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 during executive transitions 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 as they choose. Previous grantees have

used funds to support initiatives that enabled a more holistic ED transition process, such

as overlapping salaries for outgoing and incoming EDs, leadership coaching, piloting

different organizational leadership models, collaborating 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 the 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.

To ensure this opportunity is the best fit for your organization’s current journey, please note

that we can only consider applications that align with these specific criteria. If your

organization’s profile or transition process falls outside these guidelines— for example, if

your budget exceeds $1.5M or your director will have departed before November 2027—

you will be ineligible for this grant.

We want to be mindful of your team's time and capacity. To help you determine whether

this fund is the right fit before investing in a full application, we ask all interested groups to

complete our 30-minute screening form.

Application Instructions + Process

1. We ask all interested applicants to complete the screening form to ensure they

   meet our core criteria. We anticipate this form will take 30 minutes to complete.

   Screening forms are due on a rolling basis between May 7 and September 1. We will

   let you know within 4 weeks of your submission if you have been invited to complete

   a full application. The final deadline to submit a screening form is September 1.

   
   

2. By September 15, we will invite eligible organizations to submit an application. To

   provide flexibility, you may choose one of two formats (both utilize the same set of

   questions):

   • Written Narrative: A form submitted on or before October 16, 2026.

   • Application Call: A 75-minute interview with CIF’s Leadership Transition

   Grants Advisory Committee, held between September 15 and October 16,

   2026.

   • We ask that the outgoing director(s) and at least one key organizational

   stakeholder participate in 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 at CIF’s fall board meeting in the first week of

   November, and applicants will be notified shortly afterward. Grants will be disbursed

   starting December 1, 2026.

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.

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