Nine Questions with Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, CEO of Environmental Grantmakers Association

Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, president and CEO of EGA

When Tamara Toles O’Laughlin left 350.org after two years as its director for North America, the press release announcing her departure included enthusiastic quotes not only from the head of the organization, but also from the leaders of the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth. 

Instead of joining another big green nonprofit, O’Laughlin went on to become president and CEO of the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA) — the broadest, and likely the biggest, of green philanthropy’s many affinity groups. 

It wasn’t her first encounter with philanthropy. Earlier, O’Laughlin led the Maryland Environmental Health Network, where she fostered collaboration between public health and green groups that brought about the state’s proposed Green Amendment, which she hopes will pass this year. In the process, she got to know several of the region’s grantmakers. As you’ll read below, the dynamics she saw in philanthropy left her “horrified” — and ultimately led her to return.

To borrow a few of her favorite phrases, O’Laughlin now works to create a space for EGA’s grantmakers that encourages “generative conflict” about racial equity, the best way to save a species and more, and “reframes risk” regarding what is fundable, all in the hope that we don’t all die on a “fiery gas ball.” She brings to the work a drive to seed a much deeper transformation.

“Walking around as though you can continue to make capital and have endless growth without a sense of the impact to people and planet would be a horrifying status quo,” she told me. 

Also an occasional op-ed writer, the founder of the anti-racist movement leadership support group Climate Critical Earth, and a fixture on social media, O’Laughlin keeps quite busy. I spoke to her about joining EGA, her work there, current trends in the climate movement and why Louisiana encapsulates the challenge humanity faces. Below are excerpts from that conversation, which have been edited for clarity. 

Before your time at 350.org, you led a project for what is now Maryland Philanthropy Network and worked with several of the region’s grantmakers. Why did you choose to rejoin the world of philanthropy? 

At that time, I was horrified at the relationship between philanthropy and the field, and the total disconnect between what gets funded, what does not, and what people care about. I was not prepared at that time to deal with the reality of how few people made decisions about what sees the light of day and what does not. So I went to 350.org, because I was a little awestruck by those realities. 

I have made an arc back to philanthropy. After 20-some years of building great ideas with largely invisible people to do work that benefits everyone, it has dawned on me that, with so few years left in the climate decade to get real work done, we need to have systemic-level changes. It might be easier to have that conversation amongst the folks who determine what work sees the light of day.

I came to EGA specifically because they had done a lot of work on racial equity before I came. That led to an open invitation to come into leadership, one that would not ask me to suppress one part of what I know to be true about the work in order to accomplish other things that are also true about the work.

You’ve been at EGA for almost a year. What has the view from the inside of green grantmaking taught you — or reinforced — about philanthropy? 

It affirms the idea that we’re all just groups of people trying to do a good thing with the facts that we have. I admire EGA’s place in the work as a convener of this big tent of people who have vastly different ideas—whether they want to save a place, or a species, or work with a group of people. 

It feels like there is real momentum for the issues that I have written pretty extensively about: the connection between a class analysis and a race analysis, especially in environmental and climate work. It feels like a time when the right investments could really help small and medium-sized groups build on the resources, data, and public and political education that they’ve been doing — and spring up just in time to give us solutions we need before we run out the clock. 

It feels like a smart move to go to the folks who largely funded some of the biggest ideas that have been in this space for 10, 20, 30, sometimes 50 years, and have a real frank conversation about the rate of return for those kinds of investments — and be a champion for some real hybridization across the categories of what used to be fundable. 

What are you changing, evolving, ceasing, expanding at the EGA?

One program that we’re starting this year is disaggregating how our membership works. How do program officers versus trustees and presidents handle this massive mandate of doing the work for people and planet? Are we making sure that folks who don’t necessarily show up with the same power and privilege amongst themselves continue to move the needle forward in a way that does not erase climate as a threat multiplier in racially charged situations or places where people are already suffering from climate change?

It’s a ripe time to continue centering folks who are being harmed, who are losing a football field of land [every hour on average] in Louisiana, or who are already suffering with an energy burden that makes them contemplate whether or not to continue to live on the lands that they have owned for generations. That is as useful as thinking about a specific plant or animal. So we’re really being thoughtful about how to cross the divide between things that have been siloed previously. 

What does that work look like? What’s an example of how EGA tries to cross silos?

This year, we released a Racial Equity Point of View tool. It is pretty unique for a philanthropy-serving organization to have, one, a point of view of its own; and two, the idea that racial equity will not be solved this week, it will not be solved next week, it is an ongoing project. EGA has been working to figure out: How does racial equity affect every kind of philanthropist who cares about the environment?

With a tent of this size, we’re able to say, “We are not the experts here, but here’s another part of the membership that’s been experimenting and examining its own role in creating harm—and is trying something different.” We make a safe space for people to try things. A lot of my role is reframing risk. The real risk is that we’ll keep doing things the way we’ve been doing them. And we’re 100% guaranteed that that’s not going to work.

I formerly worked at Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees. In my experience, philanthropy-supporting organizations face a tough power dynamic: They are trusted as experts and conveners, but also reliant on grantmakers—as members, funders, board members. Moreover, PSOs are often more racially diverse than many of their members. What has that dynamic been like for you?

I can say that the leader who preceded me, Rachel Leon, did a lot of work. The world of philanthropy is shifting and changing, so that there’s not one, not two, but maybe 10 different kinds of folks who give dollars toward environmental philanthropy. That’s poised to become more true. The question is not how big can this tent be, but how big it will have to be for money to really flow toward the kinds of things that can make change? And how do people know the difference between scare tactics, greenwashing and good ideas? 

A role of philanthropy-supporting organizations, specifically of EGA, is to hold space for generative conflict about which ideas are good, for whom those ideas will work, where we have made mistakes, to lift up works in progress and to reward risk. Our role is not so much as an arbiter of taste, but more as a table for people to really work things out — to figure out what the work becomes when you stop focusing on a specific kind of bird and recognize that the entire context of their habitat and the people in it are part of the conversation, and they haven’t been previously. Biodiversity isn’t just about one species, it’s about all of them. 

In order to wade into that without hurting people, the conversations have to be about integrating the work across silos. Before we hone in on tactics, we need to have a great strategy, and it feels like EGA is in a good position because of how long it’s been here, how it is trusted by its members, and its ability to hold and create conditions for generative conflict. We don’t tell people that it will all work out. We tell people that you will have a chance to work it out yourself — and we’ll help you.

There’s been a wave of new billionaire funders in climate philanthropy. We’ve seen historic awards to climate justice and major joint commitments like the $1.7 billion Indigneous land tenure pledge. It also seems like the biggest checks and largest share of dollars are still going to the largest groups. How are you trying to impact those new donors at EGA?

One thing we can offer is a lot of data through our Tracking the Field program. We can help people have a real sense of where money is going and what kinds of experiments have already been run. And there’s our Racial Equity Point of View tool, which says we have the right to look at where inequity is an issue, where inclusion has created real power dynamics and where issues are creating tension between folks. 

Every time we find new folks who are interested in this space is an opportunity for us to raise the questions that our members are already asking: How do we ensure a healthy democracy for a healthy planet? How do we wrestle with reparations, land back and land trusts? Our members have done some of the very first experiments on these things. Energy democracy and energy justice has long been a focus of EGA.

A new group of people who care about this work is exactly what the broader movement needs to survive. If we don’t provide them with good information, then they’ll be less effective. It feels like an opportunity for us to connect and say, ‘Here’s what we know — and here’s how it helps you to do what you want to do better.

Following the racial uprisings of 2020, we had this outpouring of statements from philanthropy, more attention to issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and justice, and more funding. I also keep hearing fears of a pullback, that it will be a passing trend. What are you seeing? 

One of the most devastating and important pieces of research that I have read recently is “Mismatched: Philanthropy’s Response to the Call for Racial Justice” by the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity. What was really powerful to me was that lots of money goes to let people know that racism is real. Not as much money goes to what we’re going to do about it. The work of organizing, of supporting people to do what is needed, that money is still hard to come by. But letting people know that racism is an issue? There’s tons of money for that. That feels like a real gap. It dovetails nicely with our Racial Equity Point of View. We have said frankly, clearly and explicitly that if you come to this space, we will help you move the needle from recognizing that racism is a problem to doing something about it in your own portfolio.

You’ve written for Rolling Stone, The Nation, Grist and other publications. What’s the piece you would like to write—or see written—about environmental philanthropy?

Healthy democracy for a healthy planet—and an op-ed on that may or may not be in the works. 501(c)(3) philanthropy can, at times, be more timid than it should be about its role in the life of democracy. There are tax rules that separate who can have a conversation about electoral politics and that has had a chilling effect on all the ways that you can support grassroots groups, help people get information and encourage voters who care about environment and climate to not just be passive. Across every role I’ve ever been in, the most powerful thing you can do is remind people who agree with you that they can do something. 

If I were to have a light bulb go off over all of environmental philanthropy, it would be how failure to pay attention to the health of democracy makes it fairly impossible for us to do what we want done for people and planet. It’s time for us to stop being disinterested parties — and to become folks who are really clear that communities being enfranchised and having voting rights matters to the things we care about. People being able to show up safely to exercise their right matters. 

I saw that you like to travel. What’s one favorite recent destination — and what did it make you think about climate change?

I was recently in Louisiana, which I love for a number of reasons: the music, the food, the people. It’s all awesome. I went for a meeting with colleagues on the big picture for our environment. 

During the course of my travels, I went to a community that’s losing land. You lose a football field of land [every hour] in Louisiana. I went to have this meeting on a street that looks like confetti because the concrete buckled under the loss. The parish is not going to spend money to replace it because it’s just going to continue happening. People are living their lives in a place where the streetlights are collapsing, where the concrete is buckling. All of this is happening in the shadow of Mardi Gras. It’s a really jarring juxtaposition.

As magical as Louisiana is, it is actively being lost at a rate that should be unconscionable — and makes people feel abandoned. For me, the loss of all of those things simultaneously is a really incredible snapshot of what we’re up against.