EJN Seed Grants 2025 to Support Climate & Environmental Journalism by BIPOC-Serving Newsrooms in the United States and Canada ($8,000 grant) Deadline: 31 October, 2024

Applications are open for the EJN Seed Grants 2025. EJN is offering media grants to immigrant, Black, Indigenous and people of color-serving newsrooms and media collectives in the United States and Canada to support innovative, investigative and/or enterprise reporting projects on environmental or climate change issues that call attention to topics, groups and/or locations lacking representation in mainstream media.

These grants are intended to fund the initial production of new journalistic tools or resources (such as open-source databases) and/or the publication of multi-part, longform journalistic work (such as an investigative series or a podcast). Along with funding, selected grantees will benefit from mentorship from media trainers, facilitated connections to relevant experts and assistance with media sustainability.

Project Themes

EJN is looking to provide seed funding to projects that:

• Utilize Freedom of Information Act requests or other investigative techniques to expose government or corporate misconduct and corruption related to the environment;
• Feature storytelling and narratives about climate or environmental issues by and for communities not often featured in mainstream media, and in diverse languages;
• Envision or implement alternative methods of reporting that could better serve their target audiences, including explorations of data sovereignty and cultural preservation, informed consent and community-led media initiatives;
• Dispel myths or counter misinformation related to target audiences and the environment or climate challenges they face;
• Enhance access to information within a news desert, whether geographical or topical.

Grant

• They anticipate supporting three organizations with grants of $8,000 each. In general, proposals with smaller budgets will be more competitive.

Eligibility

• Immigrant and/or BIPOC-serving media in the United States and Canada are eligible to apply. EJN’s definition of media for this opportunity includes newspapers, online media, radio, television, multimedia platforms, journalist networks, collectives and other groups that produce and distribute news and information.
• Civil society organizations, academic institutions, NGOs or environmental groups who do not fit the definition above are not eligible for this opportunity. Applications with a focus on advocacy and/or political campaigning will not be considered.
• For the purposes of this grant opportunity, they will only be accepting applications in English. Unfortunately, they do not have the capacity to consider applications in other languages at this time. Applicants must either have a working understanding of English or have a translator available to assist with communication with Internews staff. Projects may, however, produce content in any language best suited for their audience.
• Former EJN grantees are eligible to apply. They will take the performance of former grantees into consideration during the selection. Organizations with an existing EJN grant are not eligible.
• Applicants are required to be transparent about the use of generative AI tools, if any, to revise their proposals. EJN reserves the right to disqualify applicants from consideration if they have been found to have engaged in unethical or improper professional conduct, including, but not limited to, submitting AI-generated content as their own.

Judging Criteria

All applications they receive are reviewed and discussed by a panel of international judges, comprising Internews staff and experts in environmental journalism.

Applications will be evaluated using the following assessment criteria:

• The overall quality of the proposal;
• The relevance of the proposed project in contributing to the objectives and priorities of this grant program;  
• The potential impact of the proposed project, including the quality and effectiveness of the project design;  
• The innovative characteristics of the proposed activities;
• The financial viability and cost-effectiveness of the proposed activity;  
• The ability of the applicant to carry it out;
• The geographical spread of the grantees.

Application

The application deadline is October 31, 2024 at 11:59 PM (America/Los_Angeles).

Click here to apply

For more information, visit EJN.