Mosaic Movement Infrastructure

Mosaic aims to build local to national movement infrastructure that enhances diverse and collaborative engagement on four major policies and efforts intersecting with the environmental and justice communities. The goal is to move resources quickly to maximize the climate, environmental, and community benefits now possible, and ensure no community bears disproportionate burdens as this effort unfolds.

Successful applications will address all three focus areas outlined below:

1. Key policies: advancing climate, conservation, and justice in a critical window of time. There are four recently enacted policies and initiatives that provide opportunities to make significant gains on climate, conservation, and justice issues, but progress will depend on effective advocacy. Funding will support projects that focus on propelling the benefits of these four policy goals, while also countering new threats and mitigating harms:

* The Inflation Reduction Act creates the historic opportunity to invest $369 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 42% by 2030, while simultaneously advancing climate solutions, clean water, ecosystem restoration, and other outcomes that promote health and justice in communities, across states, and around the country. While it is investing $60 billion in environmental justice, at the same time, it could open the door to greater pollution in communities already on the frontlines of fossil fuel extraction and production.
* The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is generating historic investments in clean transit, green jobs, and public infrastructure to further reduce our carbon footprint to make our communities more climate resilient.
* The Justice40 initiative is intended to ensure that 40% of all federal investments flow to environmental justice efforts to promote safer and healthier communities.
* The 30×30 framework envisions the protection of 30% of all land and water in the U.S. by 2030 to advance a more inclusive, science-based, and locally driven stewardship of lands and waters.

2. Movement infrastructure: building the connections and shared tools to implement. Movement infrastructure – shared, field-wide tools and connections – will be essential to ensure the environmental community is connected and equipped with the tools and resources to effectively implement these policies and build a durable movement for the future. Funding will support projects that are collaborative by design, engage, and benefit multiple stakeholders, and create shared tools that advance one or more of the four policy priorities by strengthening the following six types of movement infrastructure identified by Mosaic’s Governance Assembly: Communications, leadership development, advocacy tools and training, data and information, relationships and trust, and philanthropic innovation.

3. Bridging and bonding: activating diverse and aligned field engagement. Mosaic will fund projects that: (A) Strengthen bonds amongst existing, aligned groups that share a core focus or (B) create or advance connective bridges that build greater power through mutually beneficial, authentic collaborations between organizations where trust, affinity, or shared focus may be lacking. Mosaic is also interested in supporting engagement by constituencies new or newer to environmental and justice advocacy. Given the cross-field nature & coordination required for the successful implementation of these policies, preference will be given to cross-field, bridging efforts.

Amount: A total of $5,500,000 is available. Award ranges are dependent on grant type:
* Seed (single year requests): Awards range from $50,000 – 100,000. Funding will pilot new and innovative movement infrastructure projects with startup funding to strengthen the implementation of the four policy initiatives.
* Cultivate (single or multi-year requests) Awards range from $150,000 – 200,000. Funding supports and cultivates the capacity of existing collaborative movement infrastructure efforts to sustain their work or achieve a new level of scale and impact in the implementation of the four policy initiatives.
* Harvest (single year requests); Awards range from $200,000 – 300,000. Funding will actualizes existing movement infrastructure that is advancing one or more of the policy initiatives near a specific tipping point (big win, victory, outcome, etc.) with targeted last mile resources.

Eligibility: Nonprofit 501c3 public charity organizations or equivalent (including fiscally sponsored projects or a collaboration of organizations that includes a 501c3 non-profit acting as a lead steward).

Additionally, projects must be:
* Advancing field-wide connections and shared tools across one or more of our six areas of movement infrastructure and are widely beneficial to multiple organizations (as opposed to one or a small few number of organizations)
* Supportive of people and organizations who predominantly focus on clean air and water, a safe climate, healthy and just communities, thriving natural systems, or other related environmental protection and justice topics
* Based in and substantially focused on the United States

Link: https://mosaicmomentum.org/2022mosaicrfp/

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