Donating to climate nonprofits? Think systems change

As a climate charity evaluator, we often hear a familiar story: you have reduced your meat consumption, perhaps even gone vegan. You carry a reusable water bottle everywhere and avoid single-use plastics. You opt for walking, cycling, or taking public transport instead of driving.

Yet despite your efforts, climate targets continue to be breached, and extreme weather events grow more frequent. You might ask yourself: is there something more I can do?

At Giving Green, we believe donating to effective climate nonprofits offers individuals a way to connect their personal actions with wider, systemic change. We guide donors towards climate donation opportunities that truly move the needle.

“We can’t afford to just think small,” said Daniel Stein, founder of Giving Green, in a recent interview with Triple Pundit. “We need to ask big questions: What would the world look like with fewer greenhouse gas emissions? How do we get there? What technologies are necessary? What laws need to change? And then direct funding toward those solutions.”

Each year, we dedicate thousands of research hours to identifying climate giving opportunities that pull the biggest levers. Here is what we have learned about systems change.

What does system change look like in climate action?

We define systems-changing climate initiatives as those that change the rules of the game. For climate donors, funding systems change means supporting initiatives that shift incentives and actions far beyond the immediate project.

Here are some examples:

• Policy advocacy: Shaping the regulatory framework to influence the actions of others.

• Technology development: Creating technological tools that make it easier to implement climate solutions.

• Market shaping: Reducing costs and increasing incentives for widespread adoption of climate solutions.

• Strategic grassroots organizing: Building political will and creating scalable blueprints for broader adoption.

Why systems change offers the best value for your climate donations 

Traditional impact evaluation methods favor short-term outcomes, quantitative data, and linear theories of change, as noted by the Shifting Systems Initiative, a multi-year effort led by major philanthropies. 

In the context of climate solutions, this might look like prioritizing projects that can point to a concrete number of trees planted over projects that contribute to policies that reduce the incentives for deforestation across entire countries. 

To address this bias, we have grown our research toolkit over the past five years to include both qualitative and quantitative methods. 

We start off by qualitatively assessing the impact of a climate donation strategy based on three criteria: 

1. Scale: how big a problem is it?

2. Feasibility: how hard is the problem to address?

3. Funding need: how much would more donations help?

   
   

As part of this assessment, we also construct a theory of change for an intervention or organization to lay out the chain of events that leads to impact. 

To complement our qualitative analyses, we also build quantitative cost-effectiveness models to estimate roughly the climate impact per dollar donated. 

The process involves estimating many inherently uncertain inputs, such as cumulative emissions reductions that may result from a policy, or the influence of one organization within an ecosystem of advocates for that policy. Given the high uncertainty, we do not take the results of these models literally; we consider them as rough plausibility checks rather than precise metrics.

The overall findings are illuminating: even under conservative assumptions, donations to systems-changing climate initiatives can be at least an order of magnitude more effective than direct interventions.  

Case study of systems-changing climate initiatives

One system-changing event in climate action is the rapid decline in solar photovoltaic prices. 

Dropping from over $100 per watt to less than $0.50 today, the dramatic cost reduction fast-tracked other crucial green technologies. To accelerate the current green transition, we must replicate this success to new green technologies like advanced geothermal, green hydrogen, and alternative proteins.

But how? What lessons can climate donors learn from the scaling up of solar PV? 

The table below summarizes notable events in the development of solar PV, as described in the book How Solar Became Cheap: A Model for Low-Carbon Innovation. For each event, we identified the broad strategy that acted as a catalyst. 

The findings are illuminating: the predominant strategies responsible for the cost reductions are government support of RD&D and demand-pull policies, both examples of system-changing levers. 

In short, policy and technology change systems. Climate funders can make the next “big thing” happen by being prepared to fund high-risk, high-reward projects like policy advocacy and technology advancement, 

How can climate donors support systems change?

At Giving Green, we make high-impact climate giving easier, for everyone. We have guided the giving of donors large and small, with gift sizes ranging from $0.30 to $10 million. 

Regardless of how much you look to give, one helpful question to ask is: how can my climate donations contribute to larger, societal change?

"If you want to use your own efforts to do something big for climate change, you have to go beyond yourself because your own carbon footprint is not enough,” said Stein in a recent interview on the Innovations in Sustainable Finance podcast. 

Philanthropic capital is well positioned to take bold bets that can power grand changes. Climate donors have a unique opportunity to fill gaps left by other sectors, fund long-term experiments, and push for evidence-based strategies that shift entire industries, 

Our research over the past five years offers two learnings for climate donors who want to maximize their impact: 

1. Embrace uncertainty and think long-term

The most transformative climate solutions often come with uncertainty. Many systems-level interventions do not fit neatly into predefined metrics or short-term measurement frameworks. Instead of focusing only on highly measurable outcomes, funders should be open to investing in strategies that may take time to yield results.

2. Fund strategies with a clear path to systemic change

A project’s true value lies in how it interacts with the broader system over time. When considering what to fund, philanthropists should prioritize initiatives with a clear theory of change—one that maps out how different actors and policies come together to drive impact.

Additional resources on maximizing the impact of your climate action

• Each year, Giving Green publishes a list of top climate nonprofits that push forward systemic solutions to climate change. You can:.

  • Donate directly to the recommended Top Nonprofits

  • Give to our Giving Green Fund, which regrants to high-impact climate nonprofits based on their latest funding needs.

• If you enjoyed this blog, you might like this in-depth report on how Giving Green thinks about systems change as a climate funder.