Collaborative Green Movement Funding Initiative Grows, Looks to Harness Federal Climate Investment

Last year, a group of green funders joined forces to ensure that the torrent of federal dollars from the freshly passed Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act would flow in part to the nation’s water systems — and do so equitably.

To make the most of this new flood of opportunity, the partners created the Water Solutions Fund to coordinate the eight members’ efforts and pool their dollars. And as they looked around the country for ways to reach beyond their network and into communities in need, their attention turned to another collaborative, the environmental movement infrastructure initiative Mosaic.

We’ve been following Mosaic since it launched two years ago. Now on its third annual and largest-ever slate of grants, the initiative’s 17 philanthropic backers in this round include newcomers like The Water Solutions Fund and the U.S. Energy Foundation. The $9.6 million round, announced Thursday, will back 79 separate projects proposed by some 350 co-applicants. That’s up from the $6.4 million Mosaic moved to 47 projects in 2022.

Mosaic’s latest portfolio — 100% chosen by its unique grantmaking panel, which spans so-called Big Greens, grassroots environmental justice groups and foundation leaders — demonstrates one way foundations are mobilizing resources to support the implementation of a once-in-a-generation set of environmental opportunities. It also reflects the multiplier effects of participatory funding, which, as in most corners of philanthropy, makes up a small part of environmental funding, but comes with benefits that Mosaic’s participants feel pay immense dividends.

Collaboration for a historic opportunity

The United States not only has to implement the major federal legislation mentioned above, but also its 30x30 conservation pledge, aiming to conserve least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030, as well as the Justice40 Initiative, an all-of-government effort to direct 40% of the benefits of certain federal investments to disadvantaged communities. The U.S. is expected to spend $500 billion on climate work over the next decade. Mosaic offers one example of how philanthropic funders are helping to scale those efforts and open the doors for new recipients.

“[Mosaic] gave us a chance to really model philanthropic collaboration in a way that you don't see very often,” said Dr. Jennifer Sokolove, director of programs and strategy at the Water Foundation, which hosts the Water Solutions Fund. “We got new connections with a bunch of water organizations that expand our scale and scope to places that we didn't have connections before.”

Granted, many of the funders backing Mosaic’s grantmaking via the Water Solutions Fund are not entirely new to the cause. Several of the Water Solutions Fund’s supporters have funded Mosaic since its launch, including the Pisces Foundation, Walton Family Foundation and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. See a full list of backers below. But there are others for whom the aligned funding marks their first support of Mosaic, albeit indirectly, such as the Kresge Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and Lyda Hill Philanthropies.

Mosaic’s growing influence

This year’s grants show that Mosaic and a growing collection of even newer green intermediaries may increasingly serve not only as pass-throughs for the rising tide of billionaire wealth and newly mobilized legacy dollars going to environmental causes, but as guides for those funders’ grantmaking, or at least the decisions of other intermediaries.

Note that the Water Solutions Fund and Energy Foundation joined Mosaic not as contributors toward its pooled fund, but as aligned donors, whose funding goes directly to grantees chosen by Mosaic’s unique governing body. That indicates a significant level of trust in Mosaic’s participatory process, which I outlined when the collaborative launched in 2021. In addition, Mosaic also informed a recent report on “equitable systems change” from Bridgespan, the nonprofit consultancy that works with philanthropies and donors like MacKenzie Scott.

Such knock-on effects suggest that Mosaic’s eventual influence and impact could prove to be even greater than that suggested by the nearly $21 million it has now helped move since its launch.

Many funders are still wary

Still, next to the overall tide of green giving in recent years and the fact that so many foundations claim to want to fund community needs and prioritize equity, that relatively low amount is indicative of philanthropy’s ongoing hesitancy to actually put money toward movement infrastructure, participatory grantmaking and pooled funds — particularly when all of those things come in a single package, i.e., Mosaic.

“I hope the success of the initiative spurs more foundations, including those newer to the scene, to devote more money to these underfunded but essential ingredients to large-scale social change,” said David Beckman, president of the Pisces Foundation, which helped organize the effort.

If a billionaire or two wanted to get involved in Mosaic, there’s plenty of space to grow. The initiative has received more than 2,000 requests for funding over its lifespan, together totaling more than $400 million.

Mosaic originally launched a system, MosaicConnect, that sought to share unfunded applications with other funders via a publicly posted spreadsheet — similar to Lever for Change’s Bold Solutions Network. The initiative has now removed that effort from its website and turned its focus to direct and curated outreach to potential funders, channeling the expertise of the initiative’s participatory governing assembly, which brings together the expertise of lawyers, organizers and funders around a single table.

“That ecosystem of big greens, grassroots, funders coming together to build shared strategy — that really is kind of the secret sauce,” said Katie Robinson, Mosaic’s project director.

Not just a benefit to funders

Some pooled funds consist simply of funders coming together to align their grantmaking — a valuable exercise, but often an insular one. Mosaic’s model, on the other hand, involves a wider range of players coming together to make joint decisions, including funders, large nonprofits and movement groups. That has admittedly caused members many headaches. It’s hard for any dozen people to agree, let alone a diverse group of organizations. But it has also helped expand participants’ connections to each other and the field.

“While Mosaic doesn't have a lot of money, I think the structure of the [governing assembly] lends itself to having a broader and deeper understanding” of the field, said Rahwa Ghirmatzion, executive director of PUSH Buffalo, who likened the connections to a mycelium network, the fungal system that transfers water and other essential nutrients between plants.

Kate Sindling Daly, who was formerly a colleague of Beckman’s at the Natural Resources Defense Council and is now senior vice president of law and policy at Conservation Law Foundation, which she calls a “big green for its region,” has been contemplating the possibly “transformative” decision to take federal funding — and the massive capacity that would entail.

Sitting on Mosaic’s governing assembly has given her perspective on such questions, particularly for organizations smaller than her own. “Work that I wouldn't necessarily have thought of as being crucial, I now — from my vantage point at Mosaic — can see just how essential that is,” she said.

Robinson made a similar point about the broader effort to make the most of this moment. The current unprecedented availability of federal dollars for climate action “is not something that just naturally implements on its own,” she said. “It really requires a movement ecosystem that is coordinated, equipped and ready to act at scale together.”

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Mosaic’s Funders

Funders in italics also back the Water Solutions Fund

Caldwell Fisher Family Foundation
David and Lucile Packard Foundation
David Rockefeller Fund
Energy Foundation
Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment
NorthLight Foundation
Oceankind
Overbrook Foundation
Pisces Foundation
Posner Foundation of Pittsburgh
Rob and Melani Walton Foundation
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Tides Foundation
Walton Family Foundation
Water Solutions Fund
William & Flora Hewlett Foundation

Editor’s Note: Mosaic ceased sharing unfunded projects on its website during its latest round of funding, but has not discontinued efforts to attract other funders to those applications. An earlier version of this story may have implied otherwise.

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