After reviewing an inspiring group of applications submitted this summer, the NACRP Fund Advisors have selected the 2025 Fall Cycle grantees. This round includes Track I awards, which support individuals involved in community-driven planning who need resources to continue their work, and Track II awards, which resource organizations advancing community-driven planning efforts through specific projects.
Fall 2025 Awardees
Track I
Anita Cuningham (NC)
As part of the NC Climate Solutions Coalition, Anita is addressing legacy pollution, energy insecurity and long-standing disinvestment in rural and BIPOC communities across Eastern North Carolina. Her work advances community-led solar, disaster education, preparedness,and resilience education, and environmental justice advocacy. This funding would directly support Anita’s financial wellbeing, especially as one of her part time positions can no longer compensate her efforts due to a funding shortfall. In her words: “This support would give me the financial stability needed so I can remain focused and committed to the work and the communities I serve.”
Glenda Simmons Jenkins (FL)
With the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Community Trust (GGCCT), Glenda plays a key role in securing and protecting land essential to the continuation of Gullah/Geechee culture. Her work challenges inequitable county planning practices, organizes descendants to protect burial grounds on private property, and advances climate resilience by securing legacy communities. For Glenda, "This award allows me to repair, refurbish and refresh my home after years of neglecting upkeep to serve my people. With this support, I can refuel my personal reservoir allowing me to no longer pour from an empty cup."
Kumar Jensen (OH)
Working with the City of Dayton, the Baseline Institute is helping bring together 13 neighborhood environmental organizations to better understand their strengths, needs, and shared barriers. This funding will support Kumar’s staff time to build direct relationships with each group, coordinate quarterly convenings, and help the groups build a long-lasting collaborative governance model. In Kumar’s words: “In a region with few coordinated resources for neighborhood-led environmental work, the potential impact of the Dayton Environmental Empowerment Project is monumental. These organizations already know how to serve their communities — they simply need the resources to meet the need.”
Track II
IMPACT Community Action is working with residents of American Addition — the oldest historically Black neighborhood in central Ohio — to reimagine the Tray Lee Center as a community-led space for resilience, history, and hope. Building on decades of resident advocacy, this effort supports the transformation of a once-redlined and disinvested neighborhood into the nation’s first historically Black net-zero community. The project strengthens resident leadership, storytelling, and governance to ensure decisions about the neighborhood’s future reflect lived experience and local priorities. In IMPACT’s words: “This award is more than funding, it’s a vote of confidence in and for the people of American Addition. It allows us to support residents as they preserve their history, amplify their voices, and build a future where the community leads the way in climate resilience and justice.”
Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project (CA)
MICOP, together with CAUSE and Líderes Campesinas, is advancing Project MILPA, an Indigenous-led effort to plan a farmworker cooperative in Ventura County. Guided by Comité MILPA—a group of 15 Mixtec, Zapotec, and non-indigenous farmworkers—the project develops a business plan, governance model, and training curriculum rooted in the realities and aspirations of the local agricultural workforce. By providing stipends, childcare, and interpretation in Indigenous languages, MICOP will ensure farmworker participation. In their words, “This award helps us keep the planning process in the hands of the people who work the land. With this support, Indigenous farmworkers can lead conversations about ownership, sustainability, and the kind of future they want to build for their families and community.”
Reclaim Our Power (CA)
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Reclaim Our Power is building collective power to dismantle Pacific Gas & Electric Company and other investor-owned utilities and to advance a transformative energy system that is affordable, safe, reliable. Through their People’s Policy workshops, they are bringing Californians together to unpack utility injustice and co-create the priorities of a future not-for-profit, justice-centered utility — ensuring frontline communities shape the solutions they need. In Emi Yoko-Young’s words: “Thanks to NACRP's Community Driven Planning Fund award, we're excited to create more democratic workshops that uplift and center the voices of those on the frontlines of energy injustices and who know the solutions we need to create a just energy system."
About the Fund:
In response to member needs, the NACRP launched the Community-Driven Planning Fund in March 2024 to support community-driven planning processes governed by community-driven planners, organizers, and facilitators. NACRP members can submit proposals for up to $30,000 to resource communities and/or facilitators accountable to frontline communities and advance a community-driven planning process.
Climate Innovation coordinates and administers the Fund and 5 NACRP members, in their role as Fund Advisors, govern the Fund grantee selection process.
About the NACRP:
The National Association of Climate Resilience Planners (NACRP), a core program of People’s Climate Innovation Center (Climate Innovation), is a national network of community-driven planning facilitators, grassroots organizers, and multi-sector partners that fosters effective community-driven racial and climate justice solutions through training, peer learning, referrals, and capacity-building.
For more information about the Community-Driven Planning Fund and how to become a NACRP member, visit our website here.
