Giving Green Fund Strategic Response Grants: Q1 2025

Our first round of grants designed to meet needs and seize opportunities in climate action under the Republican trifecta.

How we're targeting impact in Q1 2025

The Giving Green Fund (GGF) makes regular grants to meet urgent and high-impact needs at our Top Nonprofits and other organizations working on our prioritized strategies.

For Q1 2025, the Giving Green Fund plans to disburse a total of $880,000 (USD) with a focus on two key areas:

• Supporting Giving Green’s Top Nonprofits with immediate funding gaps and strong resilience to political changes in the U.S.

• Defending U.S. policy supporting clean technology innovation, including nuclear, geothermal, industrial decarbonization, and carbon removal.

As mentioned in our statement on the 2024 U.S. election, we are committed to staying nimble and humble, adapting our grantmaking strategies to meet needs as they arise. We’ve added new innovation-focused grants because we see a growing risk to clean tech progress and believe philanthropy can play a key role in keeping clean tech on the political agenda. We’ve prioritized clean tech innovation because we think some technologies, such as nuclear and geothermal, have potential for bipartisan support and continued progress. Additionally, early support for new technologies can have a substantial impact on how quickly they improve and decrease in cost. Guided by our focus on systems change, we see lowering clean tech costs as critical for long-term climate impact, and we want to help keep it a top priority.

Funding Top Nonprofits with urgent needs and political resilience

We believe our 2024 climate giving recommendations are strong even if U.S. politics shift, because they support many kinds of change—policy at all levels, new technology, market shaping, public support, and more. To decide on Q1 disbursements, we spoke with our Top Nonprofits as well as other players in the space to determine where the greatest near-term needs for marginal funding exist. This included determining which strategies we believed were most resilient to the current U.S. political situation. 

This quarter, we’re allocating funding to the following top recommendations listed in alphabetical order:

Name	Amount	What could the organization do with additional funding?	Link
Future Cleantech Architects	$115,000	Hire technical specialists to engage with EU policymakers in areas such as steel, structural efficiency, and aviation.	Click to view summary.
Good Food Institute	$115,000	Use additional funds to support its research program, fueling innovation in alternative proteins internationally.	Click to view summary.
Opportunity Green	$115,000	Expand its aviation work, including preparing for upcoming talks on aviation and the EU Emissions Trading System.	Click to view summary.

By default, we split allocations among Top Nonprofits equally. For more information on how we determine exact grant amounts, see this previous blog post. 

In addition to the above grants, we are working with mission-aligned funders to advise their giving strategies and offer strategic, research-driven insights on how they can fill gaps and respond to this unique political moment. As a result of this ongoing work with others in the climate philanthropy ecosystem, Giving Green influenced nearly $400,000 in grants to one of our Top Nonprofits, Clean Air Task Force (CATF). This includes a $200,000 grant focused on sustaining its clean technology innovation workstream in collaboration with Doneer Effectief.

Defending U.S.-based clean tech innovation policy

Under a Republican trifecta, there are serious concerns that parts of the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act could be rolled back, putting key climate provisions at risk. Already, federal funding for climate projects has been frozen, and it is unclear how much will be cut. We are especially concerned about funding cuts for developing and demonstrating early-stage clean technologies, since today’s research investments will shape their future cost, deployment, and emissions impact. Still, we see a promising path forward: support for energy innovation has traditionally seen bipartisan support and could be aligned with Republican goals such as energy security. For example, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright has expressed support for certain technologies highlighted by Giving Green, such as nuclear and geothermal energy. 

At the same time, we think funding innovation is especially timely because we anticipate a large near-term philanthropic funding gap. Namely, Breakthrough Energy—a key supporter of U.S. innovation—recently wound down its grantmaking, leaving grantees without the stable, year-over-year funding they had come to rely on. 

To continue U.S. policy research and education for clean tech innovation, we are allocating funding to the following organizations listed in alphabetical order:

Name	Amount	What could the organization do with additional funding?	Link
Bipartisan Policy Center	$125,000	Continue supporting clean energy innovation by helping Congress shape future energy laws and align funding requests with key decision-makers' priorities.	Click to view summary.
ClearPath	$245,000	Sustain its work on clean technology innovation, including educational work on authorizations and defending provisions relevant to clean energy innovation that may otherwise be rolled back.	Click to view summary.
Third Way Institute	$165,000	Continue to coordinate organizations with a shared goal of accelerating the research, development, demonstration, and deployment of clean energy.	Click to view summary.

We reached this decision by speaking with (1) leading U.S. nonprofits advocating for innovation to learn more about their approach, historic wins, and funding needs, and (2) various funders to get a sense of where our level of available funding would be additional.

Get in touch with Giving Green

Donations to the Giving Green Fund are impactful and timely because we make our giving decisions based on the latest information from nonprofits and major donors. We remain committed to the promise made in our election statement to use our expanded scope of grants to move quickly and strategically to move money to high-impact climate nonprofits as needs arise in this pivotal political moment. For most donors, our Top Nonprofits remain great options to fight climate change. If you're giving a larger amount, feel free to reach out. We always strive to be as transparent as possible online, but we are happy to share more information about funding needs and high-priority projects in a one-on-one conversation.

If you would like your gift to support our research and communications campaigns, we humbly ask that you support our work here at Giving Green. It is with these donations that we are able to allocate the time and resources necessary to ensure our research, recommendations, and grant strategies evolve and adapt to meet the moment. 

We are grateful to our donors for their continued support and look forward to our continued work together to keep climate mitigation on the path toward progress.