Who Is Big Philanthropy Betting on for a Climate Breakthrough?

One past recipient of the Climate Breakthrough Project started a global movement to stop the financing of coal plants. Rudmer Zwerver/shutterstock

Foundations are well-known for being risk-averse. The proven is preferred over the possible. Incrementalism is favored over radical change. 

Every sector of philanthropy is affected by this dynamic. Even funding for climate change—which demands large-scale transformation that some might struggle to imagine today, let alone convince their board to fund—is no exception. 

In 2015, three grantmakers—the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, with support from Oak Foundation and the Good Energies Foundation—came together to put more money into big ideas for addressing our planetary crisis. Their answer was the Climate Breakthrough Project: a group that gives annual, multimillion-dollar awards for individuals or small teams with high-risk, high-reward ideas for curbing climate change. 

The San Francisco-based organization, which announced its sixth round of prizes this week, aims to empower climate leaders who might not find support for their dream projects through traditional channels. It also offers one model for how philanthropy might take bigger swings, whether on climate or in any sphere.

“We really believe that we are in the business of taking risks, of thinking outside the box, and more of climate philanthropy should be making bolder moves when it comes to grantmaking,” said Savanna Ferguson, the group’s executive director. 

The aim is not for every award to be a comprehensive success. “If every single one of our awardees achieved their ultimate ambition that they set out to on day one, we haven’t taken on enough risk,” Ferguson said. But their recipients have racked up some big victories.

One of the inaugural awardees, John Hepburn, kickstarted a global movement to stop insurance companies from underwriting and financing coal projects. Another, Tzeporah Berman, launched the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. A third, Arief Rabik, started a government-backed effort to restore degraded land through bamboo cultivation in his native Indonesia with plans to expand to other Southeast Asian nations.

It doesn’t hurt that it is the largest environmental award of its kind, according to organizers. At $3 million over three years currently, it’s a bigger purse than the widely publicized EarthShot prize (£1 million) or the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prizes ($175,000). 

The program’s successes have also translated to a growing base of funding. In addition to its original sponsors, the organization’s funders now include several other established and emerging climate philanthropy heavyweights: IKEA Foundation, the Quadrature Climate Foundation—which recently pledged to give up to $100 million annually in climate change philanthropy—and the JPB Foundation.

Whose breakthrough ideas were chosen this year?

This year’s Climate Breakthrough Project awards will go to three women from three different continents, who will each get $3 million over three years, as well as tailored support for carrying out their plans. Here’s a look at each of their past accomplishments—and what they plan to do with their prizes. 

• Denise Fairchild has more than three decades of experience as an activist campaigning for housing, jobs and economic development in Los Angeles and California. For the past 10 years, she has led the national Emerald Cities Collaborative, which brings together labor, business and community groups to work for a green and equitable economy. Like some past awardees, she’s still shaping her Breakthrough plan, but the focus will be on sparking widespread cultural shifts in American norms around energy consumption. Her ideas are inspired by the concept of energy democracy—a push to broaden public participation in how energy is produced and managed—and a topic on which she co-edited a 2017 book. 

• Kathrin Gutmann has helped close or plan the retirement of 166 coal plants and aided 21 European countries in creating coal exit plans in her current role as campaign director of the Europe Beyond Coal Campaign. Her next big goal? Ensuring Europe switches entirely to renewable energy by 2035. With her prize money, the German-born advocate wants to create a movement that pushes cities, businesses, banks, political leaders and everyday citizens to ditch fossil fuels for renewables. 

• Sara Jane Ahmed currently is a finance advisor to finance ministers of the world’s most climate vulnerable countries, known as the Vulnerable Twenty (V20), but she’s also advised groups ranging from the United Nations to the World Resource Institute. She has helped secure a government moratorium on new coal-fired power in the Philippines, her home country, and develop a sustainable insurance program for the V20. With her prize money, she aims to create and implement Climate Prosperity Plans—packages of policies and finance measures designed to transform economies—in the 40 most climate-vulnerable developing nations. That’s the mission of her new organization, the Financial Futures Center. 

How do they choose who to bet on?

Like a sports team recruiting young talent, choosing who should receive a few million dollars starts with a lot of scouting. The Climate Breakthrough Project’s staff and board members all serve as scouts, as do various partner organizations, foundations and peer prize organizations. They even hire scouts on a contract basis in key places around the world to extend their network. Applications, by the way, are not accepted.

The next step is paring down a stack of some 100-plus scouted candidates to roughly a dozen finalists. The project’s staff relies primarily on desktop research to review key elements: what they’ve done, what they’re doing now and what they’ve been recognized for. “We look for leaders who have a demonstrated ability to effect change and think about solving problems on an immense scale,” Ferguson said. 

For the 12 to 15 finalists, it is an ultra-thorough vetting process. “I’m pretty sure the team at Climate Breakthrough knows me better than my own mother does at this point,” one past winner told CBC News. Depending on how far they get, candidates will have one-on-one and panel interviews with members of the project team, which also interviews about a dozen people who know each candidate. One final step, which typically applies only to the final selections, is a five-page writeup of their breakthrough idea touching on its potential, why no one is doing it already, and how they might pivot if there are challenges.

The project team looks for 10 key traits in finalists, from willingness to reject conventional wisdom to an ability to pivot to a strategic mindset. Of course, they also need a big idea. Candidates must have at least one idea they want to work on—plus, it has to be something that is either not funded or not adequately funded. And like most of its backers, the award’s focus is on greenhouse gases.

“The thing we care about is that it is large-scale and has the potential to reduce global annual emissions significantly within 10 years,” Ferguson said.

Some of the winners have previous connections to the award’s backers. Fairchild’s current group counts Packard among its funders. (It also received $12 million from the Bezos Earth Fund this week.) Gutmann’s organization receives funding from the European Climate Foundation and ClimateWorks Foundation, intermediary groups that each receive support from many of the project backers. “Our awardees are well-known to philanthropy,” said Ferguson, though she added that some, like Ahmed, tend to be earlier in their careers and outside such networks. 

How the funding works

The Climate Breakthrough Project is explicitly aimed at supporting nontraditional ideas that might struggle to receive traditional support. Yet many of its funders—Packard, Oak, IKEA, JPB—are among the largest climate philanthropies in the world, which by some measures are very traditional.

Like collaborative funds often do, the awards provide cover for these grantmakers to fund in ways that may not be possible directly, according to Ferguson—to individuals, over long time periods, with few strings attached. “Our funders have more constraints within their in-house portfolios,” she said. The funders collectively oversee the approach of the awards: The board is composed of one representative from each of its supporters. 

The awards also abide by some of the core tenets of flexible support. Candidates can be anywhere in the world and they need not speak English. While the vetting process is extensive, written applications are required only at the penultimate step. Winners have flexibility in how and when to use their funding—and they are encouraged to change their initial plans if warranted. And while philanthropic prizes can require time-consuming competition, limiting that phase to chosen finalists reduces its burden.

While the Climate Breakthrough Project’s awards have been outpaced by the ballooning grantmaking from donors like Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott, the program is still moving some pretty big chunks of cash toward high-risk work. In that sense, they offer one framework for how institutional philanthropic operations can be comfortable making bigger commitments to the bold ideas of brilliant individuals.

This article has been updated to reflect that Climate Breakthrough Project's board includes representatives from all its funders. An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Quadrature Foundation does not have a representative.