Mobilizing Funds
for Investment
in Communities

The Inflation Reduction Act created unprecedented funding opportunities for Native American Tribes, yet the majority of Tribes lack the capacity and expertise to access this funding. The Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy (ATCE)—an Indigenous, women-led nonprofit—is working to bridge the gap, so Tribes can develop, construct, and manage new clean energy infrastructure with the aid of federal dollars. With a grant from Invest in Our Future, ATCE began offering energy planning, grant writing, project financing, and project development services to Tribes, and formed a partnership with the Solar Energy Industries Association to vet and recommend reliable clean energy developers. They also helped convene Tribes, state and federal policymakers, and other key partners at the 2023 Tribal Energy Equity Summit.

The Just Transition Fund supports place-based strategies to help America’s coal communities successfully navigate the clean energy transition. These communities—spread across 10 percent of all counties nationwide—have been hard-hit by coal’s decline, but the rise of new clean energy technologies and availability of new federal investments offers an opportunity to retool infrastructure, reapply skills, and reshape local economies. Invest in Our Future awarded the Just Transition Fund a grant for their Federal Access Center (FAC). Through the FAC, the Just Transition Fund helps coal communities access federal funding for economic diversification, workforce development, and infrastructure projects that will facilitate a just, equitable transition. They also engage federal officials on implementation progress, identifying gaps and hurdles standing between disadvantaged communities and these critical resources.

The Rural Climate Partnership (RCP) is a funding collaborative that promotes climate solutions for rural America, by rural America. RCP engages rural communities, lifting up place-based strategies for advancing clean energy and agriculture transitions that will save money while reducing pollution. RCP also runs the Resource Rural initiative that provides technical assistance to rural communities seeking to access federal clean energy funding and organizes grassroots support for new clean energy projects.

The Solutions Project (TSP) is a national nonprofit that identifies and funds organizations—particularly women of color-led organizations—forging climate solutions alongside frontline communities. Along with directly backing efforts to craft community-centered responses to climate change (from clean energy deployment to disaster preparedness) TSP provides communications training to these organizations, so they can reshape public opinions and policy discussions around climate change.