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Explore Fund

The Explore Fund is evolving into something new. Since launching The Explore Fund 15 years ago, The North Face is proud to have funded and collaborated with hundreds of nonprofits to help break down barriers, support communities, and foster meaningful connections with the outdoors. We’re in the final stages of developing an exciting new impact initiative launching in late 2025, which we believe will significantly expand our reach. Because of this, we are not accepting new non-profit partnership requests at this time. We look forward to sharing more details soon.

The Explore Fund is evolving into something new. Since launching The Explore Fund 15 years ago, The North Face is proud to have funded and collaborated with hundreds of nonprofits to help break down barriers, support communities, and foster meaningful connections with the outdoors. We’re in the final stages of developing an exciting new impact initiative launching in late 2025, which we believe will significantly expand our reach. Because of this, we are not accepting new non-profit partnership requests at this time. We look forward to sharing more details soon.

Our work.

Since 2010, we’ve worked to create access and drive equity in partnership with a community of hundreds of outdoor leaders and organizations.
Discover more of our projects below.

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Walls Are Meant for Climbing

We are helping build free, public climbing boulders within city parks to make climbing more accessible in U.S. communities. Our first climbing boulder was designed by local youth in partnership with The Trust For Public Land and Enviromental Learning for Kids, in the Montbello Open Space Park in Denver, CO.

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American Alpine Club | Climb United

Climbing culture is rich with traditions—some worth celebrating, and some that need reexamining. Oppressive route names, underrepresentation in imagery and story, and practices that limit access to climbing are some of the ways that women, people with disabilities, Black, Indigenous, people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals are made to feel unwelcome and unsafe in the climbing community. We’re working with the American Alpine Club (AAC) to help change this through Climb United.

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The Conservation Alliance

The Conservation Alliance works within the outdoor industry to fund and partner with the most effective conservation organizations to protect wild places for their habitat and recreation values. Since we co-founded the group in 1989, The Conservation Alliance has helped preserve more than 51 million acres of wildlands.

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Alaska Wilderness League

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is considered by many to be America’s last wild frontier. Iconic for explorers everywhere, this land is home to Gwich’in people who have lived in the region and depended on the Porcupine caribou herd for generations. The Arctic Refuge is home to polar bears, muskoxen and migratory birds that travel to every continent. This fragile landscape is one of the first areas to feel the effects of climate change and extractive industry. We support the Alaska Wilderness League and many others working to protect this region.

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Protect Our Winters

Climate change is affecting how we spend time outside. For years, we’ve been working with Protect our Winters on the Hot Planet/Cool Athletes program, connecting high school students with athletes to learn about climate change. Our athletes help educate by sharing firsthand accounts of how climate change is affecting their sport, making climate change digestible and providing concrete actions for students.

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Justice Outside

In 2020, we helped launch Justice Outside’s Liberated Paths Grantmaking Program with an eye towards creating a more just and sustainable outdoor and environmental movement. The Liberated Paths Grantmaking Program aims to shift resources to and build power with Black, Indigenous, and Communities of Color. Meet the inaugural grantees.

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American Mountain Guides Association

In 2018, we launched the first Women’s Rock Guide Course in partnership with The American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA) to help create more inclusive spaces and communities in our vertical landscapes. The grant-driven course, which was the first of its kind, is designed to bring more individuals who identify as women into positions of power in guiding professions.

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Outdoor Afro

In 2010 when Rue Mapp launched her new blog called Outdoor Afro, she was also receiving one of the first Explore Fund grants. Since then, Outdoor Afro has grown from a blog into a national movement empowering leadership and connections for people of color in the outdoors. For over a decade, we’ve supported this growing network of leaders and the meaningful outdoor experiences they create for local communities.

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Greening Youth Foundation

Our outdoor spaces benefit when more people with diverse perspectives and experiences are represented. Together, with the Greening Youth Foundation, we are working to build opportunities for more self-identified women of color to enter into environmental and conservation careers through the Women of Color Environmental Leaders grant.