Climate Justice Fund Program Associate

Do you enjoy supporting community organizers, managing a well-curated to-do list, and collaborating with coworkers? Are you committed to advancing climate justice for all?

About Us

Bread & Roses Community Fund is a social justice fund and the Philadelphia region’s leading funder of grassroots organizing for racial, social, and economic justice. Our slogan is “change, not charity” and our goal is radical transformation of society. Since 1977, we have been connecting donors and community organizers to move money to grassroots organizations creating real change. We also provide training to support movements for change, and work to build community across differences of race, class, and gender. Each year we raise every dollar that we give out in grants, and community members decide where that money goes.

About the Climate Justice Fund

In response to growing public pressure to address the climate crisis, the federal government is investing billions of dollars to combat and prepare for climate change. Because of this, grassroots community organizing is more essential than ever to ensure that grant-funded projects and programs directly invest in community-driven, reparative solutions for a better future.

Bread & Roses Community Fund, with support from The William Penn Foundation, is creating a three-year Climate Justice Fund. The Climate Justice Fund will move money to grassroots groups in the Philadelphia region (Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Camden counties), organizing to change the policies, practices, and processes that create and maintain climate injustices.

Climate change is already impacting our daily lives. It is disrupting our food, health, safety, housing, and education systems. Climate injustices, ranging from extreme heat and storms to supply chain disruptions to lack of access to clean water, are borne disproportionately by people of color, poor and working-class people, people with disabilities, women, and LGBTQIA+ people. It is apparent that extreme heat leads to increased violence, including gun violence; that lands most vulnerable to flooding are often the same historically Black neighborhoods that banks redlined; and that consumer-facing programs, such as subsidies for clean technology, often fail to fairly benefit those most marginalized.

Given how interconnected climate change is—and how little has been gained historically by isolating “environmental” issues in their own silo—the Climate Justice Fund will provide resources to groups using community organizing to advance climate justice in broad terms through changes in legislation, regulation, and institutional policies and practices.

The Climate Justice Fund will also be a platform for building community among its grantees and creating opportunities for them to support and learn from each other. Bread & Roses will convene grantees to identify common barriers and challenges and to make recommendations to legislators and other policymakers, as well as local and national funders on how to continue, adapt, and expand support for climate justice.

About the Position

The Climate Justice Fund Program Associate will support Bread & Roses Community Fund’s Climate Justice Fund, which is being designed through a community-driven process in 2024 and will begin grantmaking in 2025. This position reports to the director of programs.

Key Responsibilities

• Build and manage relationships
  • Take proactive ownership of relationship building by conducting outreach and making connections with grassroots organizations working on fund-related issues
  • Regularly convene climate justice fund grantees and manage outside facilitation
  • Maintain up-to-date knowledge of grantee activities and outcomes and forge substantive, sustained connections
  • Respond to inquiries about Bread & Roses funding opportunities
  • With the director of programs, manage site visits or other grantee touchpoints
  • Regularly share grantee updates with staff members, the public, and funders
  • Proactively identify opportunities for skill development, capacity building, and professional connections in support of a strong, active network of climate justice organizations throughout the Philadelphia region
• Manage community-led grantmaking
  • In collaboration with director of programs, manage all aspects of the Community Grantmaking Committee (CGC); this may include recruiting and training members, scheduling meetings and applicant interviews, facilitating discussions, and ensuring that grantmaking practices align with the fund criteria (eligibility, award amounts, and application processes) established by the Community Advisory Committee
  • In collaboration with grants administration staff, review all grant applications and prepare eligible applications for review by CGC members
  • Assist with drafting CGC grant recommendations to share with Board of Directors
  • Support director of programs and consulting team in hosting listening sessions with community members as needed; document and share listening session outcomes with CGC and other stakeholders
• Administer climate justice fund
  • In collaboration with the development and communications team, promote the fund and solicit grant applications from organizations located throughout the Philadelphia region
  • Once funds are awarded, create, distribute, and collect grant agreements
  • Support grantee reporting; maintain accurate, up-to-date grantee files
  • Participate in team-wide responsibilities, including screening applications for eligibility and maintaining grants administration systems
  • Coordinate evaluation, reflection, and reporting to funders
  • Track grantee needs and work to identify and share potential solutions
• Steward Bread & Roses resources
  • Prepare reports, reflections, and other documentation to be shared with Bread & Roses staff and board members as well as funders
  • Support organization-wide fundraising efforts, including making fundraising and stewardship calls to Bread & Roses donors and documenting communication in Bread & Roses’ donor database
  • Along with other staff members, ensure the office is welcoming, safe, and clean
• Other duties as assigned

Required Skills and Experience

• Grassroots community organizing: Solid experience (5+ years) working on social justice campaigns or labor organizing campaigns that center community voices and build power among stakeholders most affected by the target issue.
• Familiarity with climate justice work in the Philadelphia region: Awareness of and engagement with current community organizing efforts focused on community-based climate justice. Interest in identifying and elevating systems-focused solutions that center the communities most impacted by climate change-related issues.
• Attentive, empathetic relationship builder: Enthusiasm for meeting and engaging with people. Able to put people at ease, especially across lines of difference and power.
• Effective facilitator: Demonstrated ability to design and lead meetings that engage a multi-racial, cross-class, intergenerational group of participants. Effectively leans into and resolves disagreement and conflict; supports the group in consensus-driven decision-making.
• Experience managing a high volume of work with efficiency: Asks for help and clarification when needed. Can manage a system for keeping tasks from slipping through the cracks. Able to juggle competing demands and prioritize without sacrificing quality. Plans backwards to meet deadlines. Follows through on commitments.
• Project management: Demonstrated ability to clearly define roles, break a project into smaller component pieces, create a timeline, and track progress.
• Clear written and verbal communication: Communicates well with others, including sharing context and asking questions to understand others’ perspectives. Responds to people in a timely manner. Takes pride in providing clear, helpful information.
• Attention to detail: Notices and fixes errors that others might overlook.
• Self-awareness and emotional intelligence: Ability to hear, reflect, act on, and learn from feedback and willingness to give feedback to others.
• Mission alignment: Shares our vision of liberation for all people and our theory of change that movements are the key strategy to get us there.

A minimum of five years of full-time work experience is desired.

Location & Hours

This is a full-time, in-person position based in our Philadelphia office, with potential for hybrid work as team needs allow. Our regular hours are Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, and this position requires working occasional evenings and weekends.