About US
We’re on a mission to create opportunity for the communities hardest hit by coal’s decline
We help build resilient communities by promoting solutions that are equitable, inclusive, and low-carbon.
Our Approach
We believe in place-based strategies that support local entrepreneurs and build on community assets.
Promote Economic Diversification
We support projects that create inclusive opportunities in low-carbon sectors that have been demonstrated to build local wealth and strengthen economic resilience.
Expand Workforce Development
We help scale wraparound workforce development programs that train former coal workers and community members for jobs in the new economy.
Improve Infrastructure
We target efforts to improve and expand infrastructure, like broadband, that is essential for an inclusive economic transition.
Our History
The Just Transition Fund was established in spring 2015 by Rockefeller Family Fund and the Appalachia Funders Network with the support of six other foundation partners: blue moon fund, Chorus Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, The JPB Foundation, The Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, and Mertz Gilmore Foundation.
The Fund was initially created to help local organizations secure funding through the POWER Initiative, the first federal program targeted to communities impacted by the changing coal economy. In the process, we helped jumpstart the engagement of national philanthropy and showcased the innovative, ground-up ways that local communities are working to revitalize their local economies.
We’ve evolved our approach over the years to catalyze and support the national just transition movement more broadly, while helping more communities tap into a growing number of federal funding opportunities.
Our Process
How We Work
We leverage public and private resources, and guide policy change to accelerate a just economic transition—from the ground up.
We invest in local capacity to improve the effectiveness of coal community-based organizations.
We provide support to accelerate communities’ ability to respond to economic changes and access federal, philanthropic, and private funding.
We work to identify, scale, and replicate community-based economic and workforce development models.
We invest in models that create pathways to prosperity for coal workers and communities.
We host convenings and events to bring the transition movement together.
We highlight best practices, model programs, and innovative solutions to enable leaders to learn from one another and move toward success.
We work alongside our partners to secure comprehensive federal and state transition policy solutions.
Our work supports impacted communities and state and local leaders, enabling them to keep local economies strong and help workers impacted by coal closures find new jobs.
We educate transition stakeholders to support local planning and foster innovation.
We support opportunities for collaboration, including information and resource-sharing among entrepreneurs, capital providers, and researchers.
Where We Work
We focus on mining and power plant communities in major coal-affected areas of the United States—Appalachia, the Midwest, the West, and Tribal Nations—and prioritize communities experiencing the most economic distress, taking into account socioeconomic factors that make transition even more challenging.
The West
Areas of the western and southwestern United States are well known for their prolific energy production, with 40 percent of the nation’s coal being mined in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana. But the region, including many Indigenous communities that have inhabited it for hundreds of years, is beginning to reel as coal plants and mines close.
The Midwest
The Midwest has a long and deep relationship with coal, experiencing booms and busts throughout the 20th century and into recent decades with the expansion of mines in the Illinois Basin. But as demand for the region’s coal declines and cleaner energy outcompetes coal power, more midwestern states and communities are embracing the need for long-term planning, community investment, and policy change.
Appalachia
The rugged landscape of Appalachia’s coal-bearing region is famous for its ecological abundance, narrow ridgelines, and steep valleys. But centuries of industrial-scale and increasingly mechanized coal mining operations have reduced hundreds of mountains to rubble through the use of mountaintop removal mining while producing a legacy of persistent poverty and pollution.
Our Guiding Principles
The Just Transition Fund was founded on a belief in the power of community, collaboration, and the potential for shared prosperity in the places hardest hit by the transition away from coal.
Community Self-Determination
Partnership and Collaboration
Equity and Justice
Inclusivity and Accessibility
Impact and Learning
Transparency and Accountability
Positivity and a Solutions Mindset
Adaptation and Healthy Striving
Our Initiatives
How we advance economic solutions that are equitable, inclusive, and low-carbon.
