Fight Locally: Inside the 11th Hour Project, a Top Climate Funder

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While perhaps better known for marine science work, or their recent $1 billion commitment to supporting young talent, Wendy and Eric Schmidt have a substantial and growing climate-centric grantmaking program. The 11th Hour Project has also set itself apart in climate philanthropy by backing underfunded local efforts to halt new fossil fuel infrastructure.

The 11th Hour Project has kept a pretty low profile to date, but it’s now giving close to $100 million a year, a number that more than doubled after 2018, making it among the largest funders in the climate space. The grantmaker currently has three main focus areas—human rights, food and agriculture, and energy—the latter two explicitly concerned with climate change. 

The foundation is one to watch in climate philanthropy, not only for its sizable giving to a mix of energy and sustainability work, but also for its emphasis on impacted communities and support for local campaigns that have racked up some notable wins. The 11th Hour Project played a big funding role, for example, in a coalition in New York that helped push the state to ban fracking in 2014.  

“We don’t believe it’s enough to just support renewable energy projects,” says Lauren Davis, energy program director. “We need to stop fossil fuels, so our focus is on ensuring renewable energy is actually replacing dirty energy.”

The grantmaker first headed down this path around 2010 when, following the collapse of federal climate legislation, it steered away from its peers in two key ways. The team decided to focus on community-led efforts, with 60% of its grants currently going to groups with annual budgets under $2 million. It also took a strong stance against natural gas fracking at a time when others in the field were either tolerating or promoting the fossil fuel as a replacement for coal. 

How 11th Hour Fits Into Schmidt Philanthropy

Eric and Wendy Schmidt’s philanthropy is a little hard to get your head around, with two oceans programs, a science research program, local giving in Nantucket, the X Prize, and more. The Schmidts coordinate their giving but have separate interests, and it’s not all housed under one roof. One thing is very clear, however—with former Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt’s net worth at around $15 billion, and a $1 billion commitment announced in November, the couple’s profile in philanthropy is on the rise. 

Here, we’re focusing on their private foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation, which calls its grantmaking program the 11th Hour Project. 

While both Schmidts are involved, it’s Wendy who has been the biggest force in the couple’s philanthropy to date, and who has the most direct involvement in the Schmidt Family Foundation. Back in 2006, she worked to set up a foundation with longtime friend Amy Rao, who currently serves as 11th Hour’s executive vice president and serves on other nonprofit boards. Not long after, they hired Executive Director Joseph Sciortino, who came from the private sector after finishing a masters in environmental management. 

Climate change was the foundation’s original issue, initially funding a lot of media and education work. For example, its very first project was working with Interfaith Power and Light to get 4,000 advance copies of “An Inconvenient Truth” in front of faith organizations. 

In 2010, the foundation added its food and agriculture program, conceived as another entry point to climate action. That program supports sustainability and resilience projects like the Regenerative Agriculture Foundation (see IP’s profile here). The grantmaker started funding internationally in 2012, and hired a program director to lead its human rights work in 2015, now working mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Haiti. 

But all three programs intersect to some extent, and a recently created program, Emerging Strategies, is devoted to areas that don’t fit neatly into one of the three. Overall, the Schmidt Family Foundation now has a staff of 29, and both Schmidts, Rao and Sciortino serve on an executive committee that signs off on grant decisions. 

An Inflection Point

The 11th Hour Project’s energy program really became what it is today starting around 2010. A couple of converging factors got it there, a big one being the collapse of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill. A number of climate funders had thrown weight behind a national cap and trade strategy, including 11th Hour, which made several small grants to raise awareness around the approach. The bill’s failure was considered a major defeat to the environmental movement. 

“There were lots of reasons why that happened. But to us, we saw a limit to what kind of campaigns and messaging could happen at the federal level regarding climate change,” Sciortino says. “We started looking at more state-based and community-led efforts. And that’s when Lauren went out to New York and started researching the fracking issue.”

In 2010, Lauren Davis became the foundation’s third program hire, coming on board to lead its energy work. Also around that time, “Gasland,” the hard-hitting documentary about the harms of natural gas hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, came out with funding from 11th Hour.  

“My first week at 11th Hour, Joe handed me a copy of ‘Gasland’ and basically just said, ‘Watch this,’ with no context,” Davis says. She was horrified by the stories coming from the communities featured in the film. 

And yet, post-Waxman-Markey, some large climate funders and NGOs, aiming to shut down the U.S. coal fleet, were either explicitly or implicitly on board with natural gas as a bridge fuel. With “Gasland” as context, 11th Hour saw the impacts of oil and gas extraction on communities, and recognized both a need and an opportunity.   

“One of the main messages that came out of the failure to pass climate legislation in 2010 was the lack of a ground game,” Davis says. “We said, wait, this is the base of support—it’s communities all across the country that are being impacted today. Right now, their kids are getting sick, their water's getting contaminated, their air is dirty. This is the climate base in America.” 

The foundation became highly involved in the New York fracking fight, joining just a few funders like the Park Foundation in actively opposing natural gas extraction. The 11th Hour Project first supported local groups like Frack Action and Catskill Mountainkeeper, and a larger coalition that emerged called New Yorkers Against Fracking. 

“Not only was this not a very popular topic in 2011, it was hostile in most major philanthropic arenas and from big green organizations,” Davis says. “We were going to a lot of gatherings and trying to lead a lot of conversations about the misguided strategy around gas as a bridge fuel, and it was not well received.”

After years of debate, protest and local organizing, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo banned fracking in the state in 2014, citing public health concerns. 

“It was hugely validating,” Davis says. “It was such an uphill battle to tell the story of what’s possible to fight fossil fuels and how much it’s needed. To have such a clear example of how you can win and what that can look like in other places, that was the biggest victory.”

Even with regional victories, natural gas production, consumption and exports in the United States have ballooned since 2000, and the consequences of relying on gas to transition from coal have become increasingly clear. While natural gas did reduce reliance on coal, multiple studies are finding that methane emissions are a far bigger climate concern than government and industry indicated. U.S. power sector emissions are back on the rise, and the gas boom expanded the country’s fossil fuel infrastructure and supply. Davis also points to studies that have shown the vast majority of known fossil fuel reserves must be left in the ground in order to keep warming under 2 degrees. 

“We always thought it was a winning political strategy on climate, but now, the truth is that it’s both a political and a scientific imperative that we stop building out the fossil fuel sector,” she says.

The Heartbeat of the Movement

Along with overlapping work in the food and agriculture and human rights programs, 11th Hour’s energy program funds a mix of approaches, including backing some national enviros and think tanks. One interesting grantee, BlocPower Brooklyn, for example, helps buildings in New York switch from oil and gas heating to air source heat pumps. Davis says they recognize the need for many types of actors working in the climate space.

“But honestly, the community groups and the local fights, it’s the heartbeat of the movement,” she says. “The work is shallow and meaningless without community fights at the center, without real people and real stories and real frontline leaders who are fighting for their own community.”

About half of the energy program’s grants support local campaigns in opposition to fossil fuels. And even as the foundation’s grantmaking budget has grown, 60% of its funding is still going toward groups with budgets smaller than $2 million, a rarity in a field that has long preferred large NGOs.

Davis says they primarily choose fights where there’s already a campaign in the works, and in a political landscape that will support a victory that can then serve as an example for other parts of the country. But that strategy is balanced with the other main criteria, which is to support communities with the greatest needs. 

The foundation is currently playing a large role in a coalition working in California to stop new fossil fuel projects, phase out existing production, and create buffer zones between fossil fuel infrastructure and places people live and go to school. The 11th Hour Project is also funding environmental justice groups like Communities for a Better Environment that are working to curb L.A. County’s urban oil and gas drilling, which disproportionately impacts people of color.

California has been a leader when it comes to expanding renewables, but its continued oil and gas drilling and permitting has become a battleground in the state. Activists see California as a potential leader in transitioning away from its economic dependence on fossil fuels. “We’re not going to be able to do that anywhere else if we can't do it in places like California,” Davis says. 

Since 2015, the funder has also supported campaigns in the Pacific Northwest, a region where companies are looking to expand fossil fuel infrastructure to export to Asian markets. Partners include a coalition called Power Past Fracked Gas, which has prevented new gas export facilities and power plants, and is currently fighting the proposed Jordan Cove LNG export project and two fracked gas projects in Washington.  

Another effort that is just getting underway is funding for a local coalition and environmental justice activists on the Gulf Coast, which are opposing new and expanded petrochemical facilities that would use natural gas to produce plastics. 

A Foundation’s Evolution

One of the impressive things about the 11th Hour Project is its willingness to take risks and fund things that not a lot of other foundations are involved in. That’s something you generally see more often among much smaller foundations. 

“They are a funder who is not just comfortable, but actually relishes being out front,” says Sarah Shanley Hope, executive director of the Solutions Project. The 11th Hour Project currently funds the intermediary, and was one of its original backers when it launched with a (then controversial) target of transitioning to 100% clean energy. “On the scale of their investments, to be that forward-leaning—I wish that more foundations would follow their lead.”

The grantmaker awarded $41 million in grants in 2018, and that number jumped up to more than $95 million in 2019, about what they expect to grant this year, as well. It also has an impact investing program that seeks to make investments in alignment with its program areas. While the team would not confirm the amount of the fund, they say it’s going to grow. The Schmidt Family Foundation was also one of the original cohort of 17 philanthropies that divested their endowments from the fossil fuel industry. 

As the foundation has scaled up, it’s gone into new geographies, substantially increased support for certain grantees, and added the new Emerging Strategies program. It’s also expanded its team to keep up with its grants to smaller community organizations, and what Sciortino describes as a high-touch approach. 

As it operates at a larger scale and gets involved in new areas, one challenge I can see facing the 11th Hour Project is making sure that it’s always following the lead of the communities it serves. That’s a challenge for all foundations, but especially for a national funder backing community efforts. The foundation’s team points out that they spend a lot of time in the field working alongside partners, and although they did not provide us with any numbers on staff diversity, say they are “working to continuously diversify our staff and our grantmaking to better represent the communities we serve.” 

While acknowledging that challenge, support for grassroots, community-led work on climate change is critical and in short supply, so it’s encouraging to see an important player taking on this approach. 

“I don't know if it’s a better approach, but I think, in the times we find ourselves in, for the current political climate, I think it's a good approach,” he says. “To show these examples where grassroots and good community organizing can make a difference, I think we need to see that. And I think the climate movement probably hasn't had enough of that in the past.”