Charitable giving to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and halt climate change was flat from 2021 to 2022. That leveling of support comes after years of steady increases in donations and grants to climate groups, according to a new report from the ClimateWorks Foundation.
Donations from individuals fell in 2022, but that was offset by a modest 12 percent increase in funding from grant makers. That increase was much smaller than the 45 percent jump in foundation funding for efforts to curb climate change in 2021.
“We have a fairly disappointing picture of climate philanthropy in a year that was marked by global economic challenges, record-breaking temperatures, and a surge in climate-related disasters,” Helen Mountford, CEO of ClimateWorks, said in an online briefing. “This is not the direction we should be heading if we are going to give ourselves a fighting chance for a livable future.”
The report points out that fossil-fuel subsidies from the Group of 20, the countries with the world’s largest economies, totaled $1.4 trillion in 2022, far outstripping any philanthropic commitment to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, which ClimateWorks estimated to be $7.8 to $12.8 billion. A United Nations report released last week found that in 2021, wealthy countries cut back how much they were giving to developing countries to help them adapt to climate change. The figure fell by 15 percent in 2021 to just $21 billion, increasing the gap between what is needed and what governments are funding at a time when philanthropy is not increasing its commitment to climate-related causes.
Despite the clear and growing threat, climate giving remained a tiny portion of all global charitable giving, which also remained static in 2022. Donations to climate groups made up 1 percent to 1.6 percent of all philanthropic giving in 2022, according to data in the report.
Mountford blamed slow economic growth, high inflation, and poor stock-market performance for the lag in giving last year. In addition, 2022 followed a very big year for climate giving. Overall climate giving jumped 25 percent from 2020 to 2021, and foundation giving was up 45 percent.
There wasn’t one particular reason why foundation giving decelerated, said Helene Desanlis, director of global philanthropy at ClimateWorks and a co-author of the report. Some foundations are increasing their climate commitments, she said, while others are pulling back or pausing giving to reconsider their strategies. Foundation giving is important to groups that work to stop climate change as it represents one-third to one-half of all climate giving, according to data in the report.
In 2020 and 2021, many grant makers increased their giving because of the pressing issues of the Covid-19 pandemic and demands for racial justice, among other priorities. But many crises continue to unfold in 2022 and 2023, says Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, which last year surveyed grant makers about climate change.
“Are we really in less of a crisis moment, or does it just seem that way?” Buchanan asks. “It’s important to not lose the sense of urgency that for a while seemed to really be propelling a number of foundations to operate differently, ask different questions, think differently.”
Climate Giving by Individuals
Major donors may have also given less in 2022. The report has only broad estimates of big contributions by individuals. Using estimates from outside sources, the report says that gifts of $50,000 or more from individuals in 2021 totaled $500 million to $2 billion. That estimated range shrank in 2022 to between $200 million and $1.5 billion. ClimateWorks did not compile these figures, so Mountford was unable to say for certain if they indicated a decrease in these gifts.
Large donations to climate-related causes accounted for a small share of big giving by individuals in 2022 — 1 percent to 1.8 percent, based on data in the report.
Yet more and more wealthy people are interested in giving to help curb climate change, says Jennifer Kitt, president of the Climate Leadership Initiative, which helps high-net-worth donors with their climate-giving strategies. The group has helped 77 families give $4.1 billion to global climate-change efforts over the past four years.
The field can be daunting to enter, Kitt says. There is a lot to learn, and it’s very different than, say, giving to a university. Some donors are driven by the urgency of the problem, while others have had their interest piqued by billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Steve Ballmer, Michael Bloomberg, and others who have made headlines in the past few years for their climate commitments.
“If you’ve never been in this area before — and who’s ever been in this area before; most of us didn’t realize it was even a problem until the last few years — there are bumps in the road for people to find their way in, and to find who to co-fund with,” Kitt says. “I don’t see a lack of interest or a lack of ambition from the new families.”
Some longtime climate donors have started to give to new initiatives like cutting carbon emissions from shipping or from building materials, Kitt says. One important area where these donors have found they can make an immediate impact is reducing methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas with a short life span. Kitt calls it an emergency brake on climate change. The report identified support for reducing super pollutants, including methane, as the fastest growing area of philanthropic investment — it was up 60 percent over 2021.
“You have to actually find the impactful places and move because we have six years to cut emissions in half — the science is clear — on the way to almost no carbon pollution by the middle of this century,” she says. “And that’s a big deal.”
Climate Justice
There were some bright spots in the report. Donations to groups that are in Africa or work on climate issues there were up 38 percent over 2021. And those gifts were going to a larger number of groups that are based in Africa than in previous years. Foundation giving to nonprofits that work on climate in Africa jumped from $65 million in 2018 to $200 million in 2022. In 2018, those funds went to just 35 groups based in Africa and 60 headquartered elsewhere. In 2022, those funds went to 80 groups based in Africa and 100 headquartered elsewhere.
While African countries have contributed the least to climate change, they are among the places most affected by it. Africa has a fast-growing population and middle class, said Zira Quaghe, who focuses on Nigeria for the African Climate Foundation. “With that comes increased demand for energy, transportation, and other goods,” he said in the briefing. “We think that climate philanthropy can really help make this growth more sustainable.”
As in the report last year, ClimateWorks did not include an estimate for the amount of money flowing to climate-justice groups. Often led by people of color, these groups prioritize race, gender, and class in their approach to climate solutions and focus on approaches to climate change with equitable outcomes, and they have long been underfunded compared with larger, more mainstream environmental groups.
The report extols the importance of climate-justice groups and their approach to curbing climate change. It highlights several efforts to fund such groups, including a $500 million, three-year commitment by several foundations to fund a just transition away from fossil fuels and a fund created by the NDN Collective, a United States-based Indigenous organization, to help groups led by Indigenous people receive money from the federal Inflation Reduction Act.
Grant makers have increasingly emphasized justice and equity in their climate giving, says Desanlis, one of the report’s co-authors. But, she says, ClimateWorks has not been able to find partners that can help the group accurately track the funding.
The report lumps climate justice and just transition work together with other categories like air quality and sustainable lifestyle, which makes it appear that justice groups receive more funding than they really do, says Spencer Ozer, a research associate at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. That broad category gets 19 percent of the climate funding in the United States and Canada. But Ozer’s research on a subset of climate-justice groups shows that they receive just 1 percent of climate funding. “That tells a much different story,” he says. “That’s why it’s so important to separate these groups out.”
The lack of data about funding for justice groups is indicative of a broader problem in philanthropy, says Abdul Dosunmu, campaign manager for Climate Funders Justice Pledge at the Donors of Color Network. “What you take seriously, you measure,” Dosunmu says. “As a community, we haven’t taken this seriously enough to measure it.”
The Climate Funders Justice Pledge does just that, asking foundations that sign on to the pledge to report what share of their climate funding goes to groups led by people of color. In September, the Donors of Color Network announced that 10 participating foundations had increased their giving to climate-justice groups and two had given more than half of their climate dollars to grantees led by people of color in 2021 and 2022.
The ClimateWorks report also highlights grant makers’ focus on technological solutions. Clean electricity received more funding than any other area of giving. That is problematic, Dosunmu says, because it discounts many of the solutions coming from the communities that are most affected by climate change.
“We need to see a reimagination of what the priorities of climate philanthropy ought to be,” he says. “And whether they ought to continue to support these big, shiny, technological solutions or whether we really need to start thinking about how we’re building and shifting power in communities to be able to tackle the justice questions that underlie the crisis.”
More foundations are also understanding that climate cuts across many issues, Desanlis says, adding that grant makers that understand how climate change affects other issues and who work closely with grantees to collaborate on strategies are likely to be more effective in using the funds they do have.
Dosunmu agrees and says more grant makers need to understand the ties between climate and other issues. “We really need to shift how we think about climate and start thinking about climate as being intersectional with other issues,” he says. “That’s how we’ll get to the point where we start to see the quantity of climate funding match the magnitude of the crisis.”
Mountford hopes the report will push more donors to fund climate change.
“The current funding is not commensurate with the urgency of the crisis and the scale of efforts needed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” she said. “Maintaining the status quo is simply not enough, and that includes for philanthropy. We should see this report as really a reality check and a call to action for all of philanthropy to up their game.”
