These Five Green Grantmakers May Not Be Massive, But They're Influential

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on May 22, 2023.

Late last year, I put together a pair of lists that took a shot at ranking the United States’ top 50 green grantmakers by how much money they moved out the door in 2021 for environmental causes. One covered the nation’s 25 largest green funders and the other the next 25 largest, i.e., prominent mid-sized grantmakers to keep an eye on. It was, as I admitted at the time, an imperfect attempt.

I had to rely on fuzzy figures for some and, as I suspected, overlooked some significant grantmakers, either due to their low profiles or recent growth. For simplicity’s sake, I also omitted certain segments of the funding landscape, including community foundations and corporate philanthropies.

But more than all of that, such a ranking wrongly suggests that dollar totals are the only measure that matters. To be sure, money is a vital metric in an era when billionaires increasingly dominate environmental grantmaking. It’s a valuable shorthand for power and influence. Yet it’s not the only one worth keeping an eye on.

Here, I’ve assembled a list of five foundations whose influence, in my experience, extends beyond what their relatively modest grantmaking might suggest. They may not control billions, but they have forged paths that foundations large and small have since followed, and they continue to show the way. They are influencers in the original sense.

These are some of the most hyper-connected and active grantmakers in the environmental space. You’ll find their names on governance boards, pledges and on lists of partners in green philanthropy. Again, I do not want to suggest this is an exhaustive list. For instance, this group trends progressive, but that’s only one side of the environmental giving space, though an important one.

Perhaps most importantly, this handful of funders offers a reminder that any grantmaker, regardless of size, can make a ripple that becomes a wave. This group has done just that by listening closely to communities, questioning endowment orthodoxy and focusing deeply on chosen issues, albeit with an eye to wider interconnections.

Here are five small-budget green influencers in philanthropy.

Christensen Fund

Over the past couple years, a growing number of green grantmakers have awakened to the incomparable role of Native communities in caring for our lands, skies and waters. That means this San Francisco-based grantmaker, which is one of the few that has been funding in that space for decades, can offer a guiding light.

The Christensen Fund has joined and helped launch some major philanthropic commitments as more dollars flow to Native-led nonprofits. In 2021, it partnered with the Ford Foundation and others on a $1.7 billion pledge for Indigenous land protection. This March, it was part of a historic $100-million-plus conservation pledge for tribal nations led by Native Americans in Philanthropy and Biodiversity Funders Group. Incidentally, back in January, it named its first-ever Native American president, Carla Fredericks.

The fund’s leadership extends beyond its path-breaking role on Indigenous issues. To take one example, the Christensen Fund has signed on to the Climate Funders Justice Pledge, and its initial data indicates 69% of its climate grantmaking has gone to BIPOC-led groups. It’s also notable for its flexible support, international funding, impact investing and public leadership. In sum, it has had a more prominent role than you might expect for an operation whose environmental grantmaking has hovered around $5 million annually in recent years, according to Candid.

David Rockefeller Fund

Rihanna’s philanthropy counts it as a partner. The McKnight Foundation followed its lead in becoming one of the first foundations to make a net zero pledge. It is among the backers of one of philanthropy’s most dynamic participatory environmental movement building funds.

In short, this 33-year-old philanthropy is a guiding light for the environmental field, even without its founder and namesake, David Rockefeller, who died in 2017. The New York City-based fund’s climate portfolio, which is one of its three core programs, focuses on equitable solutions, prioritizing groups “run by, serving, and building power” for highly impacted and underfunded communities of color on the front lines of the climate crisis.

While the Rockefeller family is still reputed to control about $8 billion, the David Rockefeller Fund is on the small end of the spectrum of the family’s giving vehicles, and its green grantmaking is modest even compared to members of this list. That said, it’s been growing rapidly. All of the fund’s environmental and climate grantmaking combined came to just $3 million in 2020, according to its annual reports, but that sum was nearly double what it sent out the year before, and a 10-fold increase from 2017.

Growald Climate Fund

You can hardly turn around in climate philanthropy without bumping into the Rockefeller family. Call it guilt or moral responsibility, but the philanthropies of the oil baron’s heirs can be found in all levels of the fight for a fossil-free future. Growald Climate Fund, started by Eileen Rockefeller Growald, the daughter of David Rockefeller, has upped its funding in recent years, similar to her father’s operation (see above).

Launched in 2013, the Massachusetts-based philanthropy sent out $6.7 million in climate and environmental grants in 2020. That’s triple what it granted in prior years, according to its tax filings. A major grantmaking priority is clean electricity, and its partnerships with much-larger institutions show the scale it works on. In 2022, Growald Climate Fund joined with funders like Bloomberg Philanthropies and the new Sequoia Climate Foundation to back a three-year, $500 million investment to support an equitable energy transition in the Global South. It is also one of the 45 partners of Giving to Amplify Earth Action, or GAEA, a World Economic Forum initiative seeking to bring together philanthropies to mobilize the $3 trillion in annual investment needed to battle climate change, biodiversity loss and other environmental threats.

GRACE Communications Foundation

This New York City-based funder has a hand in pretty much every philanthropic network out there working on agriculture and farming. It has staff on the steering committees of Funders for Regenerative Agriculture, Global Alliance for the Future of Food, Health and Environmental Funders Network, Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders, and Food and Farm Communications Fund, where it has two representatives. It also participates in the Plastic Solutions Fund, among other groups.

Unlike the other philanthropies I’ve listed, GRACE is functionally an operating foundation. In 2020, for instance, it technically did not issue a single dollar in grants, but spent nearly 80% of its budget, or $6.9 million, on direct charitable activities. Those included its Foodprint.org campaign, Meatless Mondays work and pandemic response.

Wallace Global Fund

Talk with anyone about divestment and impact investing for a little bit and Ellen Dorsey’s name is likely to come up. The longtime head of the Washington, D.C.-based Wallace Global Fund was one of three philanthropic leaders Ford Foundation President Darren Walker thanked by name in a 2021 letter announcing his institution was divesting its $16 billion endowment from fossil fuels. That’s influence.

Under Dorsey, Wallace Global Fund has been a model and leader in pushing foundations to use all their assets for positive impact. Not only has it divested from oil assets; it also helped launch the Divest-Invest movement, which has helped move trillions in assets under management away from fossil fuel investments. Wallace Global Fund was one of the first foundations to put 100% of its endowment into mission-aligned investments, and it recently joined the transparency portion of the Climate Funders Justice Pledge.

That all means this fund has a much bigger profile than its relatively minor environmental grantmaking portfolio might suggest. Its green grants totaled just $3.2 million in 2020, down slightly from a few years before, according to Candid. Like most on this list, the fund only devotes a portion of its overall grantmaking to green causes — it made nearly $21 million in total grants in 2020.

Who do you think are the most influential small-budget green grantmakers? I welcome nominations for future roundups. Let me know at michaelk@insidephilanthropy.com.

Featured