Hive Fund Puts Its Money Where the South Is

Hive Fund raises funds and makes grants to groups working to accelerate the transition from dirty to clean energy across the US South—a region whose high pollution levels, abundant clean energy opportunities, and legacy of environmental justice leadership make it critical for global climate progress. With staff based throughout the US South, Hive Fund provides deep geographic, cultural, tactical, and issue-specific knowledge. Through trusted relationships with advisors, partners, and community leaders, Hive Fund uses participatory grantmaking practices to find and vet new groups to fund, co-create strategy, and inform funding decisions. “When communities build power and raise their voices to make change at the local level, their small wins ripple up and out, bringing even more and bigger wins,” says Melanie Allen, co-director of the Hive Fund.

Hive Fund’s grants go to groups working to accelerate the transition from dirty to clean energy in ways that center justice, redistribute power, and create healthier, safer, and more prosperous communities. It supports grantee partners working toward this shared goal through three interconnected pathways:

1. Rapidly transition to cleaner, renewable energy to lower energy costs for households across the South while bringing good jobs and economic benefits to historically disinvested neighborhoods.
2. Reverse the expansion of dirty energy and push regulators to consistently enforce clean air, water, and safety standards so communities can live free from pollution and other harms.
3. Strengthen people power and build a broad base of support to advance climate solutions that address the problems everyday people face.

Since its inception, Hive Fund has awarded more than $120 million to more than 150 grantees led by impactful leaders, nearly three quarters of them Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian American and Pacific Islander women and gender non-conforming people. Most of these grants have been to organizations in Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, and the Carolinas — states contributing nearly a quarter of the nation’s climate pollution. “There is no path to addressing the climate crisis that does not go through the US South, and yet it’s a place funders generally haven’t spent a lot of time or money in,” explains Allen.

Fiscal sponsorship through the Windward Fund has provided Hive Fund with the support, platform, and services that enable its staff to focus on their impact. Windward offers high-quality health and retirement benefits and a platform to enable large-scale grantmaking. Windward has “ready-made infrastructure that enables us to hire and operate across several states quickly and flexibly,” notes Tiffany Wu, the project’s operations manager.

Across the US South, community leaders are inspiring everyday people to see themselves in the work of creating a more just energy system and building the broad support needed to bring change to scale. “Groups are excited for more opportunities to build health and wealth in their communities and to shape the world they want to see,” says Allen.

But their path is difficult. Amid escalated attacks on climate work, Hive Fund grantees have continued pushing forward with community-driven clean energy and resilience projects, chipping away at the harms of polluting industries, and building a broad base of support for climate action. In the face of incredible odds, they’re finding creative openings and strategic opportunities to advance the transition from dirty to clean energy, with the most impacted communities at the center.

These efforts are happening in states that are also home to some of the country’s most important struggles for racial justice, democracy, and economic justice. As Allen explains, Hive Fund is actively “thinking about how projects build on one another to create meaningful change in their communities and beyond.”