New Climate Pledges Have Drawn in New Philanthropies. Will More Funding Follow?

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Back in 2021, we saw philanthropies come together to back a pair of major multimillion-dollar climate pledges that came one after the other: one to combat methane emissions around the world and another to support the Indigenous protection of tropical forests. Among the names backing the pledges was an institution not previously seen on such lists, Sobrato Philanthropies, which signed onto both.

Pushed by a new generation of family members, the Mountain View, California-based philanthropy had spent almost a year shaping a strategy to respond to humanity’s emergency. Following those late-2021 pledges, the Sobratos publicly announced their new, three-year, $23 million climate portfolio. 

Fast forward nearly two years, and the ink has only just dried on two new pledges — Invest in Our Future and BuildUs — each with long lists of participating funders. Among the names were several philanthropies not previously seen on such lists, including legacy foundations like the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Marguerite Casey Foundation, as well as billionaire-backed outfits such as Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies and the Omidyar Network. Like Sobrato Philanthropies, they have little to no past record of climate philanthropy. 

Are we seeing the emergence of a new set of climate funders? And, as with Sobrato, will new funding follow? 

The circumstances, of course, are different. There are now four separate federal bills — the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — that offer an estimated $4 trillion in potential investment. That once-in-a-generation opportunity is understandably drawing in a wide range of philanthropies. 

Nor is all this legislation solely about climate. Even the IRA, the largest climate investment ever, intertwines economic and decarbonization goals, along with others like national security. Equity, too, is a driving motivation, helped along by the government’s Justice40 initiative. 

So it should be unsurprising that there are some new names signing onto these pledges — which themselves cut across issue areas. BuildUs, for instance, is focused on workers as much as climate. 

For all that, there are signs that these newcomers aren’t just here for the pledges alone. Some have been quietly making climate-related grants for a while. Others have made separate climate grants since signing on. With some of these federal spending programs operating on a 10-year timeline, it seems likely that their ranks will only grow. 

Perhaps these pledges are a sign that climate philanthropy is at last widening to include grantmakers from across the funding landscape, stretching beyond a core group focused on lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Maybe climate change will finally begin transitioning from a fringe funding interest commanding less than 2% of philanthropy to a sector-wide concern, integrated in all grantmaking. Foundation leaders should know by now that climate change is an everything problem. Yet overall, philanthropic funding does not yet reflect that. 

For now, with record federal dollars on the table and heat records surpassed by the day, these pledges show a few more philanthropies have found space in their budget to fund accordingly. We’ll see if more follow their lead.

Legacy foundations find room for climate

W.K. Kellogg Foundation is not known as a green grantmaker. Its racial justice and equity-forward approach focuses on children, families and communities, and does not explicitly emphasize climate concerns. Yet not only is the Battle Creek, Michigan-based grantmaker among the supporters of BuildUs; its commitment follows several climate-related grants in recent years.

In 2020, for instance, the foundation made the first of three multiyear awards totaling $1.7 million to the Louisiana Green Corps, supporting training on topics like green infrastructure and environmental stewardship. More recently, Kellogg has granted money to groups like Action for the Climate Emergency ($200,000 over two years) and the grassroots intermediary Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund ($425,000 over two years). 

It’s worth pointing out that those three grantees represent funding across Kellogg’s three primary programs: Working Families, Thriving Children and Equitable Communities, respectively. 

“Our support of climate is very intersectional,” said Ciciley Moore, senior program officer at Kellogg, in a July conversation. “We don’t have a specific portfolio around climate change work.”

The unprecedented $4 trillion opportunity from the federal government has made the question of whether to build or grow a climate portfolio “unavoidable” for philanthropies, said Bonnie Kwon, policy officer at Kellogg. The team sees a range of needs among its grantees, including policy analysis, leadership development and strategic communications.

“So many community partners in particular are asking for support,” Kwon said. “While they may not be traditionally in the space of climate, they are seeing these huge opportunities that will have long-term impacts.”

Kellogg has made some green grants before. The grantmaker has been a long-time supporter of sustainable agriculture, and its support for the Foundation for Louisiana has helped that region respond to climate change and the erosion of coastal land. Its recent funding in this space is also international, including backing the social and environmental justice organization Namati.

Kellogg hasn’t been the only legacy funder making new climate-related commitments recently. Both the Carnegie Corporation of New York ($3 million) and Marguerite Casey Foundation (unknown amount), each of whose grantmaking overlaps with climate issues but who rarely call climate out explicitly, also joined BuildUs. 

More billionaires for the climate?

As with Kellogg, the named priorities of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies do not include the environment. At time of writing, its website’s search function turns up no hits for “climate.” But this summer, the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based grantmaker became a backer of Invest in Our Future.

It was not a one-off commitment. The funder has made additional climate-related grants since signing up, aimed at supporting the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to combat climate change, according to a spokesperson. (The institution did not reply to requests for a staff interview.)

The size of that commitment remains to be seen. But with an estimated $4.5 billion family fortune to draw upon, and a grants budget that reached $459 million in 2022, there’s plenty of capacity. And the family is very much on hand to make those calls. Stacy Schusterman is now leading grantmaking, and her mother, Lynn, who founded the philanthropy with her husband, is chair emeritus. 

Most of the other billionaire backers of the new funds are no strangers to climate grantmaking, even if they are relative newcomers. For instance, Bill Gates’ investment and advocacy platform Breakthrough Energy, which is one of the supporters of Invest in Our Future, only recently opened its doors, but it was one of the country’s top green grantmakers in 2021. 

Among the supporters of BuildUS, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations launched a justice-focused climate initiative in 2020, while Wellspring Philanthropic Fund’s benefactor, C. Frederick Taylor, spun off the operation’s climate work under Sequoia Climate Foundation, which made its first grants in 2021. And then there’s Skoll Foundation, founded by eBay president Jeff Skoll, which might be the most experienced climate funder of the bunch.

Yet there is one billionaire-backed BuildUs supporter, the Omidyar Network, that does not have a climate portfolio, and hardly any past grants in that area. The investment and philanthropic platform of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar is focused on areas like capitalism, technology and “belonging,” i.e., topics intertwined with climate change (then again, what isn’t?). But environmental concerns have not been central to its funding. 

As with Schusterman, a $6.3 billion fortune means Pierre and Pam Omidyar could choose to grow a portfolio in a hurry. They can’t start too soon. As the Omidyar Network’s own 2022 annual report states: “Climate change continues to threaten our future.”

Not too late

With temperatures climbing and sea levels rising, it seems that more philanthropies are moving money in response, even if neither the pace nor the amounts — though significant — reflect the truly colossal scale of the challenge.

Yes, it’s possible that BuildUs, with its dual focus on climate and economic empowerment, simply represents a moment of union between funders that prioritize those causes. But then again, each passing day is dissolving that very distinction, with our climate future inextricable from our economic fate.

Perhaps it reflects a too-close reading of the tea leaves, but I was struck by the Marguerite Casey Foundation’s recent book club selection: a collection by the brilliant essayist Rebecca Solnit and the writer Thelma Young Lutunatabua, who works at the climate-justice-focused grassroots intermediary The Solutions Project. 

The collection’s title? “Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility.” I hope a lot of foundation presidents and trustees signed up.