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We invested in... New Leaders &
Ideas

Seemingly intractable problems require fresh leaders, original ideas and new ways of working. The Kendeda Fund embraced concepts like biomimicry, community-based conservation, regenerative building design and new economic models. Investing in emergent leaders was also core to Kendeda's strategy. The contributions made by dozens of such visionaries will continue to power movements and drive enduring change long beyond our spend out.

New Leaders

Knowing that challenges like climate change and gun violence would persist, even as the Fund would spend out in 2023, we committed to investing in the next generation of leaders across most of our program areas.

The Rose Architectural Fellowship

Developing and reimagining communities requires authentic partnerships with residents and local governments – skills not always taught in design schools.

For those visionary designers engaged with the public interest, the Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship, a program of Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., provides a unique opportunity to build skills, networks, and experience. A two-year program, it partners emerging architects with community development organizations to achieve positive change.

Learn about the Rose Fellowship

The Audion Fellowship

Under the Guns & America reporting collaborative, a diverse group of early-career fellows at 10 public radio stations reported for two years on gun issues from a broad range of communities nationwide.

As full-time journalists, these Audion reporting fellows had an unprecedented opportunity to spend an extended period of time digging into some of the thorniest issues of the day -- from the cultural and historical significance of hunting and gun ownership to the role firearms play in suicide, homicide, intimate partner violence, mass shootings and beyond.

Learn About Guns & America

FRIDA

Through a unique participatory grantmaking model, Kendeda grantee FRIDA provides young feminist organizers from across the globe with the resources they need to amplify their voices and bring attention to the social justice issues they care about.

FRIDA is an entirely youth-activist-led organization committed to staying true to the mission of supporting young feminist organizing.

Learn More at YoungFeministFund.org

Kashtakari Panchayat, 2017, by Jonathan Torgovnik

The Alliance Theatre’s Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition

Established in 2004 by Kendeda and then Alliance Theatre director Susan Booth, the annual prize, one of the most coveted for young playwrights, is designed to help bridge the gap from when a skilled playwright earns an MFA to when their work finally gets produced by a leading regional theater.

For even the best of writers, that gap can often be ten years or more. Many of the winners have gone on to successful careers in theater and television, winning prestigious awards for their subsequent works. Find the full list of winners here. 

Learn about the Competition

Young Women’s Leadership and Mentorship Initiative

Through an innovative model of feminist mentorship and peer learning, young women build their own leadership as well as that of other young activists in their communities.

Undertaken as a partnership between Kendeda, the Global Fund for Women (GFW), and CREA, a feminist human rights organization based in India, the initiative was first piloted in South Asia and subsequently expanded to Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Kenya, and Tanzania. In these distinct cultures and geographies, young women draw from their lived experiences to envision and organize movements that tackle the challenges faced by local women and girls.

Learn about the GFW & CREA

New Ideas

The Fund embraced a wide array of new ideas, believing that solving pressing challenges requires shedding old constraints and ways of working.

Doughnut Economics

First published in 2012 in an Oxfam report by Kate Raworth, the concept of Doughnut Economics explores the mindset and ways of thinking needed for humanity to thrive in the 21st century. 

The doughnut consists of two concentric rings: a social foundation, to ensure that no one is left falling short on life’s essentials and an ecological ceiling, to ensure that humanity does not collectively overshoot the planetary boundaries that protect Earth's life-supporting systems.

Biomimicry

Biomimicry

Janine Benyus’ 1997 book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature popularized a practice that learns from and mimics the strategies found in nature to solve human design challenges, inspiring hope in the process.

Biomimicry is a practice that learns from and mimics the strategies found in nature to solve human design challenges, and find hope. Creating products, processes, and systems — new ways of living — that solve our greatest design challenges sustainably and in solidarity with all life on earth, we can use biomimicry to not only learn from nature’s wisdom, but also heal ourselves and this planet.

“...in solidarity with all life on Earth.”

Employee Ownership

Employee Ownership is an old idea that is “perpetually new.”

Businesses create avenues for employees to benefit financially from the profits and success of the company, and also to participate meaningfully in governance and decision-making for the company’s future.

Employee ownership makes communities more vibrant, equitable, and resilient by: retaining more businesses that expand local ownership; improving job quality and addressing the racial wealth gap that has inhibited economic growth; and inspiring business owners to share in the wealth created by employees.

The Living Building Challenge

Developed and administered by the International Living Future Institute (ILFI), The Living Building Challenge is the world’s most ambitious building performance standard. The certification encompasses seven petals (energy, water, beauty, equity, materials, place, health + happiness) and is based on the building’s actual (rather than modeled or expected) performance.

ILFI's objectives for the ambitious standard are unambiguous: create buildings that generate more energy than they use, capture and treat all water on site, and use healthy materials. The Living Building Challenge framework creates spaces that reconnect occupants with nature.

Read our Living Building Chronicle

Students from the Georgia Tech Urban Honey Bee Project talking pollinators at the Kendeda Building grand opening in 2019.

Aspiring architects hard at work at the Kendeda Building grand opening celebration.

“I don’t want students to ask: How can we copy what Kendeda did? I want them to ask: How can we do better?”

Diana Blank to Georgia Tech students