Alliance Online - June 2008

CCPAN finds a growing sense of community

Denise Lee

EVENT Eileen Rockefeller Growald Symposium: Philanthropy’s Role in the Climate Crisis: Transforming Interest into Impact
Date 7-8 April
Venue San Francisco, USA
Organizer CCPAN and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors

Following successful events in 2007 in Europe and Asia, the Climate Change Philanthropy Action Network (CCPAN) held its first 2008 meeting in the US in April. The joint Symposium with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors brought together over 150 donors including many who actively fund climate change initiatives as well as those who are considering funding in the area. As a whole, and in smaller groups, attendees focused on a broad range of grantmaking and social investment strategies aimed at maximizing impact and addressing the environmental and social challenges that donors and their constituents are facing.

The event was part of the Eileen Rockefeller Growald Symposium on Collaborative Philanthropy, set up to honour Eileen Rockefeller Growald, the founding chair of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

The programme opened with welcomes and introductions by Uday Khemka, Managing Trustee of the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation and initiator of CCPAN, and Eileen Rockefeller Growald herself. This was followed by a presentation on the new science of climate change by Dr James Hansen, head of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who discussed his compelling new research and the urgency of action. Terry Tamminen of Seventh Generation Advisors and the New America Foundation spoke about our dependence on oil, and some hidden causes for its rising. For example, the increasing weight of passengers puts greater strain on aircraft, which results in greater energy consumption by airlines. Tamminen proceeded to lay out a strategy to lead us to more sustainable energy sources.

The next session was designed to showcase a diverse set of grantmaker approaches to climate change mitigation and adaptation from both the US and overseas, to give a sense of the wide spectrum of grants that are being made in the field. The panellists discussed the priorities their foundations (William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, and Virgin Unite) had set to address climate change and why they selected their particular strategic focus. In addition, they encouraged further sharing of information and best practice so that the funding community can become a more aligned front in the fight against climate change.

Roundtables and open spaces

Recognizing the impossibility of covering every topic, the attendees were then given the opportunity to lead discussions on topics they proposed that were not on the agenda. The modified open space session allowed people to explore in depth areas of interest and to get to know one another. Topics ranged from ‘Environmental Justice’ to ‘Taking Efficiency Investments to Scale’ to ‘Ecosystem Services, Biodiversity & Climate’.

Donor roundtables in the afternoon offered the opportunity to hear from experts in specific areas, with the group dividing around five topics:

Creating a New Global Framework for Climate Change;
Moving the U.S. Federal Government Into Action;
Beyond Coal;
Unleashing the Power of Capital: Leveraging Foundation Endowments, Pension funds and Private Capital;
Climate Change Funding on a City and State Level.

Each roundtable provided an overview of the topic, outlined the opportunities for philanthropic action, and then opened up to the wider audience to discuss the issues, challenges and changing trends they are facing.

In the final plenary of the day Jessy Tolkan of the Energy Action Coalition (EAC) inspired the group with her discussion of the engaged youth climate change movement that EAC and other oganizations are helping to build. This movement is using new ways to make young people’s voices heard in the policy debate on a large scale. The Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, then gave participants an overview of the variety of ways in which San Francisco is innovating green initiatives. He highlighted philanthropy’s role by discussing a partnership on tidal wave power with funding from the Sidney E Frank Foundation.

The California meeting was instrumental in bringing together a diverse group of interested philanthropists to learn more about each other’s various strategies to combat climate change and to explore how best to work together and to continue building the sense of community that will be needed to collectively confront the challenge of our time.

Key insights from the proceedings

In her closing remarks, Melissa Berman outlined key insights and important lessons that the speakers offered throughout the day on how philanthropy can thoughtfully and effectively engage on climate change:

Link climate funding to your core mission.
Climate change connects to all issues in philanthropy, from health and poverty to arts and education, to human rights and security. Don’t abandon your core philanthropic mission if you are new to climate change philanthropy. Rather, integrate it within your giving programme so that it’s strategic and sustainable.

Fund the solution
Faced with a complex challenge, it’s all too easy to spread funding among a large and diverse group of organizations. That is, in essence, funding the problem. Instead, fund the solution. Think through how you define the core problem, and what strategic approach to a solution you find compelling. Is it multinational policy? Is it grassroots community advocacy? Is it new technologies?

Use the full range of your assets.
First of all, think about your full range of financial assets. US foundations hold more than $600 billion in assets. Those resources can be used, through mission-related investing, to help fund solutions to climate change. Second, think about your social capital – your relationships and networks – which can be engaged in this critical challenge.

Work across sectors and outside the boxes.
All too often in philanthropy, our well-intentioned efforts to focus create artificial and rigid boundaries to what we will fund. In addition, we sometimes pull up the drawbridge when other sectors – investors businesses, governments – enter our realm. The climate challenge requires that we drop all of these barriers.

Get comfortable with policy work.
For many of us, policy funding feels inchoate, frustrating and hard to assess. While it is all of those things to some degree, it is an absolute requirement for the climate crisis.

Collaborate.
The challenge of climate philanthropy is bigger than any of us. We can succeed only if we collaborate as funders, collaborate with the organizations doing the hard work, and encourage them to collaborate with one another. And if you can’t collaborate, at least cooperate.

Communicate
First, it is clear that the dimensions of the climate crisis are still not well enough defined, and philanthropy can help with that communication challenge. Second, we can all be heartened by the astonishing, innovative approaches and solutions being developed. But too few of them are known widely enough.

In his closing remarks, Uday Khemka spoke of the hope, innovation, scale and determination that he saw over the last days and the growing sense of community. Some of the visions he shared of the evolving nature of CCPAN include fostering continuity and developing a collaborative tool through the website (www.climatephilanthropists.org), creating a series of subgroups using themes from a variety of frameworks, and the potential to collectively adopt a few initiatives and take them to scale. CCPAN emerged because there was a need to connect the wonderful global initiatives tackling this issue and people behind them. In the next phase it will be opened up for the community itself to provide the vision and structure.

Denise Lee is Director of Environmental Initiatives at the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation. Email D.Lee@khemkafoundation.org

For more information
www.climatephilanthropists.org

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