The Legacy of the CCRE
Participatory grantmaking is a relatively new theory in the field of philanthropy. The CCRE put it into practice. The approach is based on the hypothesis that grantmaking programs are stronger and more effective when the direction of those programs directly involves participation and input of the communities which they serve.
That same idea was the central principle in the design and implementation of the Coordination and Collaboration in the Resilience Ecosystem (CCRE) program administered by CRF through a cooperative agreement with the NOAA Climate Program Office from 2017-2022.
Uniquely, the CCRE program sourced its grantmaking priorities each year through a series of workshops designed to solicit input from the community of practitioners whom we aimed to serve. CRF and NOAA operationalized those engagements through Resilience Ecosystem Workshops and other convenings of climate service practitioners.
The success of our participatory model was facilitated by the early and enthusiastic engagement of so many members of the Resilience Ecosystem in helping to co-create, with CRF and NOAA, a working theory of change for the field, and their active participation in identifying gaps and opportunities where strategic funding from the CCRE program would be impactful at scale.
We also expect to integrate learnings the model in a couple of different ways through the CSCI program – by engaging a team of external RE representatives as advisors to the program, as well as by creating feedback loops through our Measurement & Evaluation efforts to learn from practitioners implementing on the ground and from the communities where they are engaged.
The new Climate Smart Communities Initiative (CSCI) will build on work accomplished under the CCRE program in myriad ways. For example, one objective of the Steps to Resilience training program (supported by CCRE grants) was to leverage the experience of our trainees as some of our first potential practitioners engaging with communities enrolled in CSCI. With the training complete and the buildout of the Registry of Climate Adaptation Service Providers underway (also supported by CCRE program grants), we expect to involve several of our StR trainees with communities served by CSCI. Other products created with support of CCRE grants will be widely available to community leaders, municipal planners, and other through a Knowledge Sharing Platform hosted on the NOAA Climate Resilience Toolkit. Likewise, CRF and our core team of partners will be working to raise additional funding to support the CSCI program through both public and private sources that will match and allow us to scale the investment of federal dollars provided under the new cooperative agreement for CSCI.