Rockefeller Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The iconic Rockefeller Foundation recently placed climate at the center of its programming, vowing to “reverse the climate crisis” as part of its work across its priority giving areas, which include health, food systems & sustainable agriculture, energy & energy transitions, economic equity, innovation, and innovative finance solutions.
IP TAKE: One of the most important philanthropic organizations in the U.S., the Rockefeller Foundation recently announced that it would place climate “at the forefront” of its work. According to a IP article, Rockefeller is likely the first “major legacy foundation to publicly take such a step,” and it was likewise among the first major funders to divest from fossil fuels. Having funded climate change research, mitigation and technology for many years, Rockefeller has become a major player not only in climate change but also in supporting the broader U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.
The Foundation runs many overlapping initiatives, accelerators, collaborations and investment vehicles, often working on large initiatives with other philanthropies, research institutions, NGOs, and governmental entities. As such, it takes a highly proactive approach to grantmaking, and does not accept unsolicited proposals or letters of intent. Rockefeller is highly transparent about its funding and grantee partners, with a detailed grants database, in-depth information about its programs and program officers, accessible annual reports, and meticulous 990 forms. Nonprofits working in the areas of global health, food systems, and energy transitions should know about this foundation and its work, but it’s a long shot for new grantee partners, with the exception of residencies at the Bellagio Center (see below). Networking is key here. Keep in mind that Rockefeller’s comprehensive website evolves quickly — and so does its giving.
PROFILE: The Rockefeller Foundation, founded in 1913 by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, Sr., and his son, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the country. Throughout its lifetime, the foundation has given away the equivalent of over $17 billion in today’s dollars. Originally dedicated to public health and “social hygiene,” it expanded its grantmaking over the decades to include “the right to health, food, power and economic mobility.” In 2022, the Foundation announced another major shift, placing climate “at the forefront” of all areas of giving and engagement, and in 2023, pledged to invest $1 billion over five years toward its climate agenda. Rockefeller also updated its philanthropic mission, which is to promote “the well-being of humanity by finding and scaling solutions to advance opportunity and reverse the climate crisis.”
The Rockefeller Foundation’s current grantmaking commitments address overlapping areas of Food, Health, Power and Climate, Economic Equity, Innovation, Innovative Finance and Global Economic Recovery.
While the Rockefeller Foundation prioritizes grantmaking for the U.S., Africa and Asia, grants support initiatives the world over. The Foundation also oversees or collaborates on several affiliated organizations, including:
The Bellagio Center hosts residencies and convenings at its campus in Italy.
RF Catalytic Capital, which forges partnerships with “with like-minded funders to improve the lives of vulnerable people around the world.”
The Global Energy Alliance, which supports “equitable energy transitions in low- and middle-income countries.”
Grants for Climate Change and Clean Energy
While the Rockefeller Foundation emphasizes climate change across all grantmaking and engagement areas, its Power and Climate commitments maintain the two-pronged mission of “ending energy poverty and combatting climate change.” Citing 840 million people around the globe who lack access to electricity, the initiative uses “data and technology to bring affordable, reliable, and clean power to all” and divides its work into four overlapping initiatives.
The Rockefeller Foundation is a founding partner of the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet. This initiative, which is also backed by the IKEA Foundation and the Bezos Earth Fund, aims to “accelerate a renewable energy tipping point that powers progress for people and planet.” Specifically, the initiative works in low- and middle-income countries to accelerate transitions to clean energy, “expanding energy access, and creating jobs in the process.” The Alliance has partnered with energy organizations including Power Africa, the International Renewable Energy Agency, the International Solar Alliance, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, among others.
Powering the Last Mile is Rockefeller’s initiative “to scale distributed renewable energy solutions to empower communities worldwide.” Grantmaking focuses on rural electrification, including the development of sustainable micro- and mini-grids. Geographic priorities include Africa, India, Myanmar and Puerto Rico. Grantee partners of this initiative include India’s Tata Power, Smart Power India, Uganda’s Umeme Ltd. and Crossboundary Energy.
Rockefeller supports its power and climate work with Data & Technology Solutions that concern the prediction and measurement of consumption and reliability of renewable energy. This sub-initiative also focuses on rural electrification and mini-grids but aims to provide vital information and technology to improve the efficiency of clean energy operations, thereby facilitating smooth, successful and sustainable transitions.
The Foundation has supported researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Rochester Institute of Technology and the University of Washington in the creation of E-Guide, a comprehensive resource that helps power suppliers, investors and others plan for effective and efficient power delivery to underserved and unserved areas.
Driving Global Action is Rockefeller’s sub-initiative for coordinating global stakeholders in efforts to meet U.N. Sustainable Development Goals to end energy poverty and “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.”
To these ends, the Foundation convened the Global Commission to End Energy Poverty in 2019. The Commission is comprised of leading “investors, utilities, and policy-makers” and aims to ensure “access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy for all by 2030.” Early work of the Commission has explored business models and financing for electrification, “overcoming barriers to regional cooperation” and the efficient management of new utilities.
In addition to its Power and Climate program, a significant portion of funding from Rockefeller’s Innovation and Innovative Finance commitments focuses on climate change and clean energy.
The Innovation commitment seeks “to make big bets at the frontiers of science, technology, and innovation to solve the world’s great inequities.” The initiative works “at every stage of the innovation pipeline” to bring ideas to fruition and bring about “positive long-lasting solutions and serve the public interest.”
While this program has not made monetary grants in several years, it is closely affiliated with the Convenings and Residencies at Rockefeller’s Bellagio Center. Both programs name climate change as a main area of interest.
The Convening Program’s Addressing Climate Change focus area names health, energy, food systems, finance and the protection of “poor and vulnerable” people as areas of interest. While areas of priority may change from year to year, the program has sought “convening organizers” from low- and middle-income countries and generally accepts applications beginning in February of each year. Past convenings have resulted in the formation of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet.
The Residency Program for Addressing Climate Change also names health, energy, food systems, finance and the protection of “poor and vulnerable” people as areas of interest. Program specifics change from year to year, but past rounds of residencies sought climate scholars and others whose work displayed the potential to “change systems, incentivize nations, and provide pathways to mitigate and adapt to the worst effects of climate change.”
Rockefeller’s Innovative Finance program supports “financial solutions to channel private capital for public good.” Its main initiative is the Zero Gap Fund, a vehicle through which the Rockefeller Foundation invests in enterprises with strong potential to help the world move toward the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals. Zero Gap’s investments are structured in collaboration with a similar fund at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Catalytic Capital Consortium.
Launched in 2019, the fund has so far “invested $25M and mobilized approximately $795M in capital across 10 investments.” Its climate investments include Blue Forest’s Forest Resilience Bond and Lightsmith’s CRAFT Fund, which finances “solutions for climate adaptation and resilience to improve the lives of under-served communities globally.”
Grants for Global Development
Over the past several years, the Rockefeller Foundation has demonstrated a strong commitment to supporting the attainment of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals. While most of the foundation’s giving addresses or overlaps with one or more of the seventeen development goals, global development is the main focus of the following programs and subprograms.
Building Global Economic Recovery is one of Rockefeller’s main commitments. The program represents a broad area of engagement through which the Rockefeller Foundation supports “development finance for an inclusive, sustainable future.” Specific goals include working with key “nations institutions, and individuals” to strengthen development finance systems around the world and build “a global financial architecture that can mobilize substantially more, and better quality, financing.” Not a grantmaking program per se, this commitment is concerned with multilateral development banks and the availability and terms at which capital is available for equitable and sustainable global development.
Rockefeller’s Innovation commitment and affiliated programs at the Bellagio Center host convenings and residencies related to global development.
The Bellagio Center Convening Program brings “people together around the globe to try to solve the world’s most challenging problems and promote the well-being of humanity.” While themes may change from year to year, the Center has named Reinventing Capitalism and Promoting Well-Being as central themes, seeking “convening organizers who are based outside of the U.S., who are citizens of low and middle-income countries and/or who represent low and middle-income countries through their cultural backgrounds.”
This program typically begins its application process in February and links guidelines and other information about convenings to the program page in January.
The Bellagio Center Residency Program offers “an unparalleled opportunity for deep exchange among leaders from a wide array of backgrounds, disciplines, and geographies.” According to the program’s web page, it has “a track record for identifying big bets on some of the world’s most complex challenges.” This program also names Reinventing Capitalism and Promoting Well-Being as areas of focus, although themes may change from year to year.
This program accepts nominations and applications each year beginning in February. Application information is updated on the website in January of each year.
Rockefeller’s Innovative Finance commitment currently runs the Zero Gap Fund, which provides investment capital to projects that “demonstrate the potential to catalyze large-scale private investment towards the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.” In addition to providing capital, the program “sources investments from a deep and diverse partner network across the private, public, and philanthropic sectors” to support relevant enterprises around the world. Funding has gone to LeapFrog’s Emerging Consumers Fund and the Impact Investment Exchange’s Women’s Livelihood Bond II, among others.
RF Catalytic Capital is an “offshoot” of the foundation that helps stakeholders “combine their resources to build funding solutions for social impact and bring about transformational change.” Established in 2020, the program’s global development focus areas include COVID-19 response and eliminating energy poverty in the developing world. Many investments from this program overlap with those of other Rockefeller programs and initiatives. Grants and other forms of financial support have gone to Pandemic Prevention Institute and the Partnership to Scale COVID-19 testing, among others.
Grants for Food Systems and Sustainable Agriculture
The Rockefeller Foundation names Food as as one of its main areas of commitment. The initiative works far beyond the purview of hunger, addressing issues of sustainable agriculture, nutrition and equitable economic opportunity throughout food production and distribution industries around the world. The foundation organizes its grantmaking into initiatives for Africa, the U.S. and Global concerns.
In Africa the Rockefeller Foundation focuses its work on Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda. Grantmaking aims to improve food supply networks through infrastructure, policy and advances in sustainable agriculture. Grantees include the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and the Kimanya-Ngeyo Foundation for Science and Education.
In 2022, the Rockefeller Foundation launched a$105 million Good Food Strategy initiative “to make healthy and sustainable foods more accessible around the world.” Reporting at Inside Philanthropy characterized this initiative as “a shift for Rockefeller from a long history of backing food causes focused largely around supply and productivity — including last century’s controversial Green Revolution — to a more systems-focused, intersectional approach.”
In the the U.S., Rockefeller runs three separate initiatives to improve nutrition and food equity:
Food is Medicine works to “to integrate food and nutrition into health care to help fight the growing epidemic of diet-related diseases.”
The Power of Procurement initiative works with large public and private institutions to change the way food is purchased, moving from “a ‘lowest cost’ to a ‘best social value’ paradigm” that prioritizes “BIPOC and other underserved farm and food businesses and suppliers with good labor and environmental practices.”
A third initiative, the True Cost of Food, involved research and analysis that culminated in a comprehensive report that outlines the “ the impacts and food-related costs on our health care system and environment” and demonstrates the disproportionate effect of poor nutrition on communities of color.
Grantmaking for Global food systems focuses on hunger, sustainability and equitable development “at every step of the food supply chain.” The Foundation names six specific areas of interest for its global food giving.
The Periodic Table of Food represents a collaborative effort focused on “building a global ecosystem and providing tools, data, and training to catalog the biomolecular composition of the world’s food supply.” The initiative aims to “help address global challenges in public health, regenerative agriculture, nutrition, environment and more.”
The Periodic Table of Food initiative is led by experts in various fields from organizations and institutions including the American Heart Association, Verso Biosciences, the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, the University of South Pacific, the Alliance of Biodiversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture.
The Regenerative Landscapes and Agroecology focus area “supports the facilitation of a shared global vision, outcomes, and metrics on regenerative/agroecological practices rooted in the value of inclusion.” The Foundation has partnered in this effort with the Global Alliance for the Future of Food as well as Indigenous communities and farmers around the world.
Diet Quality Measurement refers to the foundation’s research and analytic work toward a new understanding and quantification of diet quality that takes into consideration aspects of diet that relate to “non-communicable disease risk reduction, food safety, and sustainability.” Partners in this work include Harvard University, Tufts University, the World Health Organization and Gallup World Poll, among others.
Global Good Food Procurement extends the work of Rockefeller’s U.S.-based Power of Procurement initiative to the rest of the world by “working to co-create shared global principles of good food purchasing, building the evidence base needed to shift procurement standards, and demonstrating the benefits of good food purchasing in on-the-ground pilots.”
The Foundation’s food Policy and Advocacy subprogram conducts research and analysis to create “metrics and data systems that better inform decision-makers on the real costs and benefits of our food.”
The Food System Vision Prize encourages communities and organizations around the world to “envision regenerative and nourishing food futures for 2050.” The program aims to “amplify the discourse on the state and the future of the world’s many food systems” and “empower communities globally to develop actionable solutions and become protagonists in their own food future.”
Grants for Global Health and Public Health
The Rockefeller Foundation’s Health initiative works to “help create a world where community health systems everywhere are equipped to apply data-driven decisions that deliver the right interventions to achieve Health for All.” Since the turn of the 21st century, the initiative has focused on preventable causes of death, underserved regions and communities and the increased risk of disease outbreak due to climate change. The Foundation’s health sub-initiatives include Global Vaccinations and Pandemic Prevention.
Rockefeller’s Global Vaccination Initiative works to “to gain knowledge, share insights, and create more demand for vaccines in communities with low vaccination rates.” Research and exploratory work is conducted with the aim of “strengthening health systems to become more resilient to potential future Covid-19 outbreaks and other public health threats.” Grantee partners include the World Health Organization, Zimbabwe’s Delta Philanthropies, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and Amref Health Africa.
Rockefeller’s Pandemic Prevention program works globally “to prevent the spread of infectious diseases through strengthened global pathogen surveillance and response to secure a pandemic-free future for humanity.” Launched in 2021 with an initial investment of $150 million, the initiative “has formed a network of over 40 partner organizations” that range from large health NGOs to much smaller organizations working at the community and/or regional levels. The foundation names three focus areas for its pandemic prevention work.
Grantmaking for pandemic-related Technology and Innovation supports the development and implementation of “data science platforms and tools.” Areas of focus include “early warning” systems for outbreaks and wastewater surveillance.
Rockefeller earmarks funds for Capacity Building for organizations “that are driven and led by local community members and leaders, who play an invaluable role in understanding disease transmission and spread.”
Rockefeller invests in Global Policy for pandemic prevention. In this area, the Foundation works to “merge the priorities of the private sector, government, and the non-profit sector to strengthen pandemic prevention and response for Covid-19 and the next pandemic.”
In 2022, the Foundation partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust as founding donors of World Bank’s Financial Intermediary Fund for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response, which supports pandemic preparedness “at national, regional, and global levels, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries.”
Grants for Work, Opportunity and Racial Justice
The Rockefeller Foundation’s Economic Equity commitment is the only one of its engagement areas to focus uniquely on the U.S. The program works to “[e]nhance the jobs, careers, assets, and futures of BIPOC, women, and low-wage workers so they can thrive in a crisis-laden era.” Its current initiatives involve Scaling Solutions for Workers and Mobilizing Private Capital for Impact.
Scaling Solutions for Workers supports “public policies proven to boost earnings for America's working families.” The program focuses on organizations working at state and national levels to promote the adoption of Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit programs, which have “lifted more Americans out of poverty than any program except Social Security.” Grantees include the Missouri Budget Project, Washington’s Solid Ground, Economic Security of Illinois and New Jersey Policy Perspective.
Mobilizing Private Capital for Impact promotes “partnerships to spur greater investment in low-income communities across the country.” The program focuses on “business ownership and access to capital” as ways to “build generational wealth,” especially in communities of color. To these ends, the foundation established the Rockefeller Foundation Opportunity Collective, which provides investment capital, leadership development and technical assistance to programs in projects in 12 target U.S. cities.
Other Grantmaking Opportunities
The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center programs maintain Open Call application themes for Convenings and Residencies “on any topic” that “can demonstrate a clear potential for impact” in areas of interest to the foundation. While a majority of recent convenings and residencies have built on Rockefeller’s global development and climate work, other areas of interest, including artificial intelligence, visual arts, literature and film have been represented.
These programs run annual applications that usually open sometime in February. Eligibility, guidelines, due dates and themes vary significantly from year to year.
Important Grant Details:
The Rockefeller Foundation’s grants range from $100,000 into the tens of millions.
Grantmaking tends to be conducted through the Foundation’s signature initiatives, re-granting vehicles, accelerators and collaborations with other large nonprofits or NGOs.
This funder tends to work with grantee partners over several years.
Many of this funder’s programs and initiatives overlap thematically and strategically.
Each giving area acknowledges the impact of climate change on development, equity, health and sustainable social change.
The Foundation does not accept unsolicited grant applications, but convening and residency programs at the Bellagio Center host open applications for annual programs.
For additional information about its grantmaking, see the foundation’s grants database.
General inquiries may be submitted to the Rockefeller Foundation via its contact page. Grantseekers and others may also wish to subscribe to the foundation’s newsletter for updates using the link at the bottom of the site.
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