SOLUTIONS PROJECT INC

→ Impact: INCREASING INSTITUTIONAL POWER OF FRONTLINE ORGANIZATIONS

→ Impact: INCREASING NARRATIVE POWER OF FRONTLINE ORGANIZATIONS

→ Impact: INCREASING DECISION-MAKING POWER OF FRONTLINE ORGANIZATIONS

TSP stands apart in its practice of Solidarity Philanthropy a trust-based approach shaped by grassroots organizers and racial justice leaders that prioritizes relationships and trust. Together, with our partners, we are building durable support and influence to change the trajectory of the climate crisis and prove what is possible when community climate leaders are properly resourced. To achieve transformative change, we focus on four primary strategies:

Core Grantmaking: We invest in dynamic grassroots organizations primarily those led by women of color and provide them with the resources and support needed to create and deliver ground-up climate solutions. We are often our grantees first national funder and the critical catalyst that allows them to scale. We provide our grantee partners with multi-year, general operating support $30,000 to $50,000 a year, ideally for at least a three-year period to ensure they can use our investments in whatever way will best serve their work to innovate and implement their solutions. Amidst increasing climate disasters, we also invest rapid-response funds for urgent and immediate needs.

Collaborative Ecosystem Funds: IIn addition to our main grantmaking portfolio, TSP is also an incubator for innovative new funds. A powerful testament to the trust we have built, in 2021, we were asked by frontline leaders to administer three unique funds The Justice40 Accelerator, Communicating Our Power, and the Fund for Frontline Power focused respectively on: 1) helping BIPOC-led, community-based organizations unlock billions of federal dollars through the Biden-Harris Administrations Justice40 Initiative; 2) building grassroots narrative power; and 3) supporting frontline-led grantmaking.

Narrative Strategy: We are a recognized leader in bold, positive, and reflective climate narratives rooted in grassroots power-building. The communications capacity we provide our grantees aims to shift the national dialogue on climate change to center just solutions to the climate crisis and increase grantee influence with critical audiences. Our team and program delivery partners provide earned publicity, communications training, digital content development, marketing services, and access to major media or brand platforms like celebrity and corporate social channels that further amplify our grantees work.

Cross-sector Collaboration: We build cross-sector influence with our grantee network. We open opportunities for scaled resources and audiences for frontline leadership and climate justice solutions through our high-trust relationships. For example, we have relationships with established artists such as Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, and Regina Hall; industry leaders like Seventh Generation, a Unilever Company; influential media outlets like TIME Magazine and TED; and allies across philanthropy and government who mobilize to support collective impact.

We are an all-female, majority women of color staff. Many of our team members grew up in under-resourced communities of color, many of which were neighborhoods dealing with environmental injustice. Many of our staff have worked directly with frontline communities for the majority of their careers and those who haven’t share our deep commitment to justice and equity that this work requires. We are connected to the climate justice movement, which explicitly fights for the liberation of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and People of Color.

Our team sees themselves in the communities who live at the intersections of climate change and social justice. And a majority of us know people who are directly impacted by poverty, violence, and structural inequities. That’s why the movement is deeply personal and our relationship to the work is different. We cannot separate the personal from the political, because these issues affect our daily lives. We see the climate crisis as the most urgent intersectional issue because we see humanity suffering, and this is an opportunity for us to come together, break generational systems, and build a more sustainable future.

Our Philanthropic Trustees, who advise us on funding strategy and grantmaking, are trusted non-profit or philanthropic leaders in our field. Members are asked to serve because of their demonstrated leadership in the climate justice movement and wisdom of the systemic barriers facing frontline communities.

Frontline Solutions, a Black-owned national consulting firm that believes in the principles of equitable evaluation and design engagements that prioritize learning in service of movement-accountable equity and impact, evaluates our grantmaking on an annual basis.

In 2023, CEO Gloria Walton joined Co-founder Mark Ruffalo in New York, where they received the inaugural TIME CO2 Earth Award for their work in climate justice and creating transformational change. In 2022, TSP was named the #2 most innovative NGO in the world by FastCompany, and won a Gold Anthem Award for Best Strategy in Environmentalism. We are the only climate justice intermediary recognized with an Impact Award by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. TSP's blend of grantmaking support, technical assistance, capacity building, media muscle, and our ability to leverage celebrity reach empowers our grantees activism to yield successes.

To-date, we have achieved the following: Return on Investment: $50 million invested in over 300 organizations across the U.S. These grassroots organizations have gone on to win major public funding for their solutions, including one billion for solar on affordable housing in California, $400M for transition infrastructure in Miami, and $200 million for wind development in New York, a state that now boasts one of the strongest climate policies in the country. Our grantees have not only built power to influence climate justice mandates from the federal government - their innovations are setting new standards. We are the only climate justice intermediary recognized with an Impact Award by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

Media Influence for Impact: 2000+ mainstream media stories that cover climate justice leaders advancing solutions that improve the lives of people in their communities and beyond in outlets including TIME Magazine, CBS This Morning, CNN, Jimmy Kimmel, MTV, LA Times, New York Times, NowThis, People Magazine, The Daily Show, and Today Show. We have increased the storytelling capacity and public influence and our independent media tracker has shown a major shift in positive media coverage of clean energy through an equity lens, in communities of color, and in support of renewable energy. In 2023, we helped grantees generate 200+ pieces of media with 13 million views. Together, including the indirect results of our capacity building programs, we estimate 13 billion potential views.

Collaborative Ecosystem Funds: Justice40 Accelerator, Communicating Our Power, and the Fund for Frontline Power are collaborative, grassroots-accountable, multi-million initiatives that are successfully leveraging and implementing federal, media, and philanthropic equity commitments, respectively. Through these funds, TSP is able to broaden its impact, touching an additional 200+ organizations. To date, grantee participants of the Justice40 Accelerator have secured $43 million in public funds, demonstrating an 80% success rate in applications for government grants. In 2023, the Fund for Frontline Power distributed $6.4M of determined grassroots funding to 69 grassroots groups. Through its pilot cohort, Communicating our Powered awarded 4M to 20 frontline climate organizations.