The Rockefeller Foundation Is Going All-In on Climate Change. Could Others Follow?

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I’ve heard the line again and again in my two years covering climate and environmental grantmaking for Inside Philanthropy, from foundations supporting the arts, scientific research — and even conservation. The words vary, and the comments are typically off the record, but the message is always the same: “We are not a climate funder.”

Perhaps this week’s announcement by the Rockefeller Foundation marks the start of a new era. The 109-year-old grantmaker, founded by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, was already one of the world’s top funders of climate action. But now, it plans to make climate change the focus of all of its work, from its grantmaking to its operations and investments. In other words, it is no longer just a climate funder, but a climate-in-everything funder. 

Coming a year and a half after the foundation announced it would divest from fossil fuels, the announcement marks not just the latest shift for a foundation founded with oil riches, but also makes Rockefeller the first (to my knowledge) major legacy foundation to publicly take such a step. Rockefeller aims to craft a plan within the next year for focusing its future work, while also maintaining its current commitments.

It’s a move to be celebrated. It’s also hard to understand why it’s a step that remains so rare, amid record heat waves in Europe, massive new fires in the western United States, and weather-driven crop failures adding to a global food crisis — just a few of the latest examples of escalating climate chaos. Time will tell if Rockefeller is a first mover or an exception.

The value of public climate announcements

Like many such public pronouncements, this one has been a long time coming. When I profiled Rockefeller’s climate grantmaking back in January, staff already described climate change as a factor in all its program decision-making. The foundation’s divestment announcement in late 2020, which also came after years of preparation, made it clear that its investment team was also weighing the climate emergency in their choices.

Rockefeller should be credited for making use of its bully pulpit. As the largest of the Rockefeller-linked philanthropies and the only one founded by the family’s famous patriarch, it attracts a unique sort of media attention. Few foundations, even those with billions in assets, can command an Associated Press story for a strategic decision.

By publicizing its choice, Rockefeller gives staff at other grantmakers a prominent peer to point to during internal discussions on climate action. That is a welcome contrast to seeming reticence about climate moves, particularly regarding asset decisions. 

One example of this dynamic came in the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s recent climate report. Some 22% of foundations reported that they have divested from fossil fuels and another 13% said they plan to do so in the future. While still a minority, that’s a much greater share than I’ve encountered while covering this issue — and is well above the level suggested by other sources. 

For instance, 350.org’s divestment campaign has just 190 philanthropic signatories worldwide, even though there are more than 100,000 private foundations in the United States alone, according to Candid. Even if the CEP survey is an overcount, the number of foundations anonymously claiming they’ve divested appears to be far greater than those who publicize that they have done so. 

If more foundations shared their decision publicly, would much more than a third of their peers choose or plan to divest?

Rockefeller climate giving

Over the past decade, the Rockefeller family has taken a variety of steps, both through their philanthropies and other channels, to confront the industry that made their ancestor a household name — and one of the richest men in history.

In 2014, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s public divestment from fossil fuels was seen as a landmark decision due to the roots of the family’s wealth in oil, the foundation’s relatively large size and the rarity of such a move back then. In 2016, the Rockefeller Family Fund followed suit.

In 2020, three third-generation members of the Rockefeller family launched an organization, BankFWD, to pressure banks to stop financing fossil fuel companies. Like the Rockefeller philanthropies’ divestment decisions, BankFWD’s mission is intimately intertwined with the family’s history. A prime target is JPMorgan Chase, the world’s leading fossil fuel financier and the corporate descendant of a bank once headed by a grandfather and great uncle of the group’s three founders, David Rockefeller.

The Rockefeller Foundation’s decision to divest also came in 2020. It was a seismic shift for a foundation that once counted oil assets as 100% of its endowment, and for decades accounted for about half of its holdings. And at the time, it was the largest foundation that had publicly made such a declaration. While it’s hard to determine the degree to which Rockefeller’s divestment played a role in their decisions, three more major foundations — MacArthur, Ford and McKnight — would separately announce similar plans in the following months. 

Irony and responsibility

The difference in Rockefeller’s case is that it’s a foundation founded on one of the first and greatest oil fortunes, and all such moves come in the shadow of that reality. In his letter on the shift, foundation president Dr. Rajiv Shah noted that historic irony.

Benjamin Soskis, a philanthropy historian and senior research associate at the Urban Institute, posted on Twitter that he sees the recognition of such links as something of a trend, one driven by a much more profound set of motivations. 

“Whether or not [it’s] in an explicitly reparative framework, more funders are taking historical stock of how their wealth was made [and through] what harms [and] thinking [about] how it should shape their philanthropic priorities. Not in terms of irony, but in terms of responsibility,” wrote Soskis.

Even as more funders look back at the sources of their wealth, that phrase I’ve repeatedly heard — “We are not a climate funder” — is a reminder that some are still failing to look forward, or at least have not yet publicly figured out how to grapple with the carbon emissions upon which pretty much all modern wealth has depended, or the planetary emergency whose far-reaching impacts will only multiply in the years ahead. 

It’s not that these institutions are blind to the impacts of climate change — usually far from it. Their staff are well-informed, their publications often reference it, and heck, some of their grants address it. 

But that odd insistence, whether in public or in private, that they’re not climate funders — and the corresponding abstention of responsibility — suggests that on some level, these institutions believe their grantmaking can exist separately from this existential threat. It’s also a sign of how normalized funding silos remain across the philanthrosphere, despite years of grantmaker attempts to kick that habit.

Climate change does not care about a foundation’s priority areas any more than, say, the pandemic did. Perhaps Rockefeller’s announcement will help more people in philanthropy see that reality.