![]() ![]() “In these conversations, it feels like we are really shifting the needle,” she said. “Some are definitely nowhere close at the moment” to the 30% floor, Maxton said. The group says other major foundations are in conversations about signing, while some have not responded to messages.Įven those who have opted in have ground to make up. Cargill foundations, as well as the Kendeda Fund, declined to sign the pledge. Four of the country’s largest climate funders, the Gordon and Betty Moore, Ford and Margaret A. One grantmaker, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, has committed to transparency around its giving, but not to meeting the 30% pledge. ![]() Several smaller grantmakers have also signed on, including the NorthLight, Surdna and Tides foundations and the Meyer Memorial Trust. Two other top 40 funders, the JPB and Pisces foundations, are also on board. The biggest among them is the Kresge Foundation, whose endowment is among the 20 largest in the United States. So far, 10 foundations have signed on to the pledge. People of color represent nearly 40% of the population, but the effort opted for a 30% level as their floor, aiming for “what’s doable,” Maxton said. To lead the effort, it brought on Danielle Deane-Ryan, an Obama administration veteran who has worked in a variety of roles in philanthropy and the private sector, including serving as a program officer at Hewlett. The network’s high-net-worth members identified climate as one of their key priorities-and so the group set to work. The effort has its roots in the initial conversations hosted by the Donors of Color Network, whose launch IP covered in 2018. “We want to transform the climate movement into a winning movement. “If we could scale the Sierra Club by 10 and win on climate, we’d already be winning,” said Ashindi Maxton, executive director of the Donors of Color Network. Now that 2020 is in the rear view mirror, many in the field suspect the flurry of new commitments will pass and giving will return to typical levels. A 2018 study found grantmakers greatly favor a small group of big-and typically white-led-green groups, with half of all grants from major climate funders going to just 20 nonprofits. Other research has come to similar conclusions. One of the few and frequently cited studies on the topic found that just 1.3% of the green giving from philanthropy’s top dozen foundations went to environmental justice. Yet those advances are small steps in the face of a massive funding disparity. Though the bulk of his initial grants went to the sector’s largest organizations, nearly 19% went to green intermediaries led by people of color. And within the climate space, it comes close on the heels of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s unexpected support for climate justice groups. Dozens of foundations committed to give tens and even hundreds of millions to advance racial equity, and prominent billionaire philanthropists such as Kat Taylor and MacKenzie Scott have prioritized leadership of color in their giving. The pledge launches in the wake of a year in which such giving has made unprecedented advances. grantmaking on climate change to environmental justice groups led by Black, Indigenous and people of color, and to share those figures publicly. The effort calls on foundations-particularly the nation’s 40 largest climate funders-to commit to directing 30% of their U.S. To move more philanthropic dollars to such efforts, the Donors of Color Network has joined with movement leaders like Pichon Battle to launch a new campaign, the Climate Funders Justice Pledge. “We were created out of complete disaster, necessity and need-and we’re still here, and we’re still fighting, and we’re leading the way around the Green New Deal and climate equity,” Pichon Battle said. And it also has not stopped her organization from making change, most recently helping form a five-state climate equity coalition that is soon to expand to cover the entire South and that has informed similar movements in New England, Appalachia, the U.K. It’s meant simultaneously serving as accountant, staff manager, communications director and more. It’s made it hard to hold onto employees. In the 15 years since, she has received just one multi-year grant large enough to pay for more than one staff person. Colette Pichon Battle founded the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. ![]()
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