Spotlight on Climate Funding Strategies

Increasing ambitions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to climate change poses new challenges to the world. This results in the need for new competencies. Across society, people must “obtain, improve or retain the[ir] skills, knowledge, tools, equipment or other resources” to respond effectively to the challenges we face (Climate-ADAPT 2019).

This Capacity Building is not just a necessity. It is also an important funding strategy that promises to empower individuals, organisations and communities to fight climate change – and thus generate lasting impacts beyond the funder’s engagement.

• Much Capacity Building focuses on developing the knowledge and skills of professionals in different sectors, hence, improving the “technical acumen” of individuals (Cox et al. 2021). For example, funders can help to reduce the fossil fuel use in aviation by training airport staff to improve launch scheduling. Other funders, who are interested in education, can contribute to building the capacity of teachers to teach climate science to pupils (“teaching the teacher”). One example is the development of freely available teaching materials that are easily integrated into classes.
• In the fight against climate change, improving soft skills is an equally important outcome of Capacity Building. By promoting skills like leadership, negotiation or problem solving, funders can facilitate cross-sectoral innovation and help to raise the voices of people marginalised in designing climate solutions.
• Capacity Building has great potential to accelerate other funding strategies. Ultimately, the success of other funding strategies depends on the capacities of different people to implement them. Capacity Building can, for example, pave the way for Political Advocacy. By supporting programmes that enhance the understanding of young people about policy-making processes, funders can strengthen their ability to effectively advocate in the political space for more climate action.
• Capacity Building offers an opportunity to funders to be directly involved by becoming facilitators. Organising workshops, convening communities of practice and peer-exchange are formats that funders can themselves organise and thus become active beyond handing out grants.

Many funders are already experts in communication. They use websites, newsletters or blogs to share information and stories about their grants. This communication is an important field of funders’ operation because it can leverage the impact of a foundation by reaching key actors, changing perceptions or shaping partnerships with grantees (Wildlife Conservation Society 2021; Council on Foundations 2008; Putnam-Walkerly 2010). It is this potential of Communication to leverage impact that makes it an important climate funding strategy, too.

• Information about climate change can only unfold its power if it is packaged to appeal to people. Communication is central to widen access to information about climate change to new audiences. Funders can become active, for example, by helping to translate scientific facts or technical solutions for heterogeneous audiences. The audience will determine whether journalism, music or another medium of Communication is the right strategy. One option is to make climate change visible through the power of visual images. For example, Climate Outreach, which the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation supports, uses photography to drive evidence-based communication about climate change.
• Communication needs to appeal to emotions to motivate climate action. An effective way to do this is through stories that resonate with respective audiences (Morris et al. 2019). By telling stories, e.g. about delicious vegetarian food or the fun of riding electric bicycles in cities, funders can help to shape social norms that lead to climate-friendly behaviour. Telling stories also means to choose the right storyteller as different people trust different messengers. Whether they enable journalists, priests or medical professionals to talk more about climate change, funders have a variety of messengers to work with for whom communication is part of their daily routines.
• Another dimension of Communication is the fight against misinformation. The rapid rise of social networks and virtual media spaces has fundamentally changed the way we absorb information. A drawback of this development is the increasing spread of misinformation, also in relation to climate change (Treen et al. 2020) – which undermines collective action. Funders can help to stop this. Two ways to act stand out. Firstly, they can put pressure on social media platforms to better filter and control misinformation. Secondly, they can proactively use the virtual space to counter misinformation by strengthening digital hubs and helping to establish communities in the virtual space that share evidence-based content on climate change.

Funders have a long history of supporting communities in need for direct help. As philanthropy has developed into a professional sector, this support has become embedded in complex theories of change that aim for shifting the systems in which communities are situated.

In the face of climate change, Direct Support remains an important funding strategy. When droughts, floods or storms hit, affected people and ecosystems require support for relief and reconstruction. This is particularly relevant for the vulnerable regions of the Global South.

Direct Support is not just reactive but also strategic in building long-term resilience. For example, when it comes to restoring ecosystems and the services they provide, e.g. by storing carbon or excessive rainfall.

• Direct Support allows funders to have a visible impact in a specific location. Funders who use this strategy, therefore, find it relatively easy to plan for a specific impact and subsequently evaluate the success of such plan.
• When time is of the essence and where local needs are urgent, funders are well advised to use Direct Support as a funding strategy. Direct Support is an effective strategy particularly where other funding strategies fail to unfold their potential. For example, Political Advocacy takes time to bring about structural changes and its implementation requires basic capacities to be in place. For example, communities that lack basic services such as housing, health and schooling, find it more difficult to advocate for their rights and, indeed, to engage with NGOs receiving funding for running campaigns or pressuring decision-makers.
• Direct Support can create a basis for other funding strategies and nurture lasting changes (Goldsmith 2021). Although Direct Support is not primarily aimed at structural change, it allows for climate solutions to be piloted on a small scale. These pilots can build the evidence for best practices to be scaled up. What is more, best practices can be disseminated into the public and political sphere through Communication and Political Advocacy.

Climate change is a global phenomenon, but it will bear its costs locally in communities. Putting those communities at the centre is thus an effective climate funding strategy. At the heart of Grassroots Support is the idea that local, self-organised communities can be effective stewards of climate solutions. Funders who recognise the people behind grassroots movements as leaders can unleash transformative power.

Yet, Grassroots Support accounts for only 0.7-1.2 percent of funding from European climate funders (Roeyer et al. 2021). Especially bigger funders face a barrier: their funding infrastructure matches the organisational set-up of large, established grantees better than those of grassroots movements, which are often small and informally organised (Ng 2021; Baykara 2016).

• Grassroots Support can require funders to go the extra mile. Grassroot movements are often driven by volunteers who are more loosely organised than the staff of professional NGOs. Funders are thus advised to use different methods of identifying and engaging with grassroots movements. Funders who share calls for funding proposals via social media, will be able to better reach small groups. Equally, small but long-term grants can meet the needs of grassroots movements while not burdening them with the administration of large grants.
• Grassroots organisations are often deeply embedded in a local context. Hence, they are close to the impacts of climate change and to climate solutions (Elliott et al. 2019). Because of this proximity to local events, there is a lot to be gained from Grassroots Support. Most importantly, grassroots organisations can reach people that larger NGOs might not: “monolingual non-English speakers, undocumented workers, tenants living in slum conditions, formerly incarcerated individuals, unhoused neighbours, and many others” (Goldsmith 2021).
• With some solutions to climate change, working with grassroots communities is indispensable. One of them is stopping deforestation, to which indigenous communities are key (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and FILAC 2021). Although indigenous lands account for almost 80 percent of the Earth’s biodiversity, indigenous people have limited sovereignty over that land (Sobrevila 2008; Trewin et al. 2021). Grassroots Support of indigenous people can help to change this. What is more, evidence abounds that Grassroots Support is not only essential but also cost-effective. For example, an analysis shows that Extinction Rebellion UK performs 12 times better at carbon avoidance than the Clean Air Task Force, one of the top-rated climate organisations in the world (Ozden 2022).

Social change necessitates collaboration between different stakeholders. Indeed, throughout history, social breakthroughs such as ending apartheid in South Africa would not have been possible without active coordination among key actors from different sectors (Ditkoff and Grindle 2017). What is more, philanthropists have played an active part in supporting this coordination.

The case for climate funders to support Networks is clear: Climate change is a global challenge that affects all sectors and people in one way or the other. Without broad, cross-sector and cross-border coalitions, effective climate action is not feasible.

Funders supporting Networks can be a key force in breaking down silos and creating new coalitions of actors. Philanthropy is one step removed from political and market events and can thus act as a credible “bridge builder” (Lorentz and Meier 2012) between those holding particular stakes in these events.

What is more, funders can avoid duplication or increase the visibility of a funding area by engaging in Networks with other funders like funder collaboratives or giving circles (see the case study of the Climate and Land Use Alliance).

• Funders can bring together unlike allies who have similar goals but approach them from different sectoral perspectives. For example, the ECF-funded Knowledge Network in Climate Assemblies (KNOCA) explores challenges and best practices for climate assemblies by convening policymakers, researchers, and civil society actors. Similarly, funders can bring together alike allies who have similar approaches but have not yet engaged in mutual exchange.
• Funders are well placed to go beyond the geographical borders of political or administrative entities. A transnational exchange can identify common goals, develop transnational solutions, and strategies for scaling them up. One example is C40 Cities, a global network of mayors with the mission to halve the emissions of its member cities by 2030.
• Supporting Networks is not simply an end in itself. By initiating or strengthening networks, funders contribute to the amplification of voices (and resources) that can then be heard louder outside the network itself. As a result, funding Networks can pave the way for effective Political Advocacy or help grassroots movements to thrive.