Clara Lionel Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Clara Lionel Foundation supports climate resilience, disaster relief, racial justice, global health, immigrants and refugees, women and girls, and other issues of interest in the U.S., the Caribbean and other countries around the world, including in Africa.
IP TAKE: The Clara Lionel Foundation, which takes a “360-degree approach to impact through investing in local solutions,” makes grants through a racial and gender justice lens. While climate change and natural disaster preparedness remain listed as the foundation’s top funding priorities, Clara Lionel’s grantmaking interests are broader and include general support for collaborative funds serving women and girls, immigrants and refugees, and other underrepresented populations in the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, and the U.S.
Clara Lionel is not accessible or particularly transparent. Its website does not include a grants database, though a partial list of recent grantees can be found in the organizations’s annual tax forms. This funder does not have a process for unsolicited funding queries, though it does provide a contact form online. Its website includes limited information about the funder’s strategies. Networking is probably the clearest path forward here, and established or scalable organizations likely have the best chance at funding. It is also important to note that, while this funder makes grants on its own, it frequently partners with Jack Dorsey’s #StartSmall to maximize funding.
PROFILE: Established in 2012, the Clara Lionel Foundation (CLF) is a private foundation that Robyn “Rihanna” Fenty created in honor of her grandparents, Clara and Lionel Braithwaite. Best known for songs like “Umbrella,” “Only Girl (in the World),” and “Work,” Rihanna is the world’s richest female musician, according to Forbes. She also created Fenty Beauty and became the first woman of color to sign a deal with LVMH, the French luxury goods giant. Rihanna became a global ambassador for the Global Partnership for Education in 2016.
The Clara Lionel Foundation works to shift “how the world responds to inequity and injustice” by supporting climate resilience, disaster relief, and justice projects in the U.S. and Caribbean. It also advocates for policy and systems change to improve the quality of life for global communities. Foundation partners are located in over 20 countries around the world.
Climate resilience grants focus on the impacts of natural disasters, while justice grants mostly address climate justice issues. Legacy projects include various topics of interest, such as women and girls, education, racial justice and refugee crises.
Grants for Climate Change, Disaster Relief and Justice
Clara Lionel predominately makes grants for climate resilience and disaster relief mitigation due to climate factors. Related initiatives include Climate Resilience and Climate Justice.
While Clara Lionel does not have a separate initiatives dedicated to racial justice or women and girls, the foundation conducts grantmaking through racial and gender justice lens, so grants related to equity and women can be found across all of Clara Lionel’s grant opportunities. This work includes violence prevention, work that benefits the BIPOC community, and women and girls, as well as immigrant and refugees.
The Climate Resilience initiative works to rethink “disaster response to enable communities to better withstand natural disasters before they hit.”
CRI is largely focused on “investing in emergency preparedness and climate adaptation of health, shelter and communication projects across the Caribbean.”
CRI projects, which range from infrastructure hardening projects to gender-integrated emergency response planning in the Caribbean, serve as “models that can be replicated and scaled to enable other high-risk regions around the world to be better prepared to withstand the effects of climate change.”
This initiative has several partners, including Direct Relief, Hope For Haiti and Fos Feministas (formerly IPPFWHR) among many others.
The Climate Justice Initiative funds “organizations and movements fighting for climate justice in the U.S. and Caribbean.”
Climate justice grants provide funds to “organizations in the U.S. and Caribbean focused on reimagining and implementing short and long-term solutions for climate impacts.”
These grants typically work to “advance environmental and racial justice causes” through both an equity and gender lens.
Clara Lionel’s climate grantees include Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, Climate Justice Alliance, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, and Girls CARE, “a feminist climate activist movement.” Funding for these groups is done in partnership with Dorsey’s #StartSmall.
Grants for Violence Prevention and Criminal Justice Reform
In addition to justice work across climate giving, the Clara Lionel Foundation also gives more directly to violence prevention and criminal justice reform work that occurs both in the Caribbean and in the U.S.
In partnership with Jack Dorsey, Rihanna has provided $4.2 million to victims of domestic violence impacted by the COVID-19 lockdowns. The money was directed to the Los Angeles Mayor’s Fund, focusing on L.A.'s overcrowded shelters. Rihanna and Dorsey also partnered to “give $11 million to 12 organizations leading on the work to divest from policing and fighting for criminal justice reform.”
Grants for K-12 Education
Education grantmaking is frequently international and often focused on women and girls. This focus area tends to be broad and developed according to its founder’s interests. Clara Lionel has supported organizations in Malawi, Barbados and Senegal, where the foundation helps girls pay for and access education.
The foundation also runs the Clara Lionel Foundation Barbados Scholarship Program, giving education-related micro-grants, constructs classrooms and trains graduates as HIV testers, among other programs.
Grants for Global and Public Health
While the foundation does not have a dedicated health initiative, 990 tax forms show a general trend toward related health giving. The Legacy Projects initiative also reveals several related grants.
Health grants typically focus on cancer, pediatrics, and other medical programs in Barbados.
Rihanna established The Clara Braithwaite Center for Oncology and Nuclear Medicine at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Barbados, which bears the name of her grandmother.
While health grantmaking tends to prioritize organizations based in or serving Barbados, this is not a hard and fast rule.
Past grantees include $5 million to multiple organizations around the world fighting the coronavirus pandemic, including Partners in Health, Direct Relief, Feeding America, the International Rescue Committee, the World Health Organization and her native country of Barbados.
Grants for Democracy and Civic Engagement
While the foundation does not list democracy as a key funding area, tax records show that it has made some substantial grants in this space in the past, including at least $4 million to Brooklyn’s Center for Popular Democracy in 2022. It has also given million to the TakeAction Minnesota Education Fund for civic engagement.
Important Grant Details:
Past grants have run from $5,000 up into the millions.
The foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals or requests for funding; however, it does provide a way for organizations interested in partnering with CLF to introduce themselves via a submission box near the bottom of the Partners page.
PEOPLE:
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