The Redford Center

As fundraisers ourselves, we understand that it’s easier to raise money for projects when donors can make a tax-deductible gift. That’s why we offer fiscal sponsorships to storytellers working to protect and restore the planet for current and future generations.

Our Fiscal Sponsorship Program extends our 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status to independent filmmakers so they can solicit tax-deductible donations from individuals, foundations and other grantors. The Redford Center then takes stewardship of the funds and is responsible for making sure they are being used for their intended purpose.

While we certainly aren’t the only organization offering fiscal sponsorships, we differentiate ourselves by providing individualized attention and support throughout the filmmaking process – everything from making personal introductions to promoting the projects to providing feedback on cuts.

Redford Center Grants supports environmental filmmakers and frontline stories that drive solutions for people and the planet, providing the hope necessary for audiences to feel ready to engage in addressing our environmental crises. Since launching our grants program in 2016, The Redford Center has remained one of the few entities exclusively funding intersectional environmental documentary film projects and providing multi-faceted support to filmmakers throughout the filmmaking process.

As a story-centered organization, we use narrative strategies to reflect the full complexity of environmental impacts and solutions to inspire compassion, hope, and action. Our powerful strategic insights – gained from years of producing and investing in films for environmental impact – inform our unique grantmaking approach. To date, we’ve distributed over $1 million in grant funding and direct project support to 36 films through the program.

Redford Center Stories is a learning and storytelling initiative providing educators and students with dynamic, integrative, no-cost tools to actively engage in the movement for environmental justice, protection, and repair, and develop their capacity to have a vibrant impact as storytellers elevating their visions and voices for a more just, hopeful, healthy world. This initiative supports educators in bringing an environmental context and content to any class and brings educators and students into dialogue with youth activists, filmmakers, and environmental and social justice leaders to create a learning community at the nexus of joy for learning, transformational storytelling, and global justice. With this project, The Redford Center expands its focus on impact-driven storytelling and the power of narrative, understanding that every person, at every age, already is an environmentalist, storyteller, and agent of creative community and positive change.

The Redford Center's civic engagement initiative showcases local activists, storytellers, and culture-makers as the visionary leaders needed to build the movement towards a future rooted in environmental justice and regeneration.​

Our 2021-22 series, Community Power, highlights how investing in clean energy, and specifically, clean transportation, provides the opportunity to cut harmful air pollution threatening our health and livelihoods, support people and communities who are too often left behind, and create millions of jobs that modernize our transportation and energy infrastructure. Through the power of storytelling, Community Power films showcase unity and community power in a collective call for civic engagement around clean transportation to build a safer, more just future for all.

Our Nature Films Program explores solutions to creating nature access for all through films and projects that put story, sound, imagery, and science behind a phenomenon deeply felt around the world: that humans and nature are inseparable and that connecting with the outdoors has a profoundly positive effect on human health. Humans evolved symbiotically with nature; we are predisposed to connect with and be our healthiest selves when engaging with the outdoors. This program will show us how.

Our Nature Films Program includes a growing number of stories and projects that explore equity and access to nature and the outdoors, from across our organization and collaborating filmmakers.