About

Cricket Island Foundation’s (CIF) Leadership Transition Fund provides multi-year general operating support to youth-led social change organizations through the executive transition process, with a focus on resourcing directors who are not traditionally supported in their leadership (for this fund, “leadership” refers to the executive director or equivalent). 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 stabilize organizations through the executive transition process while learning 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.

This Fund is part of Cricket Island Foundation’s broader strategy to support small, grassroots, youth-led organizations in their organizational development. Leadership Transition Fund recipients are free to allocate funds how they choose. Previous grantees have used funds to support initiatives that allowed them to conduct a more holistic ED transition process, such as: overlapping salaries for outgoing and incoming EDs, leadership coaching, trying on different organizational leadership models, working with consultants to lead hiring or strategic planning processes, and more. 

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  transition, we are not considering groups whose directors have already left their roles. 

  
  

• Commitment to shared decision making, learning, and working through conflict: We are seeking organizations that are committed to including multiple stakeholders (including board, staff, constituency, or the equivalent based on your organization’s structure) in the leadership transition process, working through potential conflict that emerges through the transition process, and sharing learnings from that process with the field. 

• Youth and/or multi-generational: Prioritizes building leadership and power with community members closest to challenges the organization addresses. Community members served must be youth (in this case, youth is defined as people ages 13-24) and/or represent multiple generations, including youth, in their overall work. 

• Community leadership: Centers youth and leaders whose lived experiences align with the communities they serve and reflect this alignment across staff, board, and constituency. We are encouraging proposals from organizations whose staff and board reflect the communities they serve in terms of backgrounds, perspectives and lived experience.

• 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

1. We ask all interested applicants to complete a screening form, linked here, to ensure that they meet our core criteria. We anticipate this form will take 30 minutes to complete. Screening forms are due by August 11th.

2. We’ll invite groups who meet our criteria to submit an application by August 28th. 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 2- October 10, 2025. 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.

3. The Grants Advisory Committee will share a list of recommended grantees with CIF’s Board of Directors following completion of application interviews.

4. Grant decisions will be made during CIF’s fall board meeting, during the 1st week of November, and applicants will be notified shortly afterwards. Grants will be disbursed starting December 1, 2025.

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 2025 Leadership Transition Fund Grants Advisory Committee is comprised of:

Amanda Lanceplaine

Hana Sun

Iman Mills Gordon

Inhe Choi

Maggie Bluhm

Nikki Dinh

Rosa Peralta

Viri Hernandez

Questions about the Leadership Transition Fund? Email ciftransitions@gmail.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.