global change program

Communities around the world are confronting critical challenges in a number of areas, including climate change, education access, interstate conflict, public health crises, and data transparency.

Incite Institute's Global Change Program (GCP) supports activists, scholars, organizers, artists, and others working with communities most directly challenged by these issues and many others. Through the Global Change Program, Incite provides grants ranging from $10,000 to $25,000 to leaders of projects, initiatives, or campaigns that tackle some of the world's most pressing problems. Global Change Program grantees remain in the field during the award year while receiving intellectual support from Incite and other institutions at Columbia University.

Since launching with a pilot in 2024, this program has supported several projects around the world. Projects have included mapping and strengthening Latin American civil society networks, bolstering the strategic planning capabilities of civil society organizations in Hungary, and fostering a regional dialogue about inequality in Colombia.

We are currently seeking our September 2025–August 2026 cohort of Global Change Program grantees. If you have an idea for a project aligned with our approach, we'd love to hear from you.

The Global Change Program supports projects that bring innovative, knowledge-based solutions—derived from academic research and/or from experience—to challenges in specific, community-defined contexts. Communities can be defined in different ways—by language, geography, or interests, for example—and applicants must demonstrate how that community’s participation in the initiative will meaningfully shape it.

Strong applications will clearly identify the challenge or set of related challenges their project addresses and will clearly identify the impact the project will have on that challenge as that impact is experienced by the community.

This year, Incite is especially interested in proposals that relate to the following challenges or themes:

• Social contexts of forced disappearances
• Power and historical narratives
• Effective models of worker organization
• Music and social transformation

Note: Applicants whose projects do not fit these categories should still apply.

Incite intends for these awards to support leaders in their efforts to be transformative. In many cases, initiatives we support will be brand new; others may be existing but seek to move in new directions, experiment with new methods, or achieve greater scale and depth. When evaluating projects, we prioritize initiatives that break new ground while showing how they can be sustained and grow beyond the project year.