Giving Compass' Take:
- Research from the Center for Effective Philanthropy reveals that American foundations are not funding climate change despite the urgency and importance of the issue.
- What role can you play in supporting climate change solutions? How can you best advance the work that leaders have already begun?
- Learn about funding innovation for climate breakthroughs.
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While U.S. foundation leaders see climate change as an urgent problem, foundation efforts to address climate change are relatively limited, a report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy finds.
Funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and based on a survey conducted between January and March 2022, the report, Much Alarm, Less Action: Foundations & Climate Change (43 pages, PDF), found that 60 percent of foundation leaders (69 percent of climate funders and 43 percent of non-climate funders) and 60 percent of nonprofit leaders (80 percent of climate-focused nonprofits and 53 percent of non-climate nonprofits) believe that climate change is “an extremely urgent problem,” while 29 percent and 22 percent believe it is “a very urgent problem.”
But while 72 percent of foundation leaders and 68 percent of nonprofit leaders overall agreed that “climate change is one of the top three most important problems to address right now,” only 9 percent and 10 percent said that it was “the most important” problem. According to the survey, a larger share of foundation leaders and 33 percent of nonprofit leaders said they believe that climate change would have a significant negative effect on the lives of the people they serve (60 percent and 33 percent), their geographic rea (59 percent and 49 percent), their issue area (36 percent and 9 percent), and their organization’s ability to achieve its goals (28 percent and 9 percent).
Read the full article about climate funding at Philanthropy News Digest.