Foundations can do a better job of funding climate-justice work by partnering with grant makers that already work with small community-focused organizations, especially those run by people of color, and by examining their existing grantees in other causes for opportunities to fund climate work.
That’s one takeaway from a guide released Thursday by Candid that hopes to spur more giving to these groups that have long been underfunded.
In 2019, only $1.6 billion, or 2 percent of global giving, went to groups that work to curb climate change, according to a report by the ClimateWorks Foundation. Of that, only about $60 million went to climate-justice groups.
The goal of the guide, which was the result of interviews with 30 foundations and leaders in the field, is to provide grant makers with concrete examples of how they can support grassroots groups.
The guide highlights a community organization in Buffalo that turned an abandoned building into affordable housing and a community center that uses solar power and was built by local workers. It also discusses the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s decision to support organizations that re-grant money to smaller climate-justice groups and the Libra Foundation’s decision to better cater to these groups by doing away with applications and reports.
“It doesn’t get us very far to tell funders what to do,” says Janet Camarena, senior director of learning experience at Candid, who edited the guide. “What really convinces them are examples that they can take to their boards and take to their program directors to say, ‘Here’s what this looks like from funders who have done it.’”
Overlooked Organizations
Candid decided to create the guide after hearing from Julie Broome, director of Ariadne, a network of Europe human-rights grant makers, that her members wanted to learn how to fund smaller grassroots climate groups in Europe but also in the global south, which experiences some of the most severe effects of climate change. The emergence of youth-led climate groups and big grant makers like the Bezos Earth Fund has increased interest in supporting a wider array of climate groups, not just big, mainstream environmental organizations.
“Let’s really take this opportunity to think about the societies that we have, the systems that we have, and how can we restructure things in a way that is more equitable, that actually reduces our impact on this planet but also really helps communities of people who are most vulnerable, most marginalized in this crisis,” says Broome, who was an adviser on the report.
Community groups led by people of color who work on climate have been overlooked by traditional foundations for a host of reasons. Large grant makers often focus on technical solutions, looking for fixes that can scale up and provide quick and concrete results, Camarena says. There are race- and gender-based biases at foundations that affect whom grant makers see as trustworthy, says Erin Rogers, a former environmental program officer at Hewlett and now co-director of the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice.
Big grant makers are often fickle and lack the staying power to commit to movement building, says Gloria Walton, CEO of the Solutions Project and a technical adviser on the report. She says that has led to severely underfunded groups that often have the best solutions for the problems their communities face.
Learning From Others
Organizations like the Solutions Project and the Hive Fund make grants to smaller climate-justice groups, one of the solutions identified in the guide. These kinds of re-granting groups can help large grant makers move money out more quickly than if they had to develop the internal expertise to understand whom to fund and how to work effectively with small groups.
“We are uniquely situated between grassroots movements and philanthropy,” Walton says. “Because we are closer to the ground, we are more accountable to the ground.”
Intermediaries can also help educate grant makers so they can become better at doing this kind of work themselves.
“They can help foundations get more comfortable, build trust, build relationships, build understanding of a different worldview on the problem and the solutions,” Rogers says. “The report is a great call to action, and I hope it helps the big funders move more quickly.”
These groups have gotten more attention recently because of a few large donations from the Bezos Earth Fund in 2021. Yet Rogers says many of her grant makers have not renewed their support after their initial donations and she is looking for new ones to work with.
Close to Home
Foundations can also look in their own portfolios to find opportunities to support climate justice, Camarena says. Traditional grant makers tend to separate issues from one another and view them in a vacuum, she says. But climate change is such a big issue, it cuts across many program areas. Climate affects health, education, economic growth, immigration, democracy, and many other issues. Now, she says, nonprofits have an opportunity to get ahead of some of the results of climate change that are like going to affect communities.
“It’s not necessarily a binary question. Am I a climate funder? Am I not a climate funder?” Camarena says. “We will all be forced to address this in our lifetimes.”
Expanding the notion of which nonprofits are working on climate can also lead to supporting groups that address climate very differently than traditional groups. Many grassroots climate-justice groups are making changes in people’s daily lives and implementing solutions that come from community members. That builds interest and popular support for change and makes it harder for, say, a polluting industry to fight them, Rogers says.
Making a shift toward climate-justice funding can also push grant makers to develop systems for better listening to their grantees and getting to know the communities where they make grants. And that can lead to better long-term support, says Marion Gee, co-executive director of the Climate Justice Alliance.
Funders need to see that everyone needs a climate agenda, Walton says. “We all have a role, regardless of what you are doing, regardless of what issue you are working on.”
Climate-justice groups have long pointed out disparities in funding and the tendency of big environmental grant makers to fund large, white-led environmental groups. But having a report like this from Candid has particular value, Gee says. “It doesn’t just name the problem but actually offers a lot of really clear solutions.”
