Resilient Futures Call 2026: US$10,000–20,000 Ideation Grants From a US$700,000 Fund for Climate and Political Leadership Work

Resilient Futures Call 2026: US$10,000–20,000 Ideation Grants From a US$700,000 Fund for Climate and Political Leadership Work

Most climate funding goes to one of two places: the technical work of cutting emissions, or the advocacy work of pressuring governments from the outside. The Resilient Futures Call is aimed at the space in between — the quality of the political leadership that has to make and hold climate decisions once the science is in and the campaign has been won.

It is a joint call from the Better Politics Fund, the European Climate Foundation, Naia Trust, and the Vibe Fund, with US$700,000 available across two streams. Only one of those streams is open to applications: the Ideation Grants, worth US$10,000–20,000 each, for new or early-stage ideas. The second stream, Incubation Grants of up to US$50,000, is filled by nomination and has no application form.

Applications close at midnight CET on 4 September 2026. Decisions are expected in late November or early December 2026.

Key details

What the call is actually funding

The call names three funding areas. Read them carefully before you write anything, because the difference between them is the difference between a shortlisted application and a fast rejection.

Pathways. Work that connects climate scientists, advocates, and affected communities directly with political decision-makers. The emphasis is on the connection itself — building durable routes by which evidence and lived experience reach the people who legislate and regulate, rather than producing more evidence and hoping it lands.

Leadership. Work that builds climate understanding into how democratic political leaders are developed. Think training pipelines, curricula for legislative staff, induction programmes for newly elected officials, peer networks among sitting politicians — anything that changes what a political leader knows and can do about climate when they take office.

Cross-Sector Leadership. Work in climate-adjacent sectors — energy, housing, transport, food, security, health, and conservation — where the leadership question is the same but the sector framing is different. This area exists because a housing minister making decisions with climate consequences may never think of themselves as working on climate at all.

An application only needs to align with one of the three. Trying to claim all three usually reads as a lack of focus rather than breadth.

Where the work has to be

Regional priority is a hard filter, not a preference. The listed countries are:

• Africa: Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa
• Asia: Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand
• Europe: France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain, United Kingdom
• Latin America: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname
• Pacific: Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu

Separately, the call publishes a long list of countries and territories from which it cannot fund, covering Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Burkina Faso, China, Cuba, DR Congo, Eritrea, Eswatini, Georgia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, India, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Laos, Libya, Mali, Morocco, Myanmar/Burma, Nicaragua, Niger, North Korea, Oman, Gaza, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen, and Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.

Two things worth flagging. First, the exclusion list is long enough that it is worth checking against directly rather than assuming — India and the United States are both on it, which surprises applicants who assume large democracies are in scope. Second, exclusion lists of this shape usually reflect the funders’ own legal and sanctions compliance rather than a judgement about the work, so there is rarely an appeal route. If your country is excluded, the honest answer is that this call is not available to you this cycle.

Who this fits, and who it does not

The Ideation stream is explicitly for the early end. The eligibility bar is that your organisation is under twelve months old, or that you are an older organisation launching a genuinely new pilot. The call states plainly that established programmes with a strong track record are not right for an Ideation Grant — that is what the nomination-based Incubation stream exists for.

This matters more than it might seem. A well-run organisation with five years of results and a request to extend its existing programme into a new country is not an Ideation applicant, even though the work may be excellent. The stream is buying the chance to test something unproven, and a proposal that reads as low-risk continuation is competing in the wrong category.

The call also publishes an unusually specific list of what it does not fund:

• Physical infrastructure projects with no political leadership component
• Research and accountability scorecards
• Public awareness campaigns with no political dimension
• Anything party-affiliated
• Corporate ESG initiatives
• Outside-pressure advocacy that does not build leadership capacity
• Citizens’ assemblies disconnected from political action
• Transparency initiatives with no link to institutional decision-making
• Watchdog journalism that does not strengthen political leadership

Notice the pattern. Several of these — scorecards, awareness campaigns, watchdog journalism, citizens’ assemblies — are things the climate and governance sector funds routinely and does well. They are excluded here not because they are weak but because they sit outside this fund’s specific theory of change, which is about what political leaders can do rather than what pressure is applied to them. If your work is one of these, do not try to reframe it. Reviewers who wrote the exclusion list will recognise their own categories in disguise.

The non-partisan requirement is absolute: no parties, no candidates, no campaigns. Working with politicians across party lines is the point; working for one party’s benefit disqualifies you.

How the application process works

The call is deliberately light. There is a single online form, and there is no second full-proposal stage — what you submit is what gets assessed. The form is linked from the official call page.

The sequence is:

1. You submit the form before the 4 September 2026 deadline.
2. All applications are screened and a shortlist is drawn.
3. A Grantmaking Council of eight regional experts reviews the shortlisted applications.
4. Shortlisted applicants are contacted for supporting documentation and, potentially, a call.
5. Decisions land in late November or early December 2026.

One consequence of the light-touch design deserves emphasis: only shortlisted applicants receive feedback. If you are not shortlisted, you will not learn why. That is a reasonable trade for a short form, but it means you cannot treat a first attempt as a free diagnostic.

Due diligence documents are only requested from the shortlist. Do not attach a full organisational dossier to the initial form — but do have your registration documents, governance structure, and basic financials ready, because the turnaround between shortlist contact and the Council’s decision window is not generous.

What the reviewers are weighing

The call lists six assessment criteria: innovation, impact potential, strategic clarity, financial clarity, regional fit, and leadership credibility and local rootedness.

Innovation here means new relative to the funding areas, not new in the abstract. A convening format that is common in European climate policy and untested in Fiji is innovative for this call.

Impact potential at Ideation scale is not a demand for measurable outcomes within the grant period. A US$10,000–20,000 grant buys a test. What reviewers want is a credible account of what would follow if the test works.

Strategic clarity is the criterion most applications fail. It asks whether you can state, in plain terms, which political decision-makers you are trying to reach, what you want to change about how they act, and why your approach would do that. Applications that describe an activity without naming the change it produces read as unstrategic even when the activity is sensible.

Financial clarity at this grant size means a simple, honest budget where the numbers match the plan. Reviewers are not looking for sophistication; they are looking for the absence of vagueness. A line reading “programme costs: US$14,000” is a problem.

Regional fit is partly the eligibility filter and partly a judgement about whether you understand the specific political conditions of the country you name. Generic climate-governance framing applied to a named country without reference to its actual institutions, election cycle, or civil service structure is a visible weakness to a Council chosen for regional expertise.

Leadership credibility and local rootedness asks who you are and whether you are of the place you propose to work in. A team with existing relationships to the decision-makers it names has an advantage that no amount of proposal polish substitutes for.

Preparing a competitive application

Attend an information session if the timing works. Two are scheduled for 17 August 2026, at 08:00 CET and 16:00 CET, with registration through a form linked from the call page. On a fund that gives no feedback to unsuccessful applicants, a live session where you can ask a direct question about fit is the only chance to test your read of the call before committing.

Before writing, do three things.

Name your decision-makers. Not “policymakers” — the actual roles. A committee, a ministry directorate, a bloc of newly elected local officials, a category of senior civil servant. The specificity forces you to check whether you can actually reach them.

Write the change sentence. One sentence: after this work, [these people] will be able to [do this thing] that they cannot do now. If you cannot write it, you do not yet have a strategically clear application, and no amount of context-setting will hide that from a Council reading dozens of submissions.

Check yourself against the exclusion list honestly. Read the nine excluded categories and ask whether a sceptical reader would place your project in one of them. If the answer is maybe, either sharpen the political-leadership component until it is unambiguous, or accept that this is not your fund.

Given the short form, ruthless compression is a genuine skill here. Every sentence spent on why climate change matters is a sentence not spent on why your specific idea works. The Council does not need convincing that the problem is real.

Timeline at a glance

Build in a buffer. A midnight CET deadline is early evening in Latin America and the middle of the night in the Pacific — for applicants in Fiji or Samoa, “4 September, midnight CET” falls during the morning of 4 September local time, which is easy to misread by a full day in the wrong direction.

Common mistakes

Applying as an established organisation. The single most common mismatch. If your track record is your strongest asset, the Ideation stream is structurally not for you.

Submitting a repackaged advocacy project. Outside-pressure advocacy is on the exclusion list. Rewriting a campaign proposal in leadership language rarely survives contact with an expert reviewer.

Ignoring the regional list. Work “across Africa” that does not centre Kenya, Nigeria, or South Africa fails the regional fit criterion regardless of merit.

Treating non-partisan as a formality. If your organisation has visible party ties — shared staff, shared premises, a founder who is a serving party official — assume due diligence will find it.

Leaving the budget vague. At this grant size a clear budget takes an hour. Skipping it signals carelessness about the thing reviewers are explicitly told to assess.

Waiting for the deadline. With no second stage, there is no later chance to fix anything. Submit with days to spare.

Frequently asked questions

Can I apply for an Incubation Grant? No. The Incubation stream, worth up to US$50,000, is nomination-based and has no open application route. Only the Ideation stream accepts applications.

How much of the US$700,000 goes to Ideation Grants? The call publishes US$700,000 as the total across both streams and does not break out a separate Ideation allocation. At US$10,000–20,000 each, the arithmetic suggests a meaningful but not enormous number of Ideation awards.

Do I need to be a registered organisation? The call does not publish a blanket registration requirement, but supporting documentation is requested at the shortlist stage for due diligence. Applicants without a legal entity should be prepared to explain how funds would be received and accounted for — a fiscal host is the usual answer.

My organisation is three years old but this specific project is brand new. Am I eligible? Yes — the criterion explicitly allows a new pilot from an older organisation. Make the newness of the pilot unmistakable in the application rather than leaving reviewers to infer it.

Will I get feedback if I am not selected? No. Only shortlisted applicants receive feedback.

Can I apply in a language other than English? The call does not publish a language policy. If this affects you, email [email protected] before the deadline rather than assuming either way.

Is there a second round after this one? The call does not announce a successor cycle. Treat 4 September 2026 as the only opportunity currently confirmed.

Official links and contact

• Call page and application form: https://www.betterpolitics.foundation/resilient-futures-call-2026
• Better Politics Fund: https://www.betterpolitics.foundation
• Enquiries: [email protected]

The Better Politics Fund lists a Berlin office at Hausvogteiplatz 12, 10117 Berlin, and a correspondence address at Brunnenstrasse 35, 10115 Berlin.

Verify all dates, amounts, and eligibility details on the official call page before applying. Details on this page reflect the call as published and checked on 2 August 2026, and funders can revise deadlines or requirements without notice.