Dan Stein, the founder of Giving Green, a climate philanthropy organization, discovered some major news in an unexpected email on a Friday morning in April. $10 million was handed to his fund by an unidentified source.
“I was tickled, awestruck, surprised,” Stein remarked, adding that he “didn’t quite process the number of zeroes.”
Donations are gathered by Giving Green, which then distributes them to a select group of charity organizations that it feels have the most potential to significantly impact the fight against climate change and lower greenhouse gas emissions.
The $10 million gift practically sprang out of nowhere and is by far the greatest single donation the group has ever received.
The anonymous donation was made to Giving Green’s fund, which is managed by Giving What We Can, a global nonprofit that was founded on the principle of effective altruism and urges donors to commit to donating a certain proportion of their annual income or fortune.
Laptops 1000The gift originates from a donor-advised fund at Fidelity Charitable, and the giver remains anonymous.
About Giving What We Can, Stein remarked, “At first, they also were nervous that it was a mistake, and they went back to Fidelity to verify it before they told us.”
Stein and his team believe that the same donor may have contributed up to $17 million more directly to such organizations in the past two years after reviewing their records and corresponding with the organizations they suggest.
Although Stein notes that it is impossible to establish because the gifts are anonymous, the timing of their arrival in two clusters suggests that they may have originated from the same person or organization.
According to Fidelity Charitable, it doesn’t discuss particular grants or donors.
Even sizable anonymous donations are not out of the ordinary, but Tory Martin, director of communications and strategic partnerships at the Dorothy A. Johnson Centre for Philanthropy, said that these kinds of gifts are typically the result of relationship-building efforts conducted behind the scenes.
“If you’re receiving millions of dollars, stewardship has typically occurred. It has been cultivated,” she declared.
According to Martin, anonymous giving is generally seen as the best kind of giving because it allows the giver to avoid attention while simultaneously thinking, “I’m doing this out of a sense of creating a better community and simply saying that this money should go towards other uses instead of sitting in my pocket or my bank account.”
However, accepting an anonymous donation can put a nonprofit’s reputation at danger if it turns out the contributor is a contentious figure.
Though Stein is skeptical that the mystery contributor is a company attempting to greenwash money because it would not receive publicity for the contribution, he has no solid information regarding the donor’s identity.
According to him, the donations show that there are people who wish to support climate change but are unsure about where to make their contributions. He founded Giving Green with the intention of offering well-informed advice.
An organization that comes highly recommended is Industrious Labs, which promotes the decarburization of heavy industries like steel and aluminum.
According to the organization’s partner Evan Gillespie, those sectors are frequently mistakenly believed to be the toughest to eradicate. Giving Green contacted them personally, and after a protracted screening procedure, Giving Green recommended them in a row.
Laptops 1000“You need to have this faith that, all right, we’re going to divulge our deepest, darkest secrets about how this is going to work,” Gillespie advised. He attributes their receipt of many million dollars in funding—funding that, critically, is unrestricted—to Giving Green’s proposal.
Giving Green provides comprehensive details about their campaigns, theory of change, and future objectives on their website, along with an explanation of why they chose to suggest donations to Industrious Labs and its other partners.
According to Giving Green, their approach is based on the principles of effective altruism, a charitable social movement that originated in UK philosophy departments in the 2010s.
Proponents claim that by giving to what they believe to be the most successful charities and solutions, they are attempting to maximize the good they can accomplish in the world.
Effective altruism has been adopted by certain affluent and powerful contributors, particularly in the technology sector.
These donors have flooded funds into causes including animal rights, global health, pandemic preparedness, and reducing the possible worst effects of artificial intelligence.
While some successful altruists have claimed that it is moral to earn as much money as possible in order to donate it, others have pledged to give away a portion of their wages.
Stein stated, “We believe that the climate problem is a tremendous generational issue and that we, as a society, should be doing things to stop it.”
“And the one thing that individuals can do is donate, and they ought to strive to do so in a way that is efficient.”
The amount of money donated to charities that address climate change-related concerns has grown recently, but according to research by the charity ClimateWorks, it still makes up a modest percentage of total donations.
ClimateWorks tracked foundation philanthropic giving of $3.7 billion in 2022 to help mitigate or adapt to the effects of climate change.
Significant contributions from private persons will probably provide another $4.2 billion to $9 billion in 2022; however it is more challenging to track, ClimateWorks reported.
More money, according to the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, ought to flow to the areas of the country where climate change is already having the greatest impact on people, as opposed to national environmental organizations or think tanks. They also caution against purchasing “false solutions” such as technologies that will take years to develop.
Movement organizations have been emphasizing “system change, not climate change.”
Furthermore, you are frequently still thinking of extraction when you consider cost-effective options, similar to trying to safeguard your profits. Put money away for a rainy day.
Senowa Mize-Fox, the NCRP movement engagement manager for climate justice, advised giving only what is necessary. In the end, we always say that the rainy day has arrived. The day has turned wet. The climate emergency is now occurring.
Most of the $10 million gift, according to Stein, will be distributed as soon as possible by Giving Green, with a large portion going to the organizations they suggest. Smaller sums will also be allocated to recently established organizationss or initiatives within existing ones that they endorse but haven’t yet had time to rank highly.
