Six Questions with Ellen Dorsey, Who Helped Convince Philanthropies to Divest

In October 2021, Darren Walker announced that the Ford Foundation would cease to invest in fossil fuel-related industries. Walker, Ford’s president, wrote in a blog post that “reaching this juncture has been made possible” by funder peers who offered him “thoughtful and wise counsel,” and mentioned three names.

The first was Ellen Dorsey’s.

Dorsey, who stepped down last month after 16 years at the helm of the Wallace Global Fund, can count Ford’s decision as one of many successes in a career spent pushing philanthropy to reconsider whether sticking with the status quo on its investments and grants could really lead to the change it hoped to see in the world.

One of Dorsey’s standout accomplishments was launching the global DivestInvest network, which, to date, has helped move roughly 60,000 individuals and more than 1,600 organizations — nearly 12% of which are philanthropies — to commit to divest $40.6 trillion in assets from fossil fuels. That’s 27 times the combined endowments of all U.S. foundations.

The effort’s fans include Christiana Figueres, the lead negotiator for the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change. “The global DivestInvest movement was a primary driver of success at the Paris Climate Talks in 2015,” she once said.

Meanwhile, Dorsey’s legacy at the Wallace Global Fund goes well beyond divestment. The foundation’s grantmaking, which has recently hovered around $19 million a year based on a formal spend-down plan, has helped seed movement groups. Through Wallace, Dorsey backed a once-little-known organization called the Sunrise Movement, whose protest with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in Nancy Pelosi’s office brought international attention to the Green New Deal.

She’s also regularly used her pen to influence her peers, writing op-eds about how philanthropy should support an election day holiday, increase payout, declare a climate emergency and, of course, change how it invests. Her fellow philanthropists have not been her only audience. She’s been on Bill Moyers, written for Ms. and was once arrested with Jane Fonda.

It’s no secret that IP has been a longtime fan. We recognized her as one of our Philanthropy Organizers of the Year in 2021, and named her to the inaugural IP Power List.

She’s now stepping away from her post at Wallace, which has been filled by Robby Rodriguez, a former community organizer who recently served as executive director of the New Mexico-based SouthWest Organizing Project.

What’s next for Dorsey? She knows what she will do first: “I’m going to take a nap.”

She’ll also stay on as an advisor at Wallace for the rest of the year, including helping continue its work in Africa — “which I love deeply,” she said — and creating a divestment movement documentation project. Outside of Wallace, she’s planning to work with some partners on new projects at the intersection of climate, fossil fuels and democracy, particularly “to build power and fight” fossil fuel subsidies.

“I’m going to be a free radical for a while,” she said.

I spoke with Dorsey about the state of climate philanthropy, the new wave of philanthropists who integrate investing and her tips for would-be philanthropic organizers. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Your doctoral thesis was on the strategy of the global anti-apartheid movement, which has informed the DivestInvest movement. Should philanthropy see the climate emergency in similar moral terms as apartheid?

Yeah, without question. I can even go another level above that. The world is facing such tremendous instability, the total intersection of crisis: of governance global and national, the climate crisis, economic inequality, rising conflicts. The intersection of them is not just rhetoric, it is actually an accelerant to each. The tectonic plates of the current system are shaking.

If we don't have that analysis, not only is it almost profoundly immoral that we would stay in our lane, but it will make us profoundly ineffective. At the same moment, we are seeing movements rising that are not necessarily structured in the same way as our historic NGO-industrial complex. That's a great thing. If we figure out how to bring an analysis of power to this moment — what power needs to shift? What are the acupressure points to unlock change? Who needs power to stand up to the abuse of power? — then we have a fighting chance.

The test for philanthropy is whether we're really ready to change and respond to this moment at scale. The test for our funding should be through this power lens, through a justice lens. If you're funding an NGO, is it supporting movements? Or is it doing its own thing? Is there a theory of change? Is it connected to the groups on the ground that are at the center of the fight and maybe have the best solutions? This is such a historic moment. Unprecedented, probably, in 100 years.

To your question about the morality, when you have an industry that will literally wreck the planet to squeeze out profit, will capture governments and destroy democracy, sow disinformation, align with the worst forces that are suppressing rights around the world — it’s as profound a moral fight as anything we could imagine. Is philanthropy, and particularly climate philanthropy, really focused on the real problem at this stage? And it is weakening the power of this industry and compelling its transition — not wrapping our stuff in just transition, but actually having that laser-focused lens?

What then do you make of the pace of action and degree of intersectionality, whether it's on divestment, payout rates or expanding grantmaking to those most at risk in all these different struggles?

I think about it, like, the good, the bad and the ugly. The good is that with a lot more climate philanthropy than we've had, the money that's now flowing into this space is quite significant — sometimes huge, huge amounts of money. And the bad is that there's a whole lot of money flowing into this space — and I don’t think it has enough of a power analysis. In terms of what power needs to shift, there’s not nearly enough work, or enough funding supporting intersectional movement building, which is essential.

As a result, typically what is happening, even in the space of trying to cut off finance to the fossil fuel industry, the banks or the other institutions that are propping up or growing the system — even in that, money tends to flow to specialized NGOs and not to building a movement. And a strong movement like the divestment movement got very little funding from philanthropy, and is still getting almost no funding. There's a little movement out there still chugging along. Could you imagine if it was supported to operate at the scale of the problem and build power commensurate with the power of the industry? It would be be unprecedented. That's not happening.

To me, that's problematic. On top of that, a lot of climate philanthropies are talking about the just transition with no analysis of justice — and what it really means to be funding just transition and building power on the ground. That work is not only building power to achieve change at a national or global level, but is innovating really profound solutions that link racial, economic, gender, climate justice, that address new ownership models and are building new forms of power that could actually offer the solutions for this 100-year crisis, or maybe millennial crisis, that we're in.

There is a lot of money. That's the good. The bad is it isn't really going to where it needs to go. And the ugly? For God's sake, you're still invested in those companies. You can't pretend like your investments are separate from your grants. It's a joke. Now, you're driving the problems you're asking your grantees to solve, and you're driving them with a vast amount of money. In many large foundations, the CIO is compensated at a higher level than the CEO. That's an investment bank masquerading as a philanthropy.

Sadly, it's not only driving the problems, it’s leaving money on the table. We did push hard on philanthropy in DivestInvest. The good thing is a lot of foundations had the debate, moved money and are now more committed to impact investing in climate solutions. I really call out MacArthur, but not just them, for doing great things. It's moving a little, but do we have a timeframe that's commensurate with the science? I don't think so.

There's a growing number of new philanthropic operations, often run by younger billionaire donors, that see all their money — whether grantmaking, endowment or venture investments — as part of their mission. Do you feel like you're starting to see the future you hoped for?

I think really committing to using all the tools at your disposal to support social and environmental change is what we must do. It can only be a good thing to look at all your tools and analyze whether they're in service of your mission, whether they're effectively bringing about change, how you can accelerate change by integrating the tools — the investments, the grants, your advocacy voice, your convening power, your leadership, etc. But that doesn't mean inherently it's good. It's really about the approach you take.

I have some worries about new donors that are saying, “Everything we're going to do is impact investing — and we can get a market return.” First of all, you're still a charitable investor, or you're perhaps receiving charitable tax status to serve the public good. If market return is 20% or 15% and that gives you a lens into what constitutes an impact investment, it's probably problematic. In philanthropy, we're not just any investor. Our capital should be used to seed new, innovative things. It should be aligned with our grants to help develop new types of solutions or to scale effective replicable solutions. Maybe we should be thinking about a fair return, rather than a market return. Fair might be zero, 2% or 5%. That's what our role should be: to know that we are different than just any institutional investor.

How do you think we should evaluate those operations and their approaches?

That’s a big-can-of-worms question in the sense that none of philanthropy is evaluated at all. It's the most unaccountable sector, and not very transparent. I think radical transparency is what is needed, whether it's traditional philanthropy or newer forms that are integrating investments, grantmaking and family offices.

We should be really transparent about what we're setting out to achieve, how we're doing that, who we're partnering with, who's advising what we're doing, what are our expectations of impact, and in the case of investments, our expectation of return. Some donors are transparent. It's not like you can brush the whole sector with one brushstroke. There's some amazing stuff that's happening. But as a sector, transparency and accountability is certainly not at the center.

How would you grade philanthropy’s action and funding to date on implementation of the estimated $4 trillion in federal infrastructure spending, whether from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) or other bills, acknowledging that effort encompasses a lot of different players?

There's a rush to implement the IRA, as there should be, and there's really important work happening: supporting communities accessing the Justice40 funds, state-based work, work at nexus of the states, civic engagement. But is it commensurate with the need? We should be having that debate.

Secondly, who's going to prevent implementation? Let's go back to the power analysis. How are we going to block and tackle the fossil fuel industry, and its allies and partners, that are doing everything they can to stymie implementation of the IRA? That debate isn't happening at the scale it needs to be.

This anti-ESG push is not surprising. It has emerged as the divestment movement and climate finance is really taking off. This is the blowback. It also has become a state-based fight that is very challenging for the advocates. I feel like the industry is swarming our movement right now. We have to be really clear about what fights are most crucial and win on them.

Yes, there's money going into IRA implementation. Is it enough? Does it have the right theory of change that incorporates a serious power analysis that is fighting the powers that be and building commensurate power at the state and local levels and rural communities? I think we could have a lot more debate and analysis about that.

You've been one of the most successful philanthropic organizers of recent years, as we recognized in 2021. What would you tell grantmakers and others who hope to have similar impact in the sector?

Thank you for that comment and that question. I am an organizer, and I've had many different platforms for that, whether being a professor, or working in NGOs and movements or being a philanthropist. Change does not happen without organizing. Full stop. If we don't have funders that will champion organizing, activism and movement-building, we're not going to get systemic change. And at this moment, we need mass system change at every level.

This debate has to happen in the boardroom. Do we have any chance of winning on what we're saying we want to win on? What does it take? Whose power do we need to weaken? Whose power do we need to grow? If we're not having those debates at the board level and every day at the staff level, then I don't think we have a fighting chance of breaking this downward spiral of fascism, climate change and injustice.

The other thing I'll say is, I've been lucky. I have been so fortunate that the Wallace Global Fund board was willing to be experimental and to even commit to spending down, understanding that we can't squirrel our acorns away for a colder winter when the moment is now. They have been willing to take risks — and they've unleashed me to do the kinds of things that I am so proud that the foundation has done.

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