Climate change activism./PHOTO; Courtesy
Youth-led movements are among the most dynamic forces shaping today’s climate response. Across continents, young people are organising communities, defending ecosystems, influencing policy, and reframing climate action through the lens of justice and lived experience.
Yet despite this leadership, philanthropy continues to treat youth-led climate action as peripheral rather than foundational.
This tension sits at the heart of the 2025 Youth Climate Funding Study, jointly produced by the Youth Climate Justice Fund (YCJF) and the ClimateWorks Foundation, with quantitative analysis by The Hour Is Late.
Examining philanthropic climate funding between 2022 and 2024, the study combines grant data with in-depth interviews from youth organisers and ecosystem actors across five regions.
Its conclusion is clear: youth-led climate movements remain chronically underfunded, constrained not only by the amount of funding available, but by how funding systems are designed.
Between 2022 and 2024, just 0.96 percent of grants from major climate foundations supported youth-led climate initiatives.
While awareness of youth leadership has grown, philanthropic practice has not kept pace.
Modest Gains, Structural Constraints
The report acknowledges progress. Funding to youth-led climate groups doubled from US$42.5 million between 2019–2021 to US$85.9 million between 2022–2024.
But this increase occurred alongside a far sharper rise in overall climate philanthropy, which tripled during the same period.
Youth-led organising, the study shows, continues to occupy the margins of climate funding strategies.
Support is also narrowly concentrated. Only 41 major climate foundations made grants to youth-led climate organising over the three years, and most issued five or fewer grants.
This pattern suggests that youth leadership is still viewed as an add-on rather than a strategic investment.
In the report’s foreword, Helen Mountford, President and CEO of ClimateWorks Foundation, frames the challenge bluntly: “We believe that movements, not projects, are what drive durable change.”
Yet much of climate philanthropy remains oriented toward short-term projects rather than the long-term work of movement building.
Why Funding Systems Fail Youth-Led Movements
The study makes clear that underfunding is not due to weak ideas or limited impact. Instead, youth-led organisations face structural barriers embedded in traditional philanthropic models.
Many youth groups are informal, newly established, or operating in restrictive civic spaces, making them poorly matched to funding systems designed around large, professionalised NGOs.
As the report notes, “Traditional funding mechanisms also often entail intensive documentation requirements, rigid programmatic restrictions, and micro-grant ceilings that demand significant administrative effort but offer limited support for building the long-term or core capacities of youth groups.”
The scarcity of multi-year or scaled funding opportunities, it adds, further compounds these challenges, making it difficult for youth-led groups to sustain, grow, or deepen their impact over time.
Short-term, project-based funding often forces youth organisations to prioritise donor expectations over community realities.
Without flexible support, they struggle to invest in staff, governance, communications, and wellbeing, the infrastructure that allows movements to endure.
Mountford underscores this gap, noting that “movements need more than just funding they need spaces to grow and systems of support.” For many youth organisers, those spaces remain elusive.
Global Inequities in Youth Climate Funding
Geography further entrenches exclusion.
The study documents stark disparities in where youth climate funding flows, with U.S.-based organisations receiving a disproportionate share, while youth-led groups across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania remain severely under-resourced.
If youth-led climate work outside the United States were funded at comparable levels, the study estimates that philanthropy would need to mobilise an additional US$381 million annually.
For many Global South organisers, access to funding is further limited by language barriers, visa restrictions, weak banking systems, and limited proximity to donor networks.
But geography alone does not define exclusion.
The study also highlights how Indigenous, Black, disabled, Romani, and queer youth organisers in high-income countries face chronic underfunding, often obscured by assumptions about access and privilege.
Funding, Power, and Relationships
Beyond funding volumes, youth organisers emphasised that how philanthropy engages matters as much as how much it gives.
A youth climate leader from Nigeria, quoted in the study, captures this distinction clearly:
“A lot of the time, it’s not just about receiving money, it’s about feeling like there’s foundational support from funders, and that funders see them on equal footing, even if the power dynamic isn’t the same. And I think that can only happen through actually speaking to young people, understanding what they need, who they are as people, why they care about the issues they’re advocating for, and what gaps the funding can help fill.”
This emphasis on relationship, trust, and dialogue runs throughout the study.
Youth organisers describe philanthropy that operates at a distance, focused on deliverables rather than connection, as ill-suited to the realities of grassroots organising.
Climate Justice Without Youth at the Centre
The study also interrogates climate philanthropy through a justice lens.
Only 11.7 percent of climate mitigation grants analysed between 2022 and 2024 explicitly addressed equity, rights, or justice.
Even within this subset, youth-led organisations received a small share of funding, and typically through smaller grants than those awarded to larger institutions.
This disconnect is significant because youth-led climate action is inherently intersectional.
Young organisers are working at the nexus of climate impacts, livelihoods, health, disability inclusion, gender justice, and land rights.
Siloed funding models, the study finds, struggle to accommodate this reality, often narrowing what counts as legitimate climate work.
Reimagining Philanthropy’s Role
Despite these constraints, youth-led movements continue to deliver impact, often with limited resources.
Their strength lies in deep community trust, local knowledge, and the ability to respond quickly to changing conditions.
The study argues that philanthropy, unlike governments or markets, is uniquely positioned to support this work if it is willing to rethink power and partnership.
As Mountford notes, “Philanthropy has a unique opportunity to nurture movements by investing not only in organisations, but also in the infrastructure of connection.”
This includes mentorship, peer learning, convenings, and long-term accompaniment support that builds resilience rather than dependency.
Crucially, youth organisers also call for inclusion in decision-making spaces, from advisory boards to grant committees, to ensure funding priorities reflect lived realities rather than distant assumptions.
Toward a More Just Funding Future
As the study draws to a close, a shared vision emerges.
Youth leaders and ecosystem partners call for flexible, multi-year fundingthat allows movements to plan beyond annual grant cycles.
They urge funders to co-create strategies with youth, prioritising relationships over rigid outcomes.
They highlight the importance of capacity development, peer networks, and solidarity-based approaches that reduce competition and strengthen collective power.
Re-granting organisations and movement builders, the study notes, are well-positioned to bridge gaps between grassroots groups and institutional funders, designing funding mechanisms that are more accessible and context-responsive.
Ultimately, the 2025 Youth Climate Funding Study delivers a clear message: youth-led climate movements are not an emerging force; they are already shaping the present.
What remains uncertain is whether philanthropy will evolve quickly enough to meet them with the trust, resources, and partnership they require.
As Mountford concludes, “The climate crisis demands ambitious, collaborative, and inclusive action. By standing with the next generation of climate leaders, together we can build a sustainable and equitable future for all.”
