When Jeff Bezos’ new climate fund announced its first round of funding in late 2020, nearly a fifth of all its grants — about $141 million — went to a handful of climate justice regrantors. In some cases, those recipients received more money from Bezos than they had given out in their entire existence.
A year and a half later, MacKenzie Scott took a similar but more international approach with her second round of climate grants, sending record-breaking awards to a long list of organizations, most of which distribute funding in the Global South.
Around the same time, Laurene Powell Jobs’ new climate operation, Waverley Street Foundation, was cutting big checks to such operations, sending about a third of its early funding to a policy shop that doubles as a regrantor, and another third to climate justice funds.
Billionaires now dominate environmental philanthropy, yet these examples and others show that their dollars have also put significant power in the hands of regrantors, sometimes called intermediaries or pooled funds, remaking the funding landscape by dramatically expanding existing operations and helping new funds get off the ground.
While such operations date to at least the beginning of modern climate philanthropy, and have an even longer history across the philanthrosphere, the fresh funding has helped seed a new crop of green funds over the past few years. With climate dollars expected to continue climbing skyward, it appears likely that many more such operations will take root in the years ahead.
Such regrantors are poised to play a pivotal philanthropic role in what remains of this crucial decade in the climate emergency. But these funds do not always get as much attention as their better-known supporters, whether billionaires or legacy foundations, and some have little public profile. Based on conversations with fundraisers and nonprofit leaders, this expansion has left many in the field eager to better understand this growing source of funding.
In a bid to make sense of this fast-expanding segment of climate philanthropy, I’ll be profiling a series of these operations over the coming months. I’ll attempt an informal mapping of the landscape through a series of lists spanning themes like food and agriculture, climate finance, conservation and climate justice — not that funds always fall neatly into just one of these categories.
To kick off this project, I’m taking a look at the role funding intermediaries play, the factors that have led new regrantors to launch, and the wide range of outfits that have opened their doors in recent years.
Why do funders turn to regrantors?
Green intermediaries have long helped “foundations and donors move money into underfunded corners of the climate movement,” as my colleague Tate Williams summarized in a deep dive on those operations in 2019.
Then as now, such funds work to achieve myriad aims. They seek to address the environmental movement’s long-running racial funding gap, reach small grassroots organizations, diversify the strategies pursued by climate philanthropy, and enable activist-led grantmaking informed by lived experience. At their best, these entities provide a clear and accessible channel for large funders looking to get closer to the people on the ground and more proximate to the problems they are trying to solve. Climate justice, in short, is an overarching concern for many operations.
Yet not all have that focus. There is also the loosely affiliated, globe-spanning network of intermediaries, including the U.S.-based giants ClimateWorks Foundation and the Energy Foundation, established by the foundations that helped launch the first phase of climate mega philanthropy. With major backers like the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, these groups were established largely as hubs of technical expertise, research and collaboration during the early years when foundations were mostly scratching their heads about what they should do about climate change. These entities still mostly represent the mainstream of climate funding, but have put more emphasis on climate justice in recent years.
Nonprofits, too, are increasingly becoming regrantors or expanding their existing funds. Whether focused on food, building movements or climate finance, more and more groups are taking on a grantmaking role, whether in response to funding opportunities or perceived need.
Regardless of structure and focus, regrantors tend to perform multiple roles — as specialists, conveners, campaign managers, donor organizers, fundraisers and more. And sometimes they’re acting a little like subcontractors, allowing either unwieldy or sparsely staffed foundations to hand off the task of redistribution at a scale too small for them to manage.
More money, equity concerns driving expansion
Over the past few years, COVID and a historic wave of racial justice protests pushed foundations to expand support for racial equity and more participatory grantmaking structures. That seems to have driven even more support to intermediaries, and may have pushed even more of them to open.
Legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act and the upcoming renewal of the U.S. Farm Bill have spurred the creation of still more funds, with the aim of preserving set-asides and ensuring equitable distribution of funding.
Then there’s the billionaires. Bezos, Scott and Powell Jobs are just the bold-faced names in a growing list of billionaires who have either entered climate philanthropy for the first time or expanded their grantmaking in the last few years. Many are relying heavily on regrantors, at least as they get their operations off the ground.
Another new billionaire-backed outfit, the Sequoia Climate Foundation, followed a regrantor-heavy template in its early grantmaking, as did Steve and Connie Ballmer in their inaugural round of climate grants.
All that money — and the likelihood of more as the climate crisis worsens — suggest this trend will only continue.
A multiplicity of funds
It’s hard to summarize the current landscape of environmental regrantors. Again, many exist to channel funding to front-line groups or causes seen as underfunded, but there are no typical intermediaries. Name a funding theme, and chances are a new fund has opened lately.
Let’s start with conservation. The Appalachian Landscapes Protection Fund, which opened in early 2021, aims to both protect that iconic landscape and support climate resilience and carbon capture potential. Started by the Open Space Institute, it is backed by conservation stalwarts like the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and William Penn Foundation, as well as several smaller funders.
Or take grassroots infrastructure. Mosaic, a participatory initiative launched the same year, recently made its third round of grants, hitting a record high of $9.6 million, including coordinated support from yet another multi-foundation partnership, the Water Solutions Fund.
Women working in the climate space, too, have a new fund. Daughters for Earth, launched at last year’s SXSW conference with an all-star cast of advisors, aims to back women on the front lines of climate change. Funders include Jody Allen, sister of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
And this is only a sampling of a much larger number that have opened over the last few years, not to mention the many long-running funds that have been bolstered by new support in recent years.
Keeping track of a changing field
I recently came across a regrantor whose name did not ring a bell: the Climate Equity Action Fund. A Google search showed that it’s the 501(c)(4) branch of a sister 501(c)(3), the Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, one of three regrantors that received $43 million from Bezos, and one of the early leaders in this space. But the rest of the search results offered a revealing portrait of just how many of these climate funds are out there, in philanthropy and beyond.
The list of hits included a bevy of outfits with variations on the same name: Minneapolis’s Climate Action and Racial Equity Fund, a Climate Equity Fund by General Motors, a Climate Equity Fund by USAID, a Climate Action Fund by New World Foundation. And that’s excluding similarly titled but nonphilanthropic operations, such as investment funds from Blackrock and Fidelity, as well as location-based funds in Berkeley, California, and Baltimore, Maryland.
Only the first group are active grantmakers, and only a couple of them are regrantors. Yet the experience felt like a microcosm of the larger challenge of tracking this space. I have compiled a working list of more than 80 regrantors and intermediaries over the past few years — which I know is incomplete.
Considering many of us have been calling for exponentially greater climate funding over the years, this is overall fantastic news — a sign that the climate crisis has at long last become a top-tier issue for funders. And we’ve generally been bullish about the role of intermediaries. At the same time, as in all corners of the modern philanthrosphere, there is a looming cloud of concern over who is calling the shots, how they are shaping agendas, and frankly, the extent to which we can even monitor what’s going on out there.
In the coming months, I aim to explore the various corners of this rapidly evolving ecosystem. I welcome your suggestions. Which regrantors would you most like to know more about? Let me know at michaelk@insidephilanthropy.com.
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