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The Keys to Successful Environmental Advocacy

Health & Environmental Funders Network
This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
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Thinking Forward: How Do We Better Support Our NGO's?
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Giving Compass’ Take:

• Health & Environmental Funders Network lists ways for donors and advocates to make a difference, whether it’s fighting the spread of chemicals or preserving our clean air.

• Collaboration and strong grassroots organizing are key, and these lessons can be applied to advocacy work across many different areas of philanthropy. 

• Read about steps to advance advocacy.


While environmental exposures can be critical, they are often not the only factors in determining health outcomes either at the individual or at the population level. And the role that poverty and stress play in health status can’t be overstated.

What does this mean for us as funders at the intersection of environment and health? On the environment side, climate change now dominates much of the moral- or value-based philanthropy; on the health side, disease prevention is proving to be a tough sell for donors drawn to the promise of cures and more effective treatments for dreaded illnesses. So, what can our hardy band of HEFN members, who are supporting very talented, dedicated but seriously under-resourced NGOs, do to grow and strengthen our often-overlooked field?

We are coming off of an eight-year fight to reform TSCA, the nation’s foremost chemicals policy. While the outcome is not everything we hoped for, the win is nevertheless the single biggest victory the environmental community has achieved at the congressional level in decades. A recent M+R evaluation of the campaign commissioned by several HEFN members attributes the win to these hallmarks of successful advocacy:

  • A unified goal with potential for high impact.
  • Collaboration among diverse stakeholders.
  • Affected groups as the public facing coalition representatives.
  • Grassroots organizing capacity (optimal when a political lens is applied).
  • Effective communications.
  • Going forward, we should look for these same elements when making funding decisions. And it would be even better if as funders we could consolidate resources around a small number of campaigns of similar caliber and potential.

Read the full article about successful environmental advocacy by Ruth Hennig at Health & Environmental Funders Network.

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If you are looking for more articles and resources for Philanthropy, take a look at these Giving Compass selections related to impact giving and Philanthropy.

  • This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
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    What Scaling Should Mean in Philanthropy

    The flight was delayed due to bad weather in Washington, and I found myself bumped to standby. Boarding the shuttle flight late out of Logan, coach looked full. A stewardess saw me floundering and gestured toward first class. “There’s an open seat up there,” she whispered. “Consider this your lucky day!” Ambling up to the third row, I immediately recognized the profile of the man sitting by the empty seat that was now mine. We struck up a conversation, and 30 minutes into sharing snapshots of our professional lives, I said, “You seem to have a lot of touchpoints with Harvard University. Were you an adjunct there or something?” He paused, smiled slowly and then asked, “Would it mean anything to you if I told you my name was Larry Summers?” I wanted the airplane to swallow me up. Yes, I’d guessed that. I just didn’t quite believe it. We continued talking, and as he learned that I was canvassing the “character landscape” to give philanthropists guidance around what they should give to, he said, “Interesting. Well, your task is obvious. You’ll just need to find the McDonald’s of Character and evangelize it.” It didn’t seem appropriate to correct the former Secretary of the Treasury, but something in me balked. To pair the work of influencing character formation with the automated logic of a global food chain got at the heart of a challenge I was already sensing in this work. How do you apply dollars and cents to such a deep and integrated human faculty? Is it really possible for matters of the will, mind, and heart to be formulized and multiplied, the way you can parse a dessert into its ingredient proportions, guaranteeing the same result every time? Summers’s impulse was understandable. Frankly he was thinking like the economist he is, presuming that philanthropic “impact” had to mean large-scale reach. But what if the McDonald’s metaphor was fatally flawed, not only for philanthropists interested in restocking our society’s moral capital, but for any funder’s work aimed at improving lives and communities? It turns out my hesitation wasn’t unique. Every practitioner I met who led an organization that was effectively shifting people’s orientation of value and changing communities for the better testified that, while of course they wanted to amplify the good they were discovering to help more people in more places, today’s philanthropic idolization of scale was too often missing the point — and even damaging organizations’ ability to fulfill their founding missions.  In short, donors were asking their grantees the wrong questions — all in the name of Bentham. “We think in terms of relationships; donors think in terms of ROI,” leaders of many of the most transformative organizations told me, in different terms. Read the full article about scaling philanthropy by Anne Snyder at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.


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