Strategic Plan 2021-2024

Strategic Plan 2021-2024

2021-2024 Strategic Plan

We need urgent pro-climate policy that meets the scale of the challenge and therefore leaders with the courage and mandate to take bold action. That means we need the climate movement to vastly increase its reach and power.

Action for the Climate Emergency (ACE) has a critical role to play in growing the power of the movement by amplifying the voices and values of young people. When young people call for climate justice, they do so with the moral authority of a generation that will have to live with the choices our leaders make today. Youth voices are not the only ones needed in the global climate movement, but without the power of youth, we simply cannot win.

We were founded in 2008 with the visionary (and at the time fringe) belief that to halt a global crisis, the climate movement needed the engagement of young people. Back then we were told again and again that young people were not a priority because they couldn’t or wouldn’t vote and couldn’t be organized. How times have changed. With the failure of our leaders to act and an explosion of youth activism and visibility within the movement, our outlying belief in the power of youth is now common knowledge — and to many, our best source of hope.

Since our founding, ACE has rigorously studied, experimented with and proven what works in engaging young people and elevating their voices. We are now poised to exponentially increase the most effective and targeted aspects of our work to tip the scales.

We will place a laser-like and disciplined focus on the three things most needed to power youth voices and leadership within the climate movement: Education, Action and Influence.

Education

Educate tens of millions of young people about the climate emergency and support them to take strategic climate action

Action

Train tens of thousands of climate leaders in hundreds of ACE Action Teams
Register and turn out millions of young voters in key geographies

Influence

Increase youth voices 10x, enabling them to shift the narrative at scale
Demand pro-climate policies and hold elected leaders accountable
Unite U.S. youth with the global climate movement

Education

1.Educate tens of millions of young people about the climate emergency

and support them to take strategic climate action.

Climate misinformation is at an all-time high and teens are increasingly the targets. ACE remains the most effective climate education organization in the U.S. working at scale to educate a generation about the climate emergency and thwart the steady stream of disinformation. We meet young people where they are and communicate with them on their own terms.

We believe climate education is the critical first step to climate advocacy and civic action at scale. Building on more than a decade of experience educating and activating millions of young people, ACE is poised to reach tens of millions more in this final decade to move the world in a new direction.

GOAL I

Reach 35m Young People Annually

with ACE’s flagship climate education program, Our Climate Our Future, as well as a rich collection of other digital media and storytelling programs that lay the foundation for understanding the science, impacts and opportunities to confront the climate emergency.

2018-19 4m

2019-20 8m

2020-21 21m

2021-2022 (PROJECTED) 35m

Action

2. Train and organize tens of thousands of new, deeply committed and active young leaders

in hundreds of ACE Action Teams to accelerate our path toward climate justice for all.

ACE has already trained thousands of young people who are now key leaders in the climate movement. In the next phase of our work, we will exponentially expand our climate and civic engagement organizing program through new youth-led local Action Teams in our strategic geographies of focus to advance climate solutions at the local, state and federal level.

GOAL I

Inspire & Train 10k Young People Annually

Create the next generation of climate leaders by inspiring and training 10,000 young people annually in under-reached areas of our country.

ACE Youth Action Network in 2021:

A community of more than 700,000 youth advocates in all 50 states, poised to grow to millions by 2024.

GOAL II

Build & Engage 300 Action teams annually

in ACE’s key regions to recruit and support youth leaders through every stage of their journey.

Action

3. Increase diverse youth participation in our democracy

by engaging new first-time and returning youth climate voters— and the millions more adults these young people can bring with them.

ACE has reached millions of our nation's youngest voters on a message of climate urgency. We have learned how to inspire them to register and turnout at low cost. We are now poised to bring millions of new and returning youth climate voters to the polls in key geographies between 2021 and 2024, ushering in the next wave of local, state and federal climate leadership.

GOAL III

Engage Millions of young people in our democracy

through non-partisan voter registration, voting, and relational voter turnout programs.

Key Regions
Expansion Regions

Our Effectiveness as of 2021

4% Increase in voter turnout

Elections are won or lost on razor-thin margins. ACE’s youth relational voter turnout program increased diverse turnout by 4% in a recent test in 12 states.

~$75 Per new net vote

ACE’s warm text messaging GOTV program netted new youth votes for ~$75 per additional vote — 25% less than similar programs in the same election cycle.

110K New Voters

ACE's 2020 scaled pilot program converted 110,000 new registrants through layered modes of contact that included: digital ads, mail, SMS, email, phones and influencer marketing.

Influence

4. Empower young people to shift the narrative

by telling their stories at scale, amplifying youth voices at least tenfold in the public sphere.

Narrative shift is the key to movement growth and young people are the most active and influential cohort on social media. They have remarkable power to shift and impact public perceptions.

Strategic communications, storytelling and an ability to elevate youth voices to shift the narrative are core ACE strengths.

ACE’s newest program, the Creator Collective, currently engages more than 3,700 influential youth creators on social media to elevate the climate emergency in the public discourse.

GOAL I

Reach 100m Americans annually
via stories & campaigns

that center youth voices on the frontlines of the energy transition, climate emergency and systemic solutions to shift the narrative in a measurable and transformative way.

GOAL II

Shift Ace's media Budget

We are doubling down on our investment in young people by building the largest community of youth climate content creators in the world—providing funds to diverse youth leaders for their strategic, coordinated storytelling across TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, and other youth-centered social platforms.

Influence

5. Hold elected leaders and corporations accountable

to take climate action immediately. Young people have the moral authority and power to influence our elected officials and pressure corporations.

We seek to elevate the voices of young people to speak truth to power, holding our elected leaders and corporations responsible for their role in the climate emergency.

ACE's 501(c)(4) affiliate, Climate Emergency Advocates, will further engage young voters in key and expansion regions, including but not limited to: Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin to stop proposed fossil fuel projects in their tracks, hold utilities and the elected officials that support them accountable and advance meaningful climate and clean energy policy.

GOAL III

Launch and grow
an affiliated 501 (c)(4)Organization

Climate Emergency Advocates, with the primary goal of giving millions of young people a voice in policies that affect their future.

GOAL IV

Leverage

to run highly effective campaigns demanding action from elected leaders and corporate accountability from polluters to decarbonize their operations immediately.

Influence

6. Build global power by connecting U.S. and international young people

ACE is a U.S. leader in the youth climate movement, currently representing more than 700,000 youth advocates in all 50 states.

We will engage our members to convene a broad and diverse coalition to influence the United States’ Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), as we re-enter the Paris Climate Agreement.

We seek to elevate and unite U.S. and international youth voices to ensure the U.S. NDC is strong, and that youth pressure to advance global climate solutions is coordinated and impactful.

GOAL V

Unite the U.S. Youth movement with the global climate movement

and elevate youth voices to influence and accelerate global climate solutions.

Justice, Equity, Diversity & inclusion

ACE is deeply committed to our continued journey toward antiracism and inclusiveness. ACE’s Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Team works to push ACE to think critically about how we engage with one another, the work that we do and how we do it.

As climate educators, organizers and storytellers we are committed to building power with young people from all backgrounds. We work to uplift and center our communities while envisioning, fighting for and creating the just and equitable future we all deserve.

ACE will advance our JEDI work through continuing our organization-wide learning journey, sharing power and increasing staff and board diversity.

Continued Learning Journey

ACE engages in annual racial justice training for its staff and board members, as well as frequent opportunities to explore how we dismantle traits of white dominant culture. ACE will continue to collectively support staff and board members on a learning journey to interrogate its policies and practices, and continue on its path of centering antiracism and justice in our work.

Sharing Power

ACE recently launched a Youth Advisory Board to help guide ACE’s campaign and advocacy strategy, and plans to appoint two youth advisors to the ACE Board of Directors each year to continue to share power across the organization.

Staff and Board Diversity

ACE’s executive leadership team and staff team are a majority people of color, at 60 percent and 67 percent respectively. The ACE Board of Directors is 36 percent people of color. ACE will continue to hire, retain and empower staff of color at all levels of the organization, and seeks to continue to diversify its board across race, gender and other identities.

Partner Now

2018 $2.3m

2019 $4.0m

2020 $7.5m

2021 $10m

2022 $15m

2023 $21m

2024 $30m

There is no better investment than young people and there is no better time to invest than now.

We invite you to play a transformational role in educating, inspiring and supporting young people to lead the fight for their future.

Partnership Opportunity

Driven by the reality that we are in the final decade to begin taking meaningful steps to avert climate disaster, ACE is acting boldly with an aggressive growth mindset.

To achieve the objectives in this plan and to ensure that youth power is accelerating the climate movement, we are seeking investment partners to grow the organization’s annual operating budget from $10 million to $30 million by 2024.

With this investment, we will scale what we know works and build an unstoppable force of young people demanding swift and measurable action at the scale of the problem.

We invite investors to join us with a transformational-level gift to help us realize the greatest vision for our work and our collective future.

Who We Are

ACE educates, inspires and supports young people to lead the fight for their future.

We ensure they have everything they need to understand the science and advocate for solutions to the climate emergency. We envision a global movement, rich in youth leadership, that has turned the tide on climate change. We believe an equitable, biodiverse and carbon neutral future is still within reach if we, the people, compel our leaders to act.

Our Values

Truth

We believe in telling the whole truth, because young people have the right to understand the science of the climate emergency and how it is inextricably linked to the economic, social and leadership choices we make.

Justice & Equity

We believe that communities most impacted by racial injustice and social inequity are also those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. We place particular focus on supporting their voices and power within the global climate movement.

Creativity

We believe in the creativity and power of young people to lead the way in imagining a better future—a future safe from climate chaos, free from environmental injustice, rich in biodiversity and prosperous for all.

Courage

We believe in the courage of young people to stand up against misinformation, falsehoods and climate injustice wherever they occur.