Environmental and philanthropy experts say they hope the Bezos Earth Fund’s announcement Tuesday that it has hired an established nonprofit leader will bring a more coherent strategy and greater transparency to a little-understood $10 billion philanthropic organization that needs a healthy dose of both as it maps out a plan to spend all of that money by the end of the decade.
Andrew Steer, who leads the environmental think tank World Resources Institute, has been tapped to be the first president of Jeff Bezos’s $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund, established last year.
The World Resources Institute was one of five organizations that in November received $100 million from the Earth Fund to monitor carbon emissions and measure to the world’s forests, grasslands, wetlands, farms, and other areas that capture carbon through natural processes. The grant will additionally drive its work to advance policies to switch 450,000 school buses in the United States to electric vehicles by 2030.
The Environmental Defense Fund, the Nature Conservancy, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the World Wildlife Fund also received $100 million gifts; 11 other organizations received smaller amounts.
Bezos’s $10 billion commitment landed him atop the latest Philanthropy 50, the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual rankings of the 50 Americans who gave the most to charity. Bezos announced last month that he was stepping down as Amazon CEO to devote more time to philanthropy and other projects.
Bezos had little to say publicly about the hiring of Steer. In an Instagram post, Bezos praised Steer’s “decades of experience in environmental and climate science as well as economic and social policy in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Africa.”
Steer on Twitter said Bezos intends to spend all of the $10 billion fund by the end of the decade on “scientists, [nongovernmental organizations], activists, and the private sector to help
activists, and the private sector to help drive new technologies, investments, policy change, and behavior. We will emphasize social justice, as climate change disproportionately hurts poor and marginalized communities.”
Skeptical Reception
Bezos’s announcement last year that he was creating the Earth Fund was greeted with praise and skepticism, with some hailing it as a huge help to fight climate change, while others complained that Amazon, the company Bezos founded, remains an enormous contributor of greenhouse gases.
Dan Stein, co-founder of Giving Green, a nonprofit that works to direct money and volunteers toward evidence-backed climate-change solutions, said that the Bezos Earth Fund’s grant decisions so far have been announced with no explanation of why those particular groups were chosen or how they fit into an overall strategy. The decisions “seem to come out of nowhere,” Stein said, adding, “Maybe some things now will start to make more sense.
So far, Bezos has focused his giving on large, established organizations, which can be an effective way to give away large amounts of cash, Stein said. However, it also risks overlooking smaller nonprofits doing more nimble work with a bigger payoff per dollar.
Stein said he doesn’t know Steer, although he added that the World Resources Institute is a well-respected organization working on climate change. “Bringing in an old hand from the climate community is hopefully going to allow them to be more transparent and more innovative.”
He noted that the Bezos Earth Fund doesn’t have a website, and Steer is the first staff hire he has heard about.
“I tried to figure it out because I wanted to ask them for money,” Stein said with a laugh.
Mysterious Ways
Bezos has not yet explained the structure of the Earth Fund. Recode reported that he set up an LLC as part of the effort.
Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy and author of Giving Done Right, also stressed the need for greater transparency — and more expertise.
“There is a long line of folks who found out the hard way that philanthropy is uniquely challenging,” Buchanan said.
A spokeswoman for the Bezos Earth Fund said Steer would join the organization “in the coming weeks.”
Manish Bapna, currently the World Resources Institute’s executive vice president and managing director, will serve as that organization’s interim CEO.
