The EJN Seed Grants 2025 program is offering media grants to immigrant, Black, Indigenous and people of color-serving newsrooms and media collectives in the United States and Canada.

The grants aim to support innovative, investigative and/or enterprise reporting projects on environmental or climate change issues that highlight topics, groups and/or locations underrepresented in mainstream media.

These grants are designed 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).

Scope of Work

The EJN Seed Grants program seeks to fund projects that utilize Freedom of Information Act requests or other investigative techniques to expose government or corporate misconduct and corruption related to the environment.

The program also encourages projects that feature storytelling and narratives about climate or environmental issues by and for communities not often featured in mainstream media, and in diverse languages.

Additionally, the program supports projects that 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.

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.

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.

Budget and Duration

The EJN Seed Grants program anticipates supporting three organizations with grants of $8,000 each.

In general, proposals with smaller budgets will be more competitive.

Additional Information

Along with funding, selected grantees will benefit from mentorship from media trainers, facilitated connections to relevant experts and assistance with media sustainability.

Key Dates

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

For More funding Opportunities, Visit Global Funding Opportunities.