About
Cricket Island Foundation’s (CIF) Leadership Transition Fund provides multi-year general operating support to support youth-led social change organizations through the leadership transition process, with a focus on supporting BIPOC leaders. Grantees receive $45,000 per year for three years, in addition to peer learning and coaching support alongside a small group of peer grantees. Through this fund, CIF hopes to be a stabilizing source of support during a vulnerable process in an organization’s life cycle, and to learn best practices for supporting healthy organizational transitions and leadership development in the youth-led social change field. We expect to award six grants in this round of funding.
Criteria
We are seeking groups that meet the following criteria:
Transition stage: Outgoing executive director(s) are planning to transition from their roles within the next two years. Since the purpose of this fund is to support groups through the process of active leadership (for this fund, “leadership” refers to the executive director or equivalent) transition, we are not considering groups whose directors have already left their roles.
Shared decision making and learning: Committed to include multiple stakeholders (including board, staff, constituency, or the equivalent based on your organization’s structure) in the leadership transition process and share learnings from that process with the field.
Youth and/or multi-generational: Prioritizes community members most affected to identify and work towards systemic solutions for issues that impact their community. Community members served must be youth (in this case, youth is defined as young people ages 13-24) and/or represent multiple generations, including youth, in its overall work.
BIPOC & community leadership: Centers and builds the leadership of youth and Black, Indigenous, & people of color at all levels of their organization, as reflected in their staff, constituency, and board. We are prioritizing BIPOC-led organizations whose staff and board reflect the communities they serve in terms of lived experience, demographic makeup, and political alignment.
Commitment to working through conflict: Has a demonstrated practice of acknowledging and addressing organizational conflict. We recognize that conflict and challenges are a natural part of organizations, especially during leadership transition processes. Part of the purpose of this fund is to support grantees in working through these conflicts.
Founders and/or long-term EDs: We are prioritizing organizations whose outgoing leader(s) is the organization’s founder(s) and/or have been in their roles for 5+ years.
Budget: A maximum youth-led social change and/or organizational budget of $1.5M.
Application Instructions + Process
We ask all interested applicants to complete a screening form to ensure that they meet our core criteria. We anticipate this form will take 30-45 minutes to complete. Screening forms are due by September 15th. If you need support completing this form, please email Hana at ciftransitions@gmail.com.
We’ll invite groups who meet our criteria to submit an application by September 26th. Applications may be submitted either through a narrative document or participating in a 75-minute application call with CIF’s Leadership Transition Grants Advisory Committee, which will take place between September 28-October 20, 2023. Applicants may choose which format they prefer; questions will be the same for both written and interview applications. We ask that applicant organizations’ outgoing director(s) and at least one key organizational stakeholder be part of the application process.
After applications are completed and reviewed, the Grants Advisory Committee will share a list of recommended grantees with CIF’s Board of Directors.
Final grant decisions will be made during CIF’s fall board meeting, during the 2nd week of November, and applicants will be notified shortly afterwards. Grants will be disbursed starting December 1, 2023.
About Cricket Island Foundation
Cricket Island Foundation’s mission is to develop the capacity and commitment of young people to improve their lives and communities, as well as the world around them. The Foundation’s values include:
Connecting through building and growing relationships.
Collaborating through mutual sharing and learning.
Communicating honestly and openly; and
Integrating diverse perspectives.
The 2023 Leadership Transition Fund Grants Advisory Committee is comprised of:
Chhaya Chhoum, Southeast Asian Freedom Network
Chi-Ante Jones, Cypress Fund
Hana Sun, Grants Advisory Committee organizer
Jordyn Lexton, Bending Arc Consulting
Maggie Bluhm, Cricket Island Foundation
Neva Walker, Inspire, Motivate, Educate (I.M.E.) Consulting
Rachel Caïdor, Third Wave Fund
Questions about the Leadership Transition Fund? Email ciftransitions@gmail.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.