Building sustainable financial systems is challenging as a youth-led organisation. As youth leaders, we do not always have the years of experience to inform how to create budgets, the long-term perspective for financial decision-making, or the highly structured processes that our external partners and systems require of us. Simultaneously, so many of the mainstream financial models we see around us reflect the top-down, extractive, and capitalist systems that we are actively trying to work against.
Despite this, over the past six years, our financial infrastructure at Youth4Nature has blossomed, both in the stability of our practices and in how they embody our values. We are proud of how far we have come, and how we have harnessed some of these challenges into unique opportunities to build financial systems that work for us, the lived experiences and knowledge of the global team and communities, and the world we are trying to grow. So often, this work happens behind the scenes, but today we want to highlight some of our top tips for you! If you’re a youth organiser, leading a climate or nature project, or just interested in how a global, youth-led organisation is grounding our financial operations, here are four practices that have helped us over the years.
1. Dreaming big & being Realistic (Dream + Floor Budgets)
We love to dream big - envisioning the ultimate version of what a project can look like. This has often left us with very large budgets for projects that were hard to fundraise for, stalling projects that could still have an important impact on nature and climate, even at a reduced scale. So, we initiated a tiered approach to budget development:
Floor budget: This is the minimum needed to run a meaningful version of the project
Dream budget: Our upscaled version - what we’d love to have if resources weren’t limited to really make a splash
The idea is to dream big and reach the sky while still keeping our feet on the ground, to be prepared, no matter the availability of resources, which change so much and so drastically depending on political, economic, and social landscapes. This practice has benefited us in so many ways:
Encouraging our youth team to reflect on what is needed vs. what is wanted to deliver a project, while still maintaining an abundance mindset.
Relieving pressure from our fundraising team, who can focus on meeting floor goals for various projects instead of chasing dream budget goals.
Preparing us in advance if additional funding and resources are secured - we already know how, where, and why we are using those resources as the project shifts into dream mode!
2. Transparency through collaborative decision-making (Budgeting Committee)
““My experience at the BC, and Y4N overall, allowed me to move from being controlled by money anxiety and scarcity, to be more in control of it. Understanding that even in the harsh scenarios of produced scarcity, we can dream and can resource our initiatives and projects.” ”
Making financial decisions that impact a team of 20-30 people, 6-figure budgets, and all of our project delivery is difficult and scary to do alone. What if you make the wrong decision? How do you accurately consider what all the projects need, all team members? When is information useful to share, and when is it too technical? These were just some of the questions we were grappling with until we introduced our Budgeting Committee.
The Y4N Budgeting Committee is a group of staff and volunteers representing different global regions and projects at Y4N, who share the responsibility of making financial decisions that align with our organisational values, meet our team’s needs, and help us grow sustainably. The main tasks the Budgeting Committee is responsible for include:
Making decisions about how and where to allocate incoming (unrestricted) funding
Co-creating our annual organisational budget
Developing internal financial policies
Supporting financial capacity-building initiatives for the wider team
Managing the Global Ambassador Support Fund (more on that below!)
Over 3 years, the Budgeting Committee has built trust, accountability, and transparency into our financial practices at Y4N, solidifying the “why” behind every financial decision. Additionally, with rotating membership on the committee, different team members have the opportunity to practice these financial skills, which they can then apply to their own local initiatives and communities.
3. Removing barriers to access for global volunteers (Global Ambassador Support Fund)
As a horizontal, international organisation with more volunteers than paid staff, many of Y4N’s projects and programs rely on the engagement and contributions of unpaid volunteer members (known within Y4N as “Global Ambassadors” or “GAs”). We recognise the systemic barriers that can prevent youth - especially those from the Most Affected People and Areas - from engaging and participating in the global climate and nature space and meaningfully contributing to projects and programs. One way we address this is with our GA Support Fund, which encourages, supports, enables, and recognises the work that GAs do for and on behalf of Y4N. From a financial perspective, the GA Support Fund is a core organisational function and is placed alongside core staffing and administrative needs in our budgeting and fundraising.
“The GA Support Fund has helped me to feel valued and seen within the team. Getting this support shows how I am recognized as an important part of the work we do at Y4N”
What makes this unique? The GA Support Fund is rooted in trust and recognition of the lived experiences and local leadership of our team members. It enables young people to act on the frontlines of nature and climate action in ways that are context-specific, community-driven, and inclusive—all central principles of Y4N’s mission. By encouraging and supporting GAs, the fund empowers youth not just as participants, but as decision-makers and change-makers within Y4N and beyond. By centering funding for GAs in our budgeting, we promote accountability and visibility of youth leadership, and practice just one way of unpacking the invisible power imbalances between staff and volunteers.
4. Shared understanding for equity & care (Financial Policies & Processes)
The nature of our global team means that we are approaching budgeting and financial matters from a wide variety of lived experiences, ways of knowing, and cultural and economic backgrounds. In the early days of Y4N, this meant that our projects - being delivered by different team members all over the world - were using different baselines or expectations for making budgets, financial decisions, and spending/reconciling. Further, as a youth-led team, we inherently have turnover and wanted to ensure that the learnings of one group of team members are not lost when they transition out. So, we created some key financial policies & practices, like:
Per Diem/DSA Policy: outlines what per diems are used for, who is eligible, and how to access them.
Honorarium Policy: outlines how much Y4N offers as per diems and how much our team members can ask for honorariums from external partners
Project Budgeting Guide: a toolkit to help team members draft well-designed and researched budgets that reflect real project needs and Y4N’s values
We know, we know, this makes us sound like a stuffy old non-profit. We like to think of these as our guiding principles of shared understanding for finances. This shared understanding helps us to:
Practice equality across our communities - for example, providing the same honorarium rates to youth speakers in Canada and Sri Lanka, Ukraine, and Colombia.
Reduce the knowledge gap that leaves youth to low-ball or approach budgeting or financial asks from a scarcity perspective
Increase access to information that builds transparency across our team, and empowers youth leaders with financial literacy to bring to local nature and climate action
So - what do you think? We certainly are not perfect, but we are doing our best - incorporating our learnings as we go, and instilling trust and care at the centre of our finances. What financial practices are you using that model the regenerative, just world we are trying to build? Tell us in the comments below!