Youth-Led Program Design

Many private foundations give grants by invitation only and don’t read unsolicited proposals. The costs are real. Direct service nonprofits outside the existing network are ineligible for much-needed funding, and funders miss the chance to build relationships with the local changemakers actually doing the work.

In 2023, the Global Climate Initiative team at the Packard Foundation launched an open proposal process to support youth movements for forest and climate justice in Indonesia. The call drew over 400 applications. That kind of response makes the scale of Indonesian youth-led organizing impossible to ignore.

I served on the advisory committee that selected the two finalists, and worked closely with our legal and compliance team to make the requirements workable for informal grassroots movements. The approval processes all existed; what was new was sitting with the organizations to build the required documents themselves: articles of incorporation, and budget projections in place of the audited financial histories a young movement couldn’t have yet. Each adaptation came out of conversations with the compliance team, and I concretized them for our whole team so everyone knew a low-burden path existed through what looked, on the surface, like an impossible requirement. The two finalists were selected and funded, reaching movements that invitation-based grantmaking would have missed.