Five Funding Priorities
Collectrify invests in projects that catalyze innovation, amplify community-based solutions, and/or implement energy efficiency and building electrification efforts to advance the field of equitable building electrification.
Through our focus on leadership development, we help build thriving organizations while increasing their capacity, creating economic opportunities, and fostering long-term resilience. Our approach strengthens the base of community advocates focused on decarbonizing homes, which is essential for building the power to win on climate action.
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Our targeted investments in the following five priority funding areas empower frontline communities to lead the transition to a clean energy future and help us meet this moment with strategic focus. We invest where communities are ready to lead for the greatest impact, illustrated by the examples of our grantee partners’ work offered below.
Collectrify’s three pillars and five funding priorities for 2025 - 2027 work hand in hand.
The pillars shape our programming by building skills, knowledge, and capacity while our funding priorities determine where we invest resources. Together, they deliver more than just dollars—they provide the support, learning opportunities, and collective power needed to sustain local projects, nurture and elevate leaders, and expand the movement to achieve our vision of transformative change. This integrated approach drives equitable building electrification at scale.
Our Annual
Priority 1:
Electrifying homes & community serving facilities at scale
Scaling electrification from homes to neighborhoods in Michigan
Collectrify made the first investment in Hope Village Revitalization’s (HVR) Sustainable Community Builders Project to catalyze a community-led vision and upgrade single-family and multifamily buildings to all-electric, energy-efficient, solar-powered, deeply affordable homes. HVR successfully competed in the national Buildings Upgrade Prize competition and has developed a detailed pilot plan to upgrade 10 neighborhood homes and 31 units of multifamily housing, building on the success of their La Salle Eco-Demonstration Home to lead to electrification at scale.
"We’ve found in our own La Salle Eco Demonstration House that indoor air quality is really improved by the heat pumps & other improvements we installed. From a standpoint of stress reduction, utility bills are a big stressor for many residents in our neighborhood. Finding ways to decreaseutility bills is key, & our experience with having the solar and heat pump combination is that we've seen a dramatic and ongoing reduction in utility bills – which is very important."
– DEBBIE FISHER, SPECIAL PROJECTS DIRECTOR,
HOPE VILLAGE REVITALIZATION
Priority 2:
Community leadership on policy design & implementation
We support community-based organizations in building their capacity to engage in policy-making educational opportunities at the local, state, and federal levels to advance equitable building electrification programs.
Leading equitable building electrification program design and implementation across California
Collectrify partners Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles; Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment; and Self- Help Enterprises—who are all members of the California Building Energy, Equity, and Power (BEEP) Coalition—co-developed California’s $521M Equitable Building Decarbonization Program and are now advancing implementation efforts across the state with a priority on limited-wealth and environmental justice communities. Thanks to their dedicated work, 13,000 homes in low-income communities throughout Southern California and an additional 7,800 homes in other areas of the state are receiving quality retrofits of $20,000 to $25,000.
Our Annual
Priority 3:
Training & workforce development for clean energy jobs
We support organizations creating clean energy jobs through training and workforce development. These efforts enable the effective, community-driven design and implementation of energy efficiency and equitable building electrification solutions while also creating economic opportunity.
Catalyzing clean energy jobs from the Midwest to the South
Collectrify’s investments have created or strengthened clean energy workforce development programs. With our support, United Parents Against Lead (UPAL) launched the first electrified and solar-powered community resiliency hub in the state of Virginia, providing a place for residents of this economically distressed community to go in times of crises. As a pathway to economic empowerment, the Petersburg Hub also serves as a training center for energy efficiency, electrification, healthy homes, weatherization, and solar installation. In 2023, thirty solar PV panel installers graduated from UPAL’s Training Center and in 2024, five of those installers were trained on panel maintenance and replacement. As a result, twelve energy efficiency and healthy home upgrades with electric appliances were completed in 2024, boosting economic development and housing stability throughout Virginia’s underserved communities.
Priority 4:
Intersectional movement &
relationship building
We support organizations creating and strengthening connections between the equitable building electrification movement and supportive movements like those focused on housing and tenants' rights, health, and community leadership development.
Building tenant power to solve interconnected challenges in California
Debt Collective created the Tenant Power Toolkit to organize, educate, protect, and build a base of tenants to advocate for decarbonized green social housing for all in Los Angeles. Through their work with the toolkit, they are tackling not only keeping people housed by preventing evictions and displacement, but also the climate crisis by ensuring that all benefit from the transition to decarbonized housing. By partnering with Debt Collective, Collectrify is working to ensure that tenants maintain the right to affordable, safe, and equitably electrified housing. It is one example of how we work to connect across sectors and movements.
Our Annual
Priority 5:
Shifting narratives & culture to support equitable building electrification
We support organizations leading storytelling campaigns and projects aimed at changing narratives and cultural perceptions about equitable building electrification to promote energy-efficient, electrified, healthy homes in limited-wealth communities and communities of color.
Ensuring equitable home electrification across Michigan
Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition (MEJC) produced a research report highlighting the need to rectify twentieth-century housing policies like redlining that inflicted harm on limited-wealth and communities of color and dedicate the resources necessary to ensure equitable building electrification across the state. MEJC empowers community organizers with the knowledge and skills to advocate for equitable electrification systems that address both historical housing injustices and the climate crisis through storytelling and building collective power across the state.