Check out the latest insights from our program team and grantees.

Minnesota-based Fresh Energy has been a leader in climate advocacy for more than 30 years, playing a significant role in what it calls “speeding Minnesota and the Midwest’s transition to a clean energy economy.”

Grantee
Fresh Energy

Acclaimed director/actor Ron OJ Parson is in a season of radical reflection. In a 50-year career that most creatives dream of, Parson has become one of the nation’s pre-eminent theater directors. Learn more about his work here.

We the People of Detroit is a grantee partner of Joyce’s Environment Program. Learn more about the organization here.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chicago Sinfonietta, like so many organizations, was forced to reimagine itself, pivoting programming and performances to a fully virtual space.

Grantee
Chicago Sinfonietta

Congo Square Theatre is an ensemble dedicated to producing transformative work rooted in the African Diaspora. For 20 years it has committed to telling stories by and for Black people.

Grantee
Congo Square Theatre Company

Black Researchers Collective was founded in 2019 with a mission to train and equip communities with the research tools necessary to be more civically engaged and policy informed.

Grantee
Black Researchers Collective

South Side Community Art Center is the nation’s first Black arts museum that develops and showcases some of the nation’s most influential Black artists.

Grantee
South Side Community Art Center

READI Chicago Director Eddie Bocanegra Joins Justice Department as Senior Adviser

Grantee
Heartland Alliance

Fifty years on, Alliance for the Great Lakes expands environmental justice advocacy through inclusion and partnerships.

Grantee
Alliance for the Great Lakes

The Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project adapts and endures, rethinking performance space and how to reach audiences and students through a pandemic.

For more than a quarter century, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have built a global reputation for pursuing data and policy to reduce gun violence. The team marked its 25th anniversary this year in 2021.

Is 2020 the year of mail-in election ballots? In Ohio, they now sprout from trees.

The Minnesota lawmaker was surprised. On a Zoom session with a hundred people listening, a student with eight siblings and only half that many computers at home had a question for her.

Text messages and grocery store receipts? That was not part of the expansive outreach campaign Joan Gustafson and her partners envisioned when they set out three years ago to persuade more Michiganders to participate in the national 2020 Census.

Veterans were at risk. Often a bellwether of issues in higher education, they needed help with access to GI Bill funds and other financial assistance during the COVID-19 crisis.

The challenge is getting through the door. When the COVID-19 crisis hit, it posed a unique problem for accelerating efforts to make household energy more efficient and affordable.