Donor Fights Fracking Locally With $40-Million

As fracking proliferates nationwide, grant makers face big challenges in shaping strategies to promote or oppose it.

Among the biggest is that this controversial practice of tapping natural gas is happening in lots of states and playing out in very different ways.

“It’s very easy to fight the Keystone pipeline: It’s one project in one location run by one company. Fracking is the opposite of that,” says Farhad Ebrahimi, founder of the Chorus Foundation.

The grant maker plans to spend $40-million over the next decade to stop the extraction and use of fossil fuels.

Mr. Ebrahimi, the son of a wealthy tech entrepreneur who is Chorus’s sole donor, says grant makers need to be both focused and nimble to deal with the sprawling fracking industry.

“You could have two wells drilled a quarter-mile apart and have totally different companies and landowners. Then a company can move on to the next state. It’s a lot more difficult to figure out where to be next.”

State Campaigns

Chorus and other foundations have worked to link people who have lived near fracking sites in Pennsylvania and elsewhere with those in other states where the practice is just gaining a foothold, so groups can learn what to expect from the influx of energy companies to their area.

Chorus also has had some early success drumming up support for its anti-fracking platform from groups that advocate for better agricultural and food policies, says Mr. Ebrahimi.

Although foundations often look for ways to take their advocacy work to the national level, that isn’t a sound strategy for dealing with fracking, he adds.

“Philanthropy needs to be less national-campaign focused,” says Mr. Ebrahimi. “Local is where the strength is.”