster collective action and mitigate polarization.
- Mosaic’s 2025 grant cycle will support projects that expand the reach and influence of climate, conservation, and environmental health and justice movements by bridging across sectoral, political, ideological, demographic, and geographic divides. This includes:
Focus Areas
- Specifically, they will support projects that build bridges within and across environmental movements, and between environmental and other aligned constituencies and movements, and also address one or more of the following sub-focus areas:
- Building narrative power: Strengthening communications, storytelling and public understanding around climate and environmental justice.
- Leveraging the environmental movement to defend democracy: Protecting democratic processes, institutions, and leaders essential to movement success.
- Breaking down silos: Within climate, conservation, and environmental health and justice movements or across issues.
Objectives
- Building on the previous grantmaking, the movement infrastructure these grants support will bolster groups’ ability to achieve their near- and long-term objectives, both offensive and defensive:
- Offense: Seizing state and local opportunities to drive policy change, implement federal policies like the IRA and IIJA, and protect gains while building long-term power across diverse coalitions.
- Defense: Safeguarding progress from the past several years, including defending federal climate investments like the IRA and IIJA, and addressing emerging threats through broad coalitions.
Funding Tracks
- Mosaic is inviting applications between $50,000-$300,000 in the following tracks:
- Seed (Single-year|$50K–150K): Piloting new and innovative movement infrastructure projects with startup funding. Focus on testing new ideas, piloting innovative efforts, and laying the groundwork for future impact.
- Cultivate (Single or Multi-year|$200K–300K total): supporting and cultivating the capacity of existing collaborative movement infrastructure efforts to sustain their work or achieve a new level of scale and impact. Helps organizations strengthen capacity, scale, and deepen impact.
- Harvest (Single-year|up to $150K–250K): actualizing existing movement infrastructure near a specific tipping point (big win, victory, outcome, etc.) with targeted last-mile resources. Ensures organizations have what they need to leverage a major opportunity or fully realize an outcome.
Eligibility Criteria
- Selected projects will expand the reach and influence of climate, conservation, and environmental health and justice movements by bridging across sectoral, political, ideological, demographic, and geographic divides and be working toward an offense and/or defense objective through at least one of the sub-focus areas.
- Projects eligible for consideration must also be:
- Advancing field-wide connections and shared tools across one or more of the four areas of movement infrastructure, in alignment with Mosaic’s strategic framework;
- Collaborative by design, engaging with state, regional, or national partners;
- Supportive of people and organizations who predominantly focus on clean air and water, a safe climate, healthy and just communities, thriving natural systems, or other related environmental protection and justice topics;
- Based in and substantially focused on the United States (including Puerto Rico, Guam, Virgin Islands, or other US affiliated territories);
- Be place-based or issue-based and demonstrate accountability to the movement; and
- Led by a 501c3 non-profit public charity organization or equivalent (including fiscally sponsored projects or a collaboration of organizations that includes a 501c3 non-profit acting as a lead steward).
- Additional consideration will be given to projects that also:
- Demonstrate capacity to support existing Mosaic grantees in their region;
- Share tools and resources across networks; and/or
- Have the capacity to develop programming and tools to support 20+ partner organizations and, if necessary, distribute subgrants.
For more information, visit Mosaic.