January 20, 2026

Grantee Partner Spotlight: Climate Critical 

by Tamara Toles O’Laughlin

Ms. Foundation is proud to support our grantee partners, who are at the forefront of organizing and creating solutions that improve people’s lives and bring us closer to achieving a true democracy. The insight and perspective they provide is invaluable. The Q&A below was generated by Climate Critical Founder Tamara Toles O’Laughlin. 

Climate Critical is a generative community space for creative practice, seeding strategy rather than tactics, and enabling radical care for every one of us in the fight for climate survival. Climate Critical Earth reinforces the people who fight for the planet, and is an Activist Care & Collaboration Fund grantee partner.

What brought you to this work?

My mother worked during my childhood—at a time when it was seen as taboo—as a way to craft, own, and keep her identity. She and my father had a partnership, even when that meant taking “nontraditional” roles in work, at home, and outside it to take care of our family. For most of that time, my mom worked with our state natural resource protection agency, which was focused on preserving water and all the infrastructure it required. I first learned that I could do the work I loved for people and planet as a job, from her. 

How do you connect/collaborate in your community?

I am part of the community I serve. I am an environmentalist, a woman, and an African American. So, it is easy for me to see the incredible possibility, partnership, and opportunities to work with and for my community on issues of climate, clean air, soil we can grow food in, and water we all need to drink, in service to a toxic-free economy. I connect with members of each of these identities and work with many others to build networks, collaboratives, organizations, and groups to solve these problems. Along the way, that also meant identifying barriers to community. For folks focused on the planet, isolation, lack of rest, and a planet that is actively on fire, flooding, and in need of rest itself, is a problem we agree needs attention. We work together to normalize rest, and care for folks in this work as a part of successful campaigns, actions, and programs. 

Who are your key partners? 

Folks who aren’t afraid to talk about race, gender, or class all day, every day. Specifically, elders who have worked on environmental issues, youth who see how terrifying the future is without an intervention, and yelders—those of us in between-–who want to use what we know to impact solutions for a sick planet.

What are you learning or what are you teaching?

I learn every day how to build coalitions by finding alignment rather than insisting on agreement on every detail to get started. I teach folks how to make and take care from a system that isn’t willing to give it, and to reconnect how we treat each other to how we treat our earth home.

Tell us about a recent victory or something you’re proud of.

Recently, just prior to and in the wake of the U.S. national election results, Climate Critical held a series of town halls where folks were able to gather to share tools for staying whole and regulated, and remembering how to breathe as the world changed. Over three town halls we taught each other how to breathe and journal, and reminded each other to rest while preparing our minds and bodies to engage the body politic in whatever shape she is in. 

What can philanthropy do better and/or how can individuals be helpful allies?

Climate Critical published a first-of-its-kind report on the state of burnout in the movements for people and planet and in it we made recommendations based upon what we learned. One of them was that philanthropy should plan for, incentivize, and invest in the care work that makes all other work doable. It can do this by resourcing at a level that means staff can be staggered in the campaigns we all depend on to make change, but also to resource whole-person development as professional development, so caring orgs don’t have to get creative to keep great people. And finally, philanthropy should fund faster and more frequently with benchmarks for how much care a grantee is taking to ensure the people it needs have what they need. 

What gives you hope?

I don’t have hope, I have people. I am a part of community, which is the best thing we’ve ever built. The rest comes from that.