Strategy and Grant Guidelines

The Hewlett Foundation is launching a coordinated program called New Constituencies for the Environment (NCE),  and is consulting with several other potential funding partners in this effort, including the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation.  The goal of this program is to strengthen and broaden the environmental movement in California. 

The NCE program will support non-governmental organizations that are working on behalf of communities whose environmental concerns have often been underrepresented, and will also support new capacity for this work in Sacramento. Grantmaking will concentrate specifically on efforts to address policies, especially at the state level, that have the potential to deliver large-scale improvements.

The NCE program was developed in response to the dramatic, long-term changes taking place in California.  The state is turning over its political leadership at an unprecedented speed, due to recently instituted term limits. California is the first state in the nation where the majority of the population is now African-American, Asian-American or Latino.  Both these trends suggest that it is crucial to add new capacity to the environmental movement. 

At the same time as these political and demographic changes are underway, California’s population is projected to increase by 50 percent over the next 50 years.  The impact of this growth on the state’s increasingly stressed air and land will be dire – the consequences already are dire for many communities in parts of the state.  To prevent the deterioration of environmental conditions in the face of this development pressure, community advocates must become stronger, more diverse, and work more strategically and cohesively together.

Means of Change

There is no shortage of compelling issues around which to organize this program.  Based on the input from months of field interviews and research on where the opportunities for substantial gains are highest, grant making criteria were developed and are outlined below.

1. Improving NGO Resources.  The Hewlett Foundation will seek to increase the organizing, communication, and scientific capacity of community groups.

The table below outlines the criteria we will use in reviewing proposals. Proposals must demonstrate how they are part of a broader strategy for achieving specific policy outcomes (see (2) below).  Please also be reminded that Hewlett Foundation grantees cannot expend any part of the Foundation’s grant in any way that violates the grantee’s tax exempt status.

NCE Grant Guidelines:

The NCE program is not able to fund the following:

• Proposals addressing air pollution stemming from pesticide sources.
• Demonstration projects.
• Technology research and development.
• Endowments or debt reduction.
• Fundraising campaigns.
• Activities not linked to strategic policy goals.

2. Improving Strategic Infrastructure

While most of our grant making will go to the range of organizations in the Central Valley and Los Angeles, our feedback from leaders in the field strongly emphasized that simply injecting more funds into organizations will not sufficiently increase their influence and effectiveness in the environmental policy arena.  We repeatedly heard that a key weakness is the lack of a system by which advocates working on behalf of disproportionately-impacted communities across the state can coordinate their work, and then jointly deliver a forceful message to decision-makers in Sacramento. It became clear that a well-respected and highly visible anchor group with a strong presence in Sacramento would be critical to achieve our goals.

The Coalition for Clean Air (CCA), which emerged from our field interviews and research as one of the most strategic and well-respected groups in the field, and which has excellent relationships with many organizations in our target communities, has agreed to partner with us to serve in this role.  CCA, which already has a Sacramento office, will work with organizations around the state collectively to select key goals, and then build a structure to meet those goals. 

It is important to stress here that the aim is not to have a new organization duplicate the work of existing organizations.  To increase its impact, however, our grant making will look for opportunities to fund regional efforts that are explicitly linked to the statewide focused strategies that CCA, in consultation with groups in the field, will develop.

To do this, CCA will significantly expand its mission and responsibilities and open an office in the Central Valley.  CCA is committed to internal diversification throughout the organization and has begun a staff hiring and Board recruitment process to achieve this goal.  Further, CCA will work very closely with participating organizations to develop an inclusive process to create and implement winning advocacy campaigns.

Acknowledgments:

We would like to thank the leaders from all sectors both within and outside of the environmental community who took the time over the past year to share their analyses of how the New Constituencies for the Environment program could best contribute to this effort.  Much of the work that we will be attempting to address builds on the base of what has largely been pursued for over a decade by environmental justice organizations, to address the environmental concerns of highly impacted communities. We would like to thank the environmental justice leaders in particular for their input. 
 
California’s families cannot be assured of clean air, open space, wildlands and parks equitably and sufficiently without a vigorous, organized effort to secure them.  That will require a larger, more sophisticated set of organizations, and a way to weave them into a cohesive, effective force.  The Hewlett Foundation hopes to help build that capacity in consultation with other potential funding partners.  We are under no illusions that the work will be easy or straightforward, but are also convinced that a well-designed effort, capitalizing on the goodwill and intelligence of activists across the state, can build an outstanding environmental legacy, and we want to do our part in supporting that change. 

If  you believe your objectives fit within these guidelines, you should complete the Letter of Inquiry form for initial review.

Click here to submit a letter of inquiry (LOI)