A Strategic Approach to Climate Philanthropy

This chapter details how a group of prominent climate funders adopted a more focused and strategic approach to grantmaking from the 1990s onward, adapting to a shifting political context. While upholding liberal philanthropic principles, this new method integrated collaborative, proactive, outcome-oriented, and evaluation-driven grantmaking with a pro-business, market-centered, and bottom-up understanding of social change. By the mid-2000s, these elements formed the basis of a new international climate philanthropy, leading to increased foundation involvement and the creation of entities like ClimateWorks Foundation, bolstered by reports such as "Design to Win" (2007).