Pulitzer Center launches Civil Society Micro-Grant Program 2025

The objective is to have Pulitzer Center-supported journalism as the inspiration for the projects supported by this civil society microgrant. By leveraging this reporting, they expect to build projects that amplify the voices of affected communities, foster public debate, and drive meaningful audience engagement that will lead to impactful conversations at COP 30 in Brazil.

Topics

• The civil society organization microgrant builds on the Pulitzer Center’s impactful journalism projects, which focus on the following:  
  • Climate and Labor: Exploring the intersection of climate change and labor, including the challenges faced by vulnerable communities and the business sector's response to navigating climate-related impacts on workers’ rights.
  • Rainforest: Highlighting critical issues and solutions in tropical forests, such as deforestation, biodiversity loss, the rainforest, and energy transition nexus, and the effects on Indigenous and local communities.
  • Ocean: Addressing pressing topics like overfishing, marine pollution, climate change impacts on ocean ecosystems, and the livelihoods of coastal communities.
  • Transparency and Governance: Uncovering governance challenges, good practices in natural resource management, and the ecological and societal impacts of policy decisions.

Funding Information 

• Grants range from US$2,000 to US$4,000. 

Duration

• The maximum duration for the proposal's implementation is nine months (March – November).

Eligible Activities

• Examples of activities may include, but are not limited to: 
  • Multi stakeholder dialogue: Facilitating transparent and meaningful dialogues that bring together affected communities, journalists, decision-makers, and academia to advance climate and environmental action.
  • Public forum: Organizing a national forum to foster public debate on key environmental issues, with Pulitzer Center-supported reporting as one of the knowledge or data sources to provoke discussions and inspire solutions.
  • Community engagement: Knowledge-sharing activities between journalists and communities to amplify underreported issues and underrepresented voices. 
  • Creative campaign: Supporting creative campaigns to raise awareness on climate and environmental issues by amplifying journalism reporting and the diverse voice of affected communities;
  • Other innovative projects: Creative ideas such as art exhibitions or other innovative mediums and platforms are also accepted.

Eligibility Criteria

• Organization type: This grant is open to grassroots organizations, civil society organizations and coalitions, youth movements, and other groups working at the intersection of climate, environment, journalism, civic rights, and active citizenship. The organizations should develop activities in Southeast Asia, Latin America, or in Africa.
• Capacity for collaboration: A track record of co-creating impactful projects with other organizations and operational capacity to manage micro-grant resources from an international organization.
• Alignment with key issues: Proven experience working on the identified topics (climate change, rainforest, ocean, transparency and governance).

Ineligibility Criteria

• Type of activities which are beyond the scope of this grant:
  • Projects which are not utilizing Pulitzer Center-supported reporting or does not involve Pulitzer Center-supported journalists;
  • Direct advocacy or lobbying, such as participating in congress or parliamentary meetings;
  • Campaigns that involve or indirectly endorse political candidates or parties.

For more information, visit Pulitzer Center.