Applications open for Green Screen Catalyst Fund

The goal of the Fund is to bring a diversity of voices into the local and global debates and enact change in terms of policy, research and community building.

Based on the common understanding that the climate crisis increasingly threatens life on this planet, the Green Screen Coalition is integrating climate justice action into digital rights philanthropic funding strategies. The initial research on the intersection of climate justice and digital rights recommended that funders and civil society:

• foster the development of cross-cutting projects and programmes;
• support collaborative research and information sharing;
• support common spaces for digital rights organizations and environmental justice actors to build trust, exchange strategies and create common agendas;
• support capacity of both grassroot organizers, Indigenous communities, and the digital rights and climate justice movements to engage with each other; and
• foster funding strategies that meet movements and communities where they are

Scope

• By catalyze, they mean support important conversations, projects, and action at the intersection with the hope that it will transform the way technology is built, how communities organize, and how they understand the interdependency between climate justice and technology.
• This includes, but is not limited to:
  • topics on the environmental impacts of internet infrastructures and digital technologies,
  • platform accountability, and the environmental impact of tracking and the AdTech industry,
  • climate mis- and dis-information,
  • research projects that apply a social justice lens to internet infrastructure research,
  • false and misleading climate solutions,
  • research and prototyping ideas for internet infrastructures and new technologies that are less environmentally damaging, such as slow internet, non-extractivist digital technologies, feminist and decolonial technologies,
  • digital and border surveillance economies and technologies for digital control,
  • and extractivism and mega-projects.
• You can apply with:
  • Research at the nexus of climate justice and digital rights and technology.
  • Translation of existing research and reports into other formats and languages.
  • Advocacy, narrative change strategies, and other emerging work at the nexus of climate justice and digital rights and technology.
  • Prototyping of policy demands that push forward actionable and positive climate action about internet infrastructure and new technologies into the policy and industry arena.
  • Community and round table events that bring together different actors to work towards an actionable agenda on a specific topic.
  • Community-led initiatives that engage with climate and environmental actors interested in the intersection and build bridges across fields.
  • Requests for travel support for digital rights and human rights practitioners to attend climate-related events, and vise-versa.
  • Follow up research to expand existing body of research, i.e landscape analysis, issue briefs, and other existing research at the intersection of climate justice and digital rights.
  • Meetings and collaborative research projects aimed at building trust and exchange strategies.
  • Developing organizational capacity on intersectional digital rights and climate justice issues
• Any previous grant recipients from the Green Screen Coalition are welcome and eligible to apply.

Size of Grants

• The Catalyst Fund seeks to support proposals addressing a range of issues and a range of different scopes. The grant period will be no longer than one year and with a total grant amount between $10k and $40k with three tiers:
  • Spark:
    • 10.000 USD
    • Individuals, collectives, networks and organizations
    • Smaller and earlier-stage ideas
  • Seed:
    • 20.000 USD
    • Organizations, collectives, networks and collaborations
    • Earlier-stage and more experimental projects
  • Build:
    • 40.000 USD
    • Organizations and collaborations between groups and organizations
    • Projects that already have some momentum and an engaged community
• They are looking to fund roughly 12 grantees with a mix of the three tiers. The funding timeline will start in January 2024 and end January 2025.

Who can apply?

• Organizations, individuals, and collectives from the majority territory, global north and Indigenous nations that are working at the intersection of climate justice and digital rights and technology. They’d also like to give special priority to key stakeholders working at the core of climate action, including Indigenous Peoples, women, youth, and Afro-descendant communities.
• They welcome well-established organizations, loosely-defined collectives, and individuals who are legally able to receive funds from the Catalyst Fund host Mozilla Foundation, which is a U.S. 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, to apply. If you operate as a collective but are not a legal entity, please choose one person to formally apply on behalf of the collective.

Ineligible

• For-profit endeavors
• Projects by technology companies or other industries to improve the sustainability of their products
• Projects that are not in the public interest or whose outcomes do not benefit anyone beyond the applicant
• Projects on behalf of communities of which the applicant is not a part, without partners or collaborators from said communities
• Projects with funding ties to fossil fuel companies
• Work that falls under lobbying or electioneering
• Projects that require funding from the Catalyst Fund that lasts longer than a year

For more information, visit Green Screen Coalition.