By Onika Abraham Lee, Executive Director of Blue Sky Funders Forum
My love of the outdoors didn’t begin in a national park. It began in the places that raised me.
My Outdoor Love was nurtured on the spectacular coastline of my father’s home island of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It was cultivated in my maternal grandparents’ kitchen garden in rural Alabama, where my grandmother grew nearly everything her family ate. And it flourished in the community gardens that dotted Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where I was raised.
Those places taught me that the outdoors is so much more than scenery.
They are where I first saw an okra plant in bloom. Where I danced to soca music. Where I tasted sorghum and learned how it came to these shores from Africa as seeds braided into my ancestors’ hair. They gave me room to run and rest, to learn and experiment, to grow food and gather friends.
Those outdoor spaces grew me, at least as much as I grew plants in them.
That lifelong Outdoor Love is what led me to Blue Sky Funders Forum, where I have the privilege of convening a national community of funders investing in equitable access to nature and environmental learning. Every young person deserves the chance to learn, grow, and thrive through meaningful connections with nature—and Blue Sky members work together to turn that belief into lasting investment, collaboration, and impact.
Listening Before Building
At Blue Sky Funders Forum’s 2022 National Convening, an informal group of members came together to explore what they could accomplish collectively as national funders. Their conversations led to a deeper question:
How could philanthropy amplify and accelerate advocacy for environmental learning and equitable access to the outdoors for young people?
Rather than trying to answer that question themselves, they turned to the people leading this work every day and asked:
How can the outdoor and environmental learning movement strengthen its collective advocacy to advance more equitable, durable, and inclusive outcomes?
Together with López-Wagner Strategies, our members launched a movement-wide listening and research process designed to center the voices of grassroots leaders, grasstops organizations, researchers, educators, funders, and public-sector partners working at the national, state, and hyperlocal levels. Through conversations, convenings, hikes, scavenger hunts, and other shared experiences, more than 50 organizations helped shape what would become ROOT Hub.
That process reaffirmed something I believe deeply: philanthropy is at its best when it listens to movement leaders, makes bold, trust-based investments in their vision, and works alongside them to unlock the public resources needed to sustain lasting change.
ROOT Hub grew from that kind of philanthropy.
Today, founding funders have committed an initial $4.5 million to build the advocacy infrastructure and organizational capacity needed to unlock much greater public investment—and to ensure grassroots organizations have the capacity and support to access those resources.
Two Big Ideas Emerged
As we listened, the field arrived at two essential conclusions.
First, we identified our North Star: the benefits of environmental learning and equitable access to the outdoors should be a human right for every young person, especially youth and children of color.
Second, we recognized that while our movement had extraordinary leaders, it lacked the permanent national infrastructure needed to organize, advocate, and secure federal investment at the scale our communities deserve.
ROOT Hub was created to fill that gap.
Like the root systems of a healthy forest, ROOT Hub will connect organizations, strengthen the movement beneath the surface, and help every part of it grow stronger together—linking what is visible above ground with the networks that sustain growth below the surface.
Building the Infrastructure Our Movement Deserves
ROOT Hub is building a culture of collaboration and readiness so our movement can advocate together for the public investments our communities deserve.
Together, we can reshape a system that was never designed to move federal resources to the grassroots organizations leading this work every day.
By organizing our collective voice, reducing barriers to federal funding, strengthening grassroots advocacy, and helping organizations prepare to access public resources, we can move more public investment to the leaders already creating extraordinary opportunities for young people across the country.
Our research made one thing clear: the passion and the expertise already existed—but the infrastructure for coordinated, movement-wide federal advocacy did not. ROOT Hub is designed to be that infrastructure—not replacing the remarkable advocacy already happening within communities, but strengthening it, connecting it, and amplifying its impact.
A New Chapter Begins
On June 24, ROOT Hub officially launched at the Natural Start Conference, and I was thrilled to celebrate alongside so many members of the ROOT Hub Seeding Circle and the partners whose vision and persistence brought this initiative to life. While the launch marked an exciting milestone, it is just the beginning.
Building a movement like this takes more than funding. It takes vision, partnership, trust, and people willing to imagine what’s possible together. I’ve been honored to serve on ROOT Hub’s Seeding Circle alongside remarkable leaders who share that vision. Helping this idea grow from a conversation among funders into a field-shaped national initiative has been one of the most inspiring experiences of my time at Blue Sky.
My own Outdoor Love was nurtured by generations of people who understood that meaningful connections to nature create belonging, possibility, and opportunity. My hope is that ROOT Hub helps ensure every child has the chance to discover their own Outdoor Love. And my commitment at Blue Sky is to continue creating the conditions where bold ideas take root, relationships grow, and collective action flourishes into lasting change.
As I reflect on this moment, I keep coming back to where it all began. I’m proud that Blue Sky Funders Forum helped seed this initiative through conversations at our 2022 convening. By creating space for funders and movement leaders to build relationships, ask bold questions, and imagine what was possible together, we helped create the conditions for ROOT Hub to take root.
I’m deeply grateful to the Blue Sky members who leaned into that process, and I’m committed to continuing to grow this work by bringing more funders into the movement—within the Blue Sky community and alongside it.
Funders, I hope you’ll join us this fall, October 7–9, in Maine for Blue Sky’s 2026 National Convening. Together, we’ll explore how strong, connected networks help catalyze the benefits of nature and how relationship-centered philanthropy can unlock greater impact for communities across the country. Learn more and register here: Blue Sky Funders Forum 2026 National Convening.
ROOT Hub is a powerful example of what Blue Sky exists to do: catalyze relationships, nurture collaboration, and sustain collective action. Whether we’re helping grow support for ROOT Hub or planting the seeds for the next transformative collaboration through our convenings, working groups, and member network, we’ll continue creating the conditions for bold ideas to take root.
Our movement grows stronger when we invest in relationships, listen deeply, and move together.
Learn more about ROOT Hub’s vision, work, and how you can be part of this ongoing movement at weareroothub.org