As climate risks intensify and federal funding remains uncertain, community foundations are emerging as essential anchors for local resilience work. With deep roots in their regions, these institutions bring the long-term perspective, trusted relationships, and flexible tools needed to advance climate solutions tailored to place. Kristin Tracz, Director of the Community Foundation Climate Collaborative, discusses how community foundations are partnering with CDFIs and other lenders to move projects forward, what localized resilience looks like in practice, and why collaboration across the philanthropic and community finance sectors has never been more critical.

Q: How do you see community foundations stepping into a larger role in sustaining and scaling climate resilience initiatives?

Community foundations exist to play the long game in communities by building on strong established relationships and living with deep commitment to improving community well-being, resilience and change. There are over 900 community foundations across the country, many of which have been active for decades if not 100+ years in their places. Over that time, they have responded to boom and bust cycles, and learned how to provide steady support and elevate community leadership. That long-term perspective allows community foundations to engage authentically in conversations around clean energy and climate resilience that can unfortunately too-often feel polarized or short-term. 

Unlike many national or private funders, community foundations work directly with community leaders and organizations on the ground. They bring together decision-makers and advocates to develop solutions tailored to place, using a wide range of tools — from grants and donor engagement to loan guarantees and low-cost capital. Community foundations are, in effect, a multi-tool that can be activated in lots of different ways. In many communities, they are the primary philanthropic resource activated during climate emergencies, positioning them to shape and implement resilience strategies. 

As climate risks like fires, floods and storms persist regardless of national policy shifts, community foundations are focused on ensuring communities remain livable, affordable, and safe. That includes building long-term local capacity to plan, collaborate and act when challenges arise — work that takes time, trust, and sustained commitment.

Q: As federal incentives fluctuate, local actors have become even more central to supporting these initiatives. What models of collaboration show the most promise for ensuring neighborhoods historically excluded from these opportunities can benefit? 

A: We see significant opportunities for closer collaboration between community foundations and community lenders, including CDFIs, credit unions and green banks. Often, projects face early-stage barriers that prevent them from entering lending pipelines. Community foundations can help address those gaps by supporting pre-development needs and preparing projects for financing. 

That work might include helping a health clinic understand the opportunities to use solar + battery to ensure reliable coolers for sensitive medicines, or matchmaking between a nonprofit providing clean energy installations and community-serving organizations who aren’t likely to have the time and capacity to think through a clean energy project on their site. Using their local knowledge and grantee networks, community foundations can surface opportunities in neighborhoods that have historically been overlooked and ensure they have a seat at the table. 

Over the past year, community foundations have helped spotlight projects, resolve early barriers, and braid philanthropic capital with tax incentives and lending. One example is the Pittsburgh Foundation’s collaboration with funders, CDFIs, and developers to leverage $1.3 million in philanthropic capital alongside more than $530k of tax incentives together to bring solar and battery storage to four Federally Qualified Health Clinic sites to become climate resilient and significantly reduce increasing utility costs. 

Q: From your perspective, what does localized climate resilience look like in practice?

A: One important aspect of working in communities is recognizing that every place is different, with specific needs and opportunities to advance resilience. At the same time, common challenges, learnings, and approaches emerge when working across many communities. Through the Community Foundation Climate Collaborative, we are building shared infrastructure for networked learning and problem-solving so those insights can be applied across places while still honoring local context. 

We are advancing localized climate resilience on two fronts. First, we are focused on ensuring that community foundations themselves are well set up to withstand shocks. That includes developing continuity of operations plans; putting pre-disaster contingency plans in place for accessing generators, clean water, and supplies; pre-positioning grants with trusted first responder and frontline organizations; and ensuring longer-term recovery needs are adequately resourced. We are sharing those lessons across our network so as many communities as possible are ready to respond when needed. 

Second, while changes to the federal climate resilience, response, and recovery infrastructure present significant challenges, they also create opportunities for community foundations. In particular, a shift toward block grant funding through FEMA presents a potential opportunity for community foundations to serve as intermediaries — receiving funds and distributing them locally to support natural disaster planning, preparedness, response and recovery. By increasing coordination with federal, state and local emergency management entities, and by building capacity to administer federal grants, community foundations can help communities secure much-needed investment. 

Beyond disaster response, community foundations also play a critical convening role, ensuring long-term planning efforts are regularly updated and grounded in community input. From resilience hubs in Southwest Florida, to coastal resilience planning in San Diego, to multi-hazard collaborations in Marin County, community foundations are anchoring locally driven approaches that reflect community priorities.

Q: New Orleans has emerged as a proving ground for philanthropy-supported climate resilience projects. What insights from the city’s recent projects illustrate what a shift toward community-rooted solutions can achieve?

New Orleans’ efforts to build community resilience hubs called “community lighthouses” — churches, community centers and clinics, powered by commercial-scale solar panels and backup battery storage — have been gaining speed over the last several years, mostly thanks to community interest and engagement. Community organizing efforts led by Together Louisiana after Hurricane Ida, focused on preventing future heat and carbon monoxide inhalation deaths correlated to power outages after storms. The clear focus and anticipated real potential impact of creating solar-powered hubs that provide residents access to safe shelter, food and other emergency assistance, led to a $1 million lead investment from the Greater New Orleans Foundation (GNOF). That accelerated the development of proof-of-concept projects, five of which provided power during outages caused by Hurricane Francine. Now the goal is to build resilience hubs across the region within a short walk from every neighborhood. Together Louisiana, along with Together New Orleans’ large membership of faith-based and community-based organizations, has propelled this expansion.

The benefits of these resilience hubs, both during the threat of a storm as well as longer-term economic and job opportunities, make a compelling case for sustaining investment in implementing these hubs across the region. These uniquely community-led approaches have also strengthened competitiveness for federal funding. Through GNOF’s Next 100 Years Challenge, projects rooted in community leadership — such as the United Houma Nation’s multi-phase resilience strategy — demonstrated impact and readiness, resulting in a $56 million NOAA grant supporting resilience hubs, green infrastructure, relocation planning, and cultural preservation. 

Q: What emerging tools or strategies do you believe will be most critical for community foundations seeking to advance climate resilience projects? 

We expect there will be an even bigger need for collaboration moving forward. There will be a need to help matchmake across opportunities, and ensure good ideas turn into real, concrete projects that can be matched with implementation capital. We believe community foundations can play an important role in the planning, development, and implementation of climate resilience and clean energy projects and are seeking to formalize partnerships with networks of community lenders that will help us do that.  We are also working to make sure our own community foundation members are positioned to learn as much as possible from each other.  

Additionally, we are exploring opportunities like setting up revolving loan funds, or pooling resources to attract investments that can both make an impact in a particular place and provide a model for other places to replicate. That may include de-risking projects, buying down interest rates or providing seed funding or first-loss funding that helps galvanize additional resources. Across communities, from Cleveland to Dubuque to Fresno, community foundations are stepping in where traditional lenders have not yet ventured.