Environmental funding – what are we doing?

Jon Cracknell – EFN Retreat – January 2009

On this day

• “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. We are faced now with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late... We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilisations are written the pathetic words: Too late.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Overview of presentation

• Our current practice – generalised• How much we give, the issues we like, the type of work we

fund... • Scorecard of environmental philanthropy• What we don’t like• Our responsibility going forwards• Things we could do together

• What our grantees would like• Possible EFN activities

How much we give• 2005/06 a little under £38 million – up 19% from the year

before – similar number of grants, c. 1,300 (new funders too, to add in)

• US foundations c. $1 billion a year on environment, 4 times as much per capita as the UK (on climate change 7 times as much per capita)

• US environment grants = 5% of total foundation giving, UK = 2%• BUT UK foundations dominate the European environmental

grant-making scene, EFN members would account for about half of the EU’s “top 30”

The issues we like

• We love biodiversity and species preservation! Particular habitats (wetlands, forests, canals), or particular species (rhinos, gorillas, squirrels, bats, butterflies, pheasants, sharks...), wildlife trusts

• Terrestrial ecosystems – trees, national parks, gardens, landscapes, grasslands, peat bogs...

• Agriculture – lots of education (city farms, children visiting countryside...), research, community food projects, projects in Africa

The type of work we fund

• Lots of research, on science, or policy, or technology, or...• Education and ‘awareness-raising’ (of a general nature)• Hands-on conservation work• Demonstration projects at small-scale• We like to fund large well-known organisations – the

household names, even though our grants represent a small proportion of their total income

Where we fund• In the UK either through organisations with national remit

(Soil Association, RSPB), or via county level organisations, or in grants to community projects

• International giving is high relative to that in other fields of philanthropy, often done via UK based organisations with international reach, (Plantlife, Kew, Fauna & Flora, Tusk Trust...)

• We like to fund projects in Africa and also in India

How we distribute grants

• Very ‘scattergun’ – broad and shallow• A lot of duplication amongst grantees – starting to map

this• Turnover/churn – not enough continuity?• Rather blindly – we don’t understand well what other

larger funding agencies are doing (Lottery, central government, Natural England etc)

• Often too slowly in the eyes of our grantees – agenda is moving fast – the fierce urgency of now

Scorecard of environmental philanthropy• Where has our comfort zone got us?

• We know how to do conservation – reasonably successful at that

• We have helped to ‘norm’ environmental awareness and concern in many ‘developed’ economies, although with quite limited effects in terms of behaviour change/habits

• Helped construct large social movements – 110,000 organisations on www.wiserearth.org

Reasonable success on ‘domestic’ agenda

• Understandable scientifically• Highly visible impacts• Current problem• Us/here• Acute problem

• Developed world - air pollution, water pollution, acid rain, deforestation, strip mining...

Limited success on the ‘global agenda’

• Complex, difficult to understand• Remote or difficult to perceive impacts• Future problem• Them/there• Chronic problem

• Natural resource depletion, climate change, soil erosion, water scarcity, peak oil, over-fishing, tropical deforestation...

A precarious position

• “Climate change is not some future prediction of what might happen, it's happening now and having a serious impact on our countryside every year.” National Trust

• “If nothing is done to substantially cut emissions, we could effectively lose coral reefs as we know them, with major coral extinctions.” Coral Reef Monitoring Network

• “We need to rethink how we do conservation. Investing millions in protecting one area for a given species will be pointless if climate change means they can’t live there in 50 years time.” WWF UK

The issues we don’t like

• Population growth• Economic growth• Consumption, materialism, advertising, wellbeing• Subsidies and tax reforms• Corruption/governance• Transport/mobility• Poverty alleviation in developing world

What we don’t fund much

• Work that addresses the causes of our environmental crisis, as opposed to its effects – we fund downstream

• Creative work around messaging – reaching beyond ‘the converted’

• Grounded yet inspiring visions of the future – “I have a dream” instead of “I have a nightmare”

• Work that directly confronts power-holders – “Power concedes nothing without demand” – Frederick Douglass

• Not in ‘high-horse’ mode – JMG Foundation definitely not grappling with all these difficult issues

• And we are constrained to an extent by the agendas adopted by our grantees

• But we cannot excuse ourselves on this basis. We have the power to change things. We’re worth £25 million here in this room. We have a responsibility. The fierce urgency of now.

• “We are the one’s we’ve been waiting for”

Our responsibility

One practical response

• We could fund much more at the European Union level• More than 80% of UK environmental legislation is framed

there – important global leadership role• EU now 27 countries, with 497 million consumers, the

world’s biggest and most lucrative import market• UK environment groups are much wealthier than their

counterparts in most European countries • Total staffing of Green 10 groups in Brussels is 111 in 2007 –

equivalent to two of the larger county wildlife trusts in the UK

“Sometimes voluntarily, sometimes through gritted teeth and sometimes without even knowing, countries around the world are importing the EU's rules ... whether they like it or not, rice farmers in India, mobile phone users in Bahrain, makers of cigarette lighters in China, chemicals producers in the US, accountants in Japan and software companies in California have all found that their commercial lives are shaped by decisions taken in the EU capital.” Financial Times

European Climate Foundation

• Interesting that the European Climate Foundation, comfortably the most important philanthropic innovation in recent years in our world, making millions of euros a year of grants, was born out of the realisation that so little money was being directed towards climate and energy policy at the EU level

• To a certain extent an indictment of our collective approach

What we could do – grants market

• Bundle grants together – to try and reduce the scattergun distribution

• Ensure core funding to smaller change-oriented groups• Specialist funders collaborate on lists of ‘hot

opportunities’ for more generalist funders – swarm intelligence...

What we could do - approach

• We are only 3% of NGO income on average – focus on our strengths – risk-taking, innovation, speed

• Exploit our potential to fund for the long-term• Recognise that our grants are relatively more important to

smaller organisations, and for new ideas • Fund challenges to business-as-usual – government and

businesses rarely do this• Be bold – the fierce urgency of now – not a time for

tokenism or incrementalism (a bit of tree planting...) – we need ‘war economy’ mindset

What we could do - innovate

• Strengthen civil society across Europe• Use the City of London’s role as a global standard-setter• Take advantage of the fact that English is a leading world

language – innovate in communications• Help develop new narratives around regulation, choice,

freedom • Develop ‘acupuncture maps’ – work together to see

where our philanthropy needles can best aid the body politic

Take on the difficult issues

• Can we work together to do this?

• To get handholds on what seems like a glass cliff (population, consumption, governance, subsidies...)

• This is our responsibility, if we choose to accept it

• If we recognise the fierce urgency of now

• If we don’t want to be “too late”