Facing a significantly altered funding landscape, Members of the NAM’s Climate Communities Network and philanthropies are pursuing new strategies—and learning from one another about innovative ways to sustain their work.
By Jamie Durana
When the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science in Durham lost its grant funding from a federal agency last year, the team tracking extreme heat exposure in 30 communities across the United States was left to figure out how they could continue their critical work. The team had planned to collect data for 3 years showing how extreme heat was affecting residents, infrastructure, and economies—data that could provide actionable insights on everything from siting new cooling centers to identifying where neighborhoods needed more tree cover.
The museum’s experience isn’t isolated. Across the United States, community-based organizations (CBOs) addressing the health impacts of climate change are navigating a funding landscape that has significantly shifted. In the wake of federal funding changes and gaps in grants, Members of the National Academy of Medicine’s Climate Communities Network (CCN) now face difficult choices about how to fund deeply urgent work.
Rather than retreat, CCN Members are establishing new partnerships, sharing strategies, and leveraging network connections to sustain critical efforts. In December 2025, the NAM hosted a workshop for CCN Members on reimagining funding for community-based climate and health initiatives. Members and Strategic Partners gathered with representatives from the philanthropic sector to discuss funding challenges head-on and chart a path forward, together.
Recognizing the Stakes
Reduced federal funding creates cascading effects throughout the broader ecosystem, also affecting the availability of funds from state governments, universities, and other organizations. As resources become scarcer, all of these entities face constraints and budget pressures. Consequently, private philanthropic organizations are stretched thin as the pool of applicants grows for a limited number of grants.
The grantmaking process has only become more competitive, especially for CBOs, as more organizations compete for fewer resources. Yet the urgency of their work hasn’t diminished. For CCN Members working in underserved and under-resourced communities, the populations they serve continue to face urgent health challenges. Cindy Robertson, executive director of Micah 6:8 Mission in Sulphur, Louisiana, says that urgency was crystal clear at a recent community event. Robertson asked the 50 or so residents present to raise their hands and then to lower them if they or anyone close to them in the community had been affected by conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, or heart disease—illnesses worsened by factors like air pollution and extreme heat. “Not a single hand was left up,” she said. Robertson added that the average lifespan in her neighborhood is 69 years, whereas the national average is 79.
For CCN Members, the Network has become a critical resource for navigating uncertainty—offering connections, resources, and platforms to share strategies and troubleshoot challenges precisely when Members need them most. The Network’s support system is yielding concrete action. Faced with constraints on traditional funding, Members are creating new approaches and using CCN connections to make these pivots possible, several of which were highlighted during the December event.
Building Connections, Creating Solutions
Mycelium Youth Network, an Oakland, California-based organization, is hoping a new social enterprise project can help bring in revenue to fund their work. CCN Member Lil Milagro Henriquez, Founder and Executive Director of Mycelium, explained that the organization is developing a cozy video game with built in social-emotional wellness tools. Mycelial Realms is designed to foster environmental literacy based on Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), reduce climate anxiety through social and emotional learning (SEL), and promote collective action among young people. The game is rooted in Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and fosters opportunities for youth to use game play to connect with their lived environment, meeting youth where they are–in digital spaces. Henriquez emphasized the need to develop new sources of income that can sustain the organization’s work: “It’s becoming harder and harder to get funding from foundation partners. We need to create solutions and revenue that works for us to build the world that we want to see.”
Other CCN Members are pursuing similarly bold strategies. Armen Henderson, medical director of Dade County Street Response in Miami, Florida, described how the organization has begun work building an apartment complex. Henderson explained that the rental money generated will go toward funding the organization’s work offering disaster relief and medical services, including building infrastructure for a hospital.
These pivots from traditional nonprofit grant models to revenue-generating ventures represent significant shifts that come with steep learning curves. For leaders who built their organizations around community service, not business development, the transition can feel daunting. For CCN Members, working and learning together helps make navigating these new strategies more manageable.
Participation in CCN has opened up concrete opportunities for collaboration, and the collaborative approach is producing tangible results: Mycelium Youth Network partnered with Deloitte, a CCN Strategic Partner, to conduct market research analysis for their video game project. CCN Members Chandra Brown, executive director of Lifelines Counseling Services, and Leevones Fisher, founder and executive director of Bay Area Women Coalition, Inc., joined forces to co-develop a community-led disaster preparedness action plan in Mobile, Alabama. Working alongside city and county leaders and the local Emergency Management Agency, the effort is focused on strengthening disaster resilience by centering community voices in how the region prepares for and responds to disasters. These connections—facilitated by the Network—are helping Members access opportunities they couldn’t reach alone.
CCN Member María del Carmen Zorrilla is director of the University of Puerto Rico‘s OTIA (Observatorio de Tecnología e Investigación Aplicada [Observatory of Technology and Applied Research]) RESURGE Project. She said participating in the CCN has strengthened the university’s capacity when it comes to developing climate and health solutions. “The Network’s institutional prestige has facilitated strategic connections with governmental structures, community leadership, and the academic sector, enabling the development of collaborative and competitive initiatives within the current funding landscape,” Zorrilla noted. “Beyond knowledge exchange, CCN has been an institutional catalyst, positioning our projects within public policy and philanthropic ecosystems and expanding opportunities that would have been difficult to achieve independently.”
As community organizations forge new partnerships and strategies, many philanthropic partners are also reexamining their funding practices. Mosaic Environmental Fund is a national collaborative fund that builds power in the environmental movement through support for networks, coalitions, shared resources, and other infrastructure that helps groups bridge divides across issues, sectors, demographics, and geographies and align strategies. Describing its approach to strengthening the broader field, Mosaic’s Eva Hernandez said the organization aims to “illustrate what is possible when we invest in that full field infrastructure” and in local leadership, ensuring community-based efforts are connected across state, regional, and national networks. “Equitable resource distribution is really critical,” Hernandez added, to align networks and turn local momentum into lasting impact. The Kresge Foundation is a private foundation focused on advancing equity and opportunity in American cities through grantmaking and social investments nationally and in their focus cities: Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans and Fresno. Through its Climate Change, Health & Equity initiative, Kresge supports organizations working at the intersection of climate change and health equity. Kresge’s Alejandra Hernandez reflected on how grantmaking practices can evolve and emphasized the importance of rethinking funder–grantee dynamics: “Strong funder partnerships center learning, relationships, and long-term support—not just deliverables. To make lasting impact, we need funding structures that honor community expertise and strengthen the ecosystems where communities can truly lead and thrive. It’s important to think about how to become creative around how we do learning together and not just ask for reports for compliance or to check the box.”
Moving Forward
The ways CCN Members are tackling funding challenges head-on reflect a broader shift in how CBOs are approaching organizational sustainability. And what they’re learning—through trial, innovation, and mutual support—holds lessons for climate and health work across the country: while local innovation can’t fully solve the compounding challenges in the funding landscape, for organizations operating as lifelines in the communities they serve, the path forward requires resourcefulness, realism, and relentless resolve.
CCN Members remain committed to tackling urgent climate and health challenges and won’t wait for traditional funding to be restored. “Our commitment to this work doesn’t dry up with the funding, and nor do the challenges posed to communities,” said CCN Member Max Cawley, director of climate research and engagement at the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science. He emphasized the need to focus on creative strategies in order to carry through that commitment. “I’ve been buoyed by the sustained enthusiasm and courage of our partners and team in pushing forward with this work—the stakes are too high, and the young people in our lives are relying on us to not give in to despair.” The work continues—sustained by community need, organizational resilience, and the power of collective action.
