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This year’s research and recommendations for high-impact climate giving It’s been a big year for us at Giving Green.  Earlier this summer, we announced that we received a transformative $10 million anonymous donation  and introduced the expanded scope of the Giving Green Fund , marking the start of an exciting new chapter for Giving Green and our impact on the climate giving ecosystem. Now, we’re thrilled to share our latest recommendations and grantees.  This includes the annual Top Nonprofits list you know and love, featuring the most effective nonprofits tackling climate mitigation on a systemic level. The 2024 list includes a new addition focused on decarbonizing heavy industry that we can’t wait to tell you about.  For the first time this year, we’re also supporting 20+ additional organizations making big contributions to Giving Green’s top-recommended philanthropic strategies. These smaller, single disbursement grants are funding a broader range of high-impact projects, including but not limited to promising young organizations and ecosystems of mission-aligned organizations. In this post, we’ll walk through the details of our latest research, share why these organizations and philanthropic strategies stand out, and highlight how donors can make the biggest impact.  Table of contents Philanthropic strategies to fund this year Reducing food systems emissions Decarbonizing aviation and maritime shipping Decarbonizing heavy industry Advancing next-generation geothermal Supporting advanced nuclear Advancing the energy transition in LMICs Advancing solar radiation management (SRM) governance Scaling demand for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) Our Top Nonprofits and grantees Top Nonprofits 2024 grantees How you can take effective climate action Join our Giving Tuesday webinar Donate to top climate nonprofits Support Giving Green's research Philanthropic strategies to fund this year Giving Green’s research process starts at the level of philanthropic strategies, which are specific approaches that donors can take to slow climate change.  We start with a wide view of strategies and then narrow down this list using our “Scale, Feasibility, Funding Need” framework. This looks for strategies that have the potential to drive major warming decreases, where philanthropy can progress the solution, and where there is relative neglect from funders.  This approach tends to select strategies focused on systems change. For a closer look at all of the philanthropic strategies we evaluated in this process, have a look at   our full research dashboard here .  From our long list of 30 philanthropic strategies, we decided to focus on eight in 2024. Five you’ll recognize from previous years: reducing food systems emissions , decarbonizing aviation and maritime shipping, decarbonizing heavy industry , advancing   next-generation geothermal energy , and supporting   advanced nuclear . Plus three strategies that are new this year— advancing   the energy transition in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) , advancing   solar radiation management (SRM) governance , and  scaling demand for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) . Since decarbonizing aviation and maritime shipping and next-gen geothermal energy were big priorities last year, we placed less emphasis on them in this year’s evaluations and grant disbursements.  For each of our eight prioritized philanthropic strategies, we dug deep into the approach and identified priority sub-strategies as well as the highest-leverage funding opportunities to advance them. For each strategy, we have written a detailed “deep dive” to guide donors interested in the space.  Historically, our strategies have squarely focused on climate mitigation, meaning that they focused on addressing our top priority: reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  This year, we also explored “climate interventions”—strategies that don’t address the source of warming but, given the rapid rate of warming, offer promising opportunities to supplement emissions reductions and protect human and ecological well-being. SRM governance and CDR fall into this category. Have a look at this table to see how all eight ranked in scale, feasibility, and funding need: Below, we’ll walk you through every strategy, and which nonprofits we’re recommending and granting in each sector in 2024.  Reducing food systems emissions The food sector emits up to 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with 42-65% of those emissions deriving from livestock. We decided to focus our food systems grantmaking on livestock emissions because it’s an astonishingly large fraction of global emissions, but policy and technological progress is still insufficient to reduce these emissions.  Specifically, we found the following sub-strategies the most promising for grantmakers: Efforts to make alternative proteins more taste- and price-competitive with meat Advocating for landmark EU legislation to price agricultural emissions Reducing enteric methane emissions – a byproduct of digestion in ruminant animals like cows and sheep.  We recommend funding The Good Food Institute  for its groundbreaking work advancing alternative proteins. Additionally, the Giving Green fund is planning to award grants to Future Matters , and the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP)   for their policy work in the EU,  and Spark Climate Solutions  for their efforts to reduce enteric methane emissions. To learn more, check out our deep dive on reducing food systems emissions .  Decarbonizing aviation and maritime shipping Currently, aviation and maritime shipping account for 6% of global emissions, but given the rate of demand increase paired with lagging decarbonization efforts, these sectors are projected to account for more than 30% of global emissions by 2050 if left unmitigated. Electrification is not as central to decarbonizing aviation and maritime shipping, which will depend heavily on technological advancements such as clean, alternative fuels. Consequently, aviation and maritime shipping are generally considered hard to abate. We believe there is an opportunity to direct more capital to advocacy efforts to pass regulations on aviation and shipping emissions, as well as policies to support the development and scale of next-gen technologies and alternative fuels. Given the challenges of decarbonization, the lack of funding these subsectors of transport have received thus far, and the reluctance of the industries to make commitments voluntarily, this represents a high-impact philanthropic strategy with a need for funding. For this strategy, we recommend giving to the Clean Air Task Force (CATF)  for its work advancing zero-carbon fuels, and transportation decarbonization, and Opportunity Green  for its efforts to close gaps in global climate policy in the sector.  To learn more, check out our deep dive on aviation and maritime shipping decarbonization .  Decarbonizing heavy industry Heavy industry accounts for around one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions and is considered hard to abate due to the difficulty of electrifying certain industrial processes and persisting gaps in innovation. We found the most promising sub-strategies to be as follows: Efforts to advocate for corporations and governments to make low-carbon purchase commitments. Advocacy for governments to enact regulation that supports decarbonization. Advocacy for governments to increase funding for research, development, and demonstration.  Funding nonprofits in regions dense with heavy industry production, especially LMICs. We think their local civil society ecosystems have been especially neglected and there is room to grow their engagement with local governments and manufacturers. Here, our top recommendations are Future Cleantech Architects  for its efforts to close innovation gaps and Industrious Labs  for its work scaling industrial decarbonization advocacy. Additionally, Giving Green is supporting US nonprofits Evergreen , BlueGreen Alliance Foundation (BGAF) , and ClearPath  for their work on domestic decarbonization of heavy industry and global trade policy. We are also supporting Climate Catalyst  and Solutions for our Climate  for their work to decarbonize heavy industry in regions dense with industrial production, such as India, Indonesia, and South Korea.  To learn more, check out our deep dive on decarbonizing heavy industry.   Advancing next-generation geothermal The need to transition to clean energy is clear, but a solely renewables-based grid is too costly to scale. Clean, firm energy sources that provide steady 24/7 power independent of weather or seasons are needed to complement renewables like wind and solar. And to scale these firm energy sources, they’ll need to become cheaper.  Until now, geothermal systems have been confined to geographic locations near tectonic plates. Recent technological advances have made it possible for geothermal energy to expand to new beyond these locations, making the next few years a critical window to support and scale next-gen geothermal. We believe now is the time to support the development of next-gen geothermal technologies and minimize their cost and risk so they can accelerate the clean energy transition. We recommend funding Project InnerSpace  for its efforts to fast-track next-gen geothermal technologies capable of unlocking geothermal energy from more places, and Clean Air Task Force (CATF)  for research and development of next-gen geothermal energy technologies. To learn more, check out our deep dive on geothermal energy .  Supporting advanced nuclear Clean, firm energy sources are needed to complement renewables like wind and solar in the clean energy transition. Nuclear energy offers a 24/7 energy source that can help decarbonize the grid and play a critical role in decarbonizing heavy industry, but steep costs are standing in the way of bringing it to scale.  To scale nuclear, we think more funding should be directed at the research, development, and deployment of advanced reactors, which are more versatile and affordable to build than traditional large-scale reactors. Our approach has a US focus because the US currently has an appetite to become a global leader in commercial nuclear energy again, creating a chance to push for regulatory reforms and more support for domestic nuclear. The world is also looking to the US to lead innovation and demonstrate novel designs before they import and implement these technologies themselves. This offers a high-impact opportunity for funders to support US nonprofits that are working on derisking investments, addressing the commercial stalemate between vendors and buyers, and clearing the path for US exports.  This year, the Giving Green fund is planning to award grants  to an ecosystem of organizations focused on supporting nuclear power: Good Energy Collective , ClearPath , and Nuclear Innovation Alliance . We are also supporting two other organizations, Clean Air Task Force (CATF)  and Energy for Growth Hub , where advancing nuclear energy is one key component of their work.  To learn more, check out our deep dive on nuclear power .  Advancing the energy transition in LMICs In addition to looking into sector-specific funding opportunities in LMICs, such as heavy industry decarbonization, we evaluated the broader energy transition in these countries. Currently, high-income countries (HICs) are responsible for the majority of global cumulative emissions, but emissions in LMICs are increasing three times as fast  and are on track to surpass HIC emissions by 2040.  Funding the energy transition in LMICs is an extremely wide strategy – for 2024, we decided to place a specific focus on India and Indonesia, as these are two of the highest-emitting LMICs where international donors can make an impact. (See our deep dive  for more information on country prioritization.)  Additionally, we focused on the following sub-strategies: Research and knowledge creation Government policy and engagement Mobilizing finance and derisking clean energy projects One of our Top Nonprofits, Project InnerSpace , works to decarbonize LMICs through expanding geothermal energy mapping in India and Southeast Asia. This year, the Giving Green Fund is also planning to award grants  to Prayas and  IIT Delhi , The Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP) , Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD) , Vasudha Foundation , Energy for Growth Hub , and Climate Catalyst  for their work to advance the energy transition in LMICs.  To learn more, check out our deep dive on the energy transition in LMICs .  Advancing solar radiation management (SRM) governance SRM encompasses a range of techniques to reflect the sun’s rays to reduce global temperatures. SRM is not a substitute for mitigation as it does not reduce emissions, nor address other effects of increased levels of atmospheric CO2. However, it may be temporarily needed to limit warming and reduce its secondary negative effects on human life and ecosystems. Governance structures can help reduce the likelihood of unregulated deployment while enabling responsible research to advance our understanding of whether SRM could be a viable strategy to protect the most vulnerable. Civil society engagement in the coming years is particularly crucial to foster more inclusive governance frameworks and build capacity for more informed decision-making around SRM.  In 2024, the Giving Green Fund plans to grant to The Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering (DSG)  and International Center for Future Generations (ICFG)  for their efforts to democratize conversations about SRM governance and foster international collaboration. To learn more, check out our deep dive on SRM governance .  Scaling demand for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) Pathways to achieving net zero will require some level of carbon removal to balance residual emissions from hard-to-abate sectors such as aviation and heavy industry. In addition, humanity has emitted 1.5 trillion tons of CO2 since the Industrial Revolution, and even if we reach net zero, these “legacy” emissions will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years.  In tandem with a multifaceted climate mitigation plan that addresses the root cause of emissions, it is projected that we will need to remove 10 billion tons of CO2 per year by 2050 to meet mid-century climate goals. Exploring and unlocking new opportunities for generating demand, especially through innovative policy approaches, will be necessary for scaling CDR.   This year, we will be granting to Carbon Removal Standards Initiative (CRSI) , 4 Corners , and CarbonPlan  in an effort to grow the ecosystem of nonprofits working to unlock demand through innovative policy approaches that are underexplored but hold great potential. To learn more, check out our deep dive on carbon dioxide removal .  Interested in learning more about our Top Nonprofits and grantees?  The following tables will walk you through each Top Nonprofit and grantee, which philanthropic strategies each are tackling, and what the Giving Green Fund plans to grant to each of them this Giving Season. In the last column, you can click to view write-ups detailing our research on each of them.  Giving Green’s 2024 Top Nonprofits TOP NONPROFITS PHILANTHROPIC STRATEGY Q4 2024 GRANT AMOUNT LINK  Decarbonizing Aviation + Maritime Shipping Next-Gen Geothermal Energy Advanced Nuclear $2,100,000 Click to view summary. Decarbonizing Heavy Industry Decarbonizing Aviation + Maritime Shipping $600,000 Click to view summary. Decarbonizing Food Systems $2,100,000 Click to view summary. Decarbonizing Heavy Industry $600,000 Click to view summary. Decarbonizing Aviation + Maritime Shipping $600,000 Click to view summary. Next-Gen Geothermal Energy $600,000 Click to view summary. The Giving Green Fund’s 2024 Grantees GRANTEES PHILANTHROPIC STRATEGY Q4 2024 GRANT AMOUNT LINK  Climate Catalyst Decarbonizing Heavy Industry $350,000 Click to view grant write-up. Evergreen Collaborative Decarbonizing Heavy Industry $100,000 Click to view grant write-up. BlueGreen Alliance Foundation (BGAF) Decarbonizing Heavy Industry $100,000 Click to view grant write-up. Solutions for our Climate (SFOC) Decarbonizing Heavy Industry $200,000 Click to view grant write-up . Prayas and IIT Delhi Energy Transition in LMICs $300,000 Click to view grant write-up. The Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP) Energy Transition in LMICs $200,000 Click to view grant write-up. Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD) Energy Transition in LMICs $200,000 Click to view grant write-up. Vasudha Foundation Energy Transition in LMICs $100,000 Click to view grant write-up. Energy for Growth Hub Energy Transition in LMICs Advanced Nuclear Energy $300,000 Click to view grant write-up. Future Matters Reducing Food Systems Emissions $200,000 Click to view grant write-up. Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) Reducing Food Systems Emissions $115,000 Click to view grant write-up. Spark Climate Solutions Reducing Food Systems Emissions $100,000 Click to view grant write-up. Good Energy Collective Advanced Nuclear Energy $250,000 Click to view grant write-up. ClearPath Advanced Nuclear Energy Decarbonizing Heavy Industry $350,000 Click to view grant write-up. Nuclear Innovation Alliance Advanced Nuclear Energy $250,000 Click to view grant write-up. Carbon Removal Standards Initiative (CRSI) Carbon Dioxide Removal $250,000 Click to view grant write-up. 4 Corners Carbon Dioxide Removal $100,000 Click to view grant write-up. CarbonPlan Carbon Dioxide Removal $70,000 Click to view grant write-up. The Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering (DSG) Solar Radiation Management $200,000 Click to view grant write-up. International Center for Future Generations (ICFG) Solar Radiation Management $100,000 Click to view grant write-up. How you can take effective climate action Feeling compelled to act on our findings? Here are a few actions you can take this Giving Season:  Learn more at our Giving Tuesday webinar Join us on December 5 to hear directly from some of our Top Nonprofits about the landscape for bold climate philanthropy. Donate to the Giving Green Fund If you want to donate based on Giving Green’s recommendations but can’t choose just one, a donation to the   Giving Green Fund   is a great way to support all of Giving Green’s Top Nonprofits in one easy step with no management fees.  Donating to our fund also allows you to support additional high-impact opportunities identified by Giving Green’s research team. This may mean additional grants to our current grantees or supporting new grantees. Either way, you will fund a more diverse set of thoroughly vetted, high-impact climate nonprofits advancing a wider set of effective philanthropic strategies.  Donate to top climate nonprofits Alternatively, you can donate   directly to any of the recommended nonprofits . Support Giving Green’s research Every year, the Giving Green team dedicates thousands of hours to identifying and supporting the most effective climate charities. Since we take no portion of the donations made to our recommended organizations, we rely on the generosity of donors to sustain our research and outreach efforts. In the past, every dollar invested in Giving Green’s operations has generated $15 in donations to high-impact climate initiatives. Support our work to be a climate impact multiplier . As always, we welcome you to reach out with questions, feedback, requests for personalized climate giving support, collaboration inquiries, etc. Whatever it may be and wherever you are in your climate journey, we want to hear from you! Contact us   here .

In light of the US election results, we know many are concerned about what this means for the future of our climate. There is no denying that we have a tough four years ahead of us. At Giving Green, our work is rooted in the big picture. We understand that the road to climate mitigation and decarbonization is a long one with many ups and downs. In the face of setbacks, we will stay focused and keep moving in the right direction.  We want to reassure our community that we have long been preparing for this moment. Our research and recommendations are guided by a long-term, global strategy that accounts for multiple levers of systems change. This includes policy—on an international, state, and federal level—as well as technology development, market shaping, building social license, and more.  We took steps to prepare for a shift in the political landscape and kept this possibility top of mind when evaluating our 2024 climate giving recommendations . We chose each philanthropic strategy and Top Nonprofit in part for its promise to drive decarbonization efforts regardless of which party holds power. Additionally, since climate change is a global problem that requires global solutions, we took care to include nonprofits based outside of the US and organizations with an international reach.  Rest assured that this shift in political power has not changed our conviction in this year’s recommendations. Now more than ever, we believe that one of the best ways to support the climate movement is by strengthening civil society and supporting resilient and highly effective nonprofits tackling the issue.  Over the next four years and beyond, we are committed to staying nimble and humble, and will constantly be adapting our research, evaluation, and grantmaking strategies to meet needs as they arise. With the Giving Green Fund  especially, we are prepared to use our expanded scope of grants  to move quickly and strategically to get funds in the hands of the climate nonprofits best positioned to keep the movement’s foot on the pedal of progress.  We have our work cut out for us, but we are up to the challenge. As are our Top Nonprofits, Giving Green Fund grantees, and the rest of the climate movement.  But don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what some of our Top Nonprofits are saying:  “Clean energy, innovation, clean air, and climate action are broadly popular across the country, and they can and must progress regardless of who sits in the White House.  If the incoming president chooses to cede U.S. leadership on the global climate stage, there will be many ready to fill the void — and new opportunities for U.S. states, businesses, investors, and other non-state actors to step up.   And that’s what CATF will fight for. The climate challenge is a century long one, and you don’t hit pause when politicians push unpopular policies that would take us backwards. We will be vigorously defending gains made, assessing the changed landscape, and finding new ways of moving progress forward, with allies across the political and business spectrum.”   – Clean Air Task Force (CATF)   (Read more here ). "GFI’s vision of creating a world where alternative proteins are no longer alternative is built on a theory of change that can succeed under different governments around the world.   Good policy is good policy. What’s good for the future of American consumers, farmers, national security, and business remains the same. We’re here to keep amplifying how America can lead the world in building the agricultural innovations and bioeconomy of tomorrow, and to ensure consumers have the freedom to choose the food they eat. We made huge strides on alternative proteins in the U.S. under many administrations (including the last Trump administration), and thanks to the work of our exceptional team, our strategies will evolve to meet this new moment.”   – The Good Food Institute   “Getting to a zero-carbon industry future can’t wait and neither will we. Together with partners, we are relentless in pushing forward in the venues where change is possible: at the state level, with corporate campaigns, international networks, and some strategic federal advocacy and defense.” – Industrious Labs

Table of contents Background Systems change and pulling multiple levers Giving Green’s prioritized impact areas Industrial decarbonization Decreasing livestock emissions Carbon removal Supporting the energy transition in LMICs Nuclear power Solar geoengineering governance and coordination How you can take effective climate action Endnotes Background When we launched the Giving Green Fund  in 2022, we initially focused on recommending timely grants to our Top Nonprofit recommendations  based on their specific funding needs. We’ve since expanded our approach to include growth and ecosystem grants to promising organizations, as outlined in our previous blog post . With huge thanks to an anonymous gift we received in early 2024 , we intend to recommend allocations totaling at least $10M USD by the end of this year.  In this post, we outline the priorities we have set for the Giving Green Fund in 2024, to be clear about our decision-making process and indicate the types of levers we might recommend funding this year. We invite organizations working in our prioritized impact areas to connect with us and we invite feedback on our approach. Systems change and pulling multiple levers To match the immensity of climate change, we believe mitigation requires a holistic strategy and deep societal transformation. Therefore, we focus on systems change instead of incremental action, and a portfolio of options instead of a single agenda. By focusing on these, we believe our high-level strategy and evidence-based approach gives donors more “bang for their buck” in the fight against climate change. Our focus on systems change: We categorize systems change interventions as ones with high potential for scale but perhaps a more uncertain or longer path to impact. Major interventions include policy advocacy, technology development, and market shaping, which all overlap with one another. Together, these interventions have and will continue to influence the adoption rate of new, greener technologies over existing, highly-polluting ones. For example, these have been the levers that have helped solar photovoltaic and battery technologies rapidly drop in price.[1] Our portfolio approach: We support diverse impact areas because there is no single solution to climate change. Tackling climate change requires various tools to address different sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, the uncertainty of systems change makes multiple approaches necessary if we want to increase our chances of success. Giving Green’s prioritized impact areas As part of our research process , we evaluate impact areas on the basis of scale, feasibility, and funding need . Based on our 2024 assessments, we have prioritized finding promising new funding opportunities in the following impact areas: Industrial decarbonization Decreasing livestock emissions Carbon removal Supporting the energy transition in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) Nuclear power Solar geoengineering governance and coordination We note that this list of prioritized impact areas is preliminary and we may not support funding new opportunities in all these areas. Additionally, shipping and aviation and next-generation geothermal technologies are still priorities for us. However, we do not plan to recommend additional grants in those impact areas outside of our current top recommendations, due to capacity constraints and the recency of our previous work in these areas. We plan to re-evaluate these impact areas in 2025. Honing in on our prioritized impact areas, we are interested in considering grants that address the challenges and levers described below. Industrial decarbonization Challenge: Heavy industries like steel and cement are the literal building blocks of the global economy. Heavy industry accounts for around one-third of greenhouse gas emissions, but has received very little attention from government or philanthropy. What we’re interested in exploring:  We are interested in organizations working to reduce emission in industrial sectors, and are open to a variety of potential mechanisms. We will prioritize actions working on systems change and will consider global impacts of any organizations.  Example levers: Building adequate demand for low-carbon products. Developing a supportive regulatory framework. Transition assistance that facilitates a switch to low-carbon production. Decreasing livestock emissions Challenge: Livestock production is responsible for ~15% of global emissions – some livestock belch methane, require substantial (often deforested) grazing land, and contribute to general supply chain emissions.[2] What we’re interested in exploring: We are interested in organizations that work to reduce some demand for high-emitting livestock products. We are also interested in organizations addressing direct methane emissions from livestock (enteric methane), which we think has been relatively neglected. Example levers: Research, industry, and policy support for alternative proteins. Policy advocacy for pricing agricultural emissions, such as the development of an agricultural emissions trading scheme. Research and policy support for reducing enteric methane emissions. Carbon removal Challenge: To reach mid-century climate goals, it is estimated that we will need to remove 10 billion tons of CO2 per year by 2050 to account for residual emissions.[3] However, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is far from ready to meet this demand, and there remains a need for policy and regulatory structures to scale this work. What we’re interested in exploring: We believe it's important to ensure civil society engagement matches private interest and investment in CDR. Supporting nonprofits can be valuable, as they can focus on tasks that industry might neglect, such as developing standards and protocols, policy advocacy, and ecosystem building. Example levers include: High-level strategies for government and international policies. Local policies and projects to build grassroots support for CDR. Increased global engagement, especially in LMICs. Supporting the energy transition in LMICs Challenge: We have identified India and Indonesia as focus countries because they are currently among the world’s top ten emitters and emissions in these fossil-fuel-dependent countries are expected to rise under business-as-usual.[4] If market barriers to carbon-free electricity production remain in place, the power sector will likely remain a major source of emissions as the countries’ total generation climbs. Demand for space cooling is also expected to soar in both countries as outside temperatures increase.[5] Inefficient air conditioners impact emissions and can strain the power grid, while lack of access to cooling adversely affects human health and wellbeing. What we’re interested in exploring: Our team is broadly interested in supporting organizations that can help enable a clean energy transition, such as through increasing renewables or improving energy efficiency, while ensuring energy access. Example levers: Developing energy transition plans and advocating for supportive and additive climate policies. Supporting private sector investment in zero-carbon technologies. Support for clean cooling, such as supporting building designs that reduce the need for mechanical cooling and making highly-efficient air conditioners that are already on the market more affordable. Nuclear power Challenge: We think nuclear power can play an important part in decarbonization because it provides consistent, carbon-free energy with a small land footprint. As part of a diverse energy portfolio, it can complement other energy sources, such as wind and solar. Our theory of change is that support for US-based nuclear innovation may help spread advanced nuclear reactors worldwide by reducing costs, providing a model for other countries, and enabling technology transfer. For this to happen, the US must show strong domestic demand and become a major exporter of these technologies. To achieve this, nuclear energy costs must be competitive with other low-carbon options, but currently, there is a stalemate between nuclear vendors and domestic buyers.[6] Additionally, vendors face numerous barriers in global markets.[7] What we’re interested in exploring: We are interested in efforts that could help derisk early projects and accelerate private sector commitment, especially for innovative designs. We are also broadly interested in efforts that could help boost domestic demand for nuclear power to help build a case for nuclear globally. Example levers: Policy advocacy for efforts that would help derisk early projects (e.g., building an orderbook by aggregating demand, cost overrun insurance, financial assistance). Community engagement to ensure and maintain a social license to operate. Solar geoengineering governance and coordination Challenge: Solar geoengineering aims to manage warming by either reflecting more sunlight away from the Earth or reducing the trapping of outgoing thermal radiation. Because research and interest in solar geoengineering are increasing, we believe there is a strong need for governance and coordination that minimizes its risks and prioritizes climate-vulnerable countries in discussion.[8] What we’re interested in exploring: We are interested in organizations conducting research that is deeply engaged with wider questions around the societal and environmental impacts of solar geoengineering. Additionally, given the environmental justice concerns surrounding decision-making processes for solar geoengineering, we’re also interested in organizations that work on international coordination. Example levers: Establishing regulations and standards of good practice to ensure high-quality research that avoids harm to humans and the environment. Capacity-building to involve climate-vulnerable countries in solar geoengineering governance. Additional thoughts: We think progress on solar geoengineering, even when it comes from well-meaning organizations, could pose a moral hazard by undermining progress on climate change mitigation. Given our uncertainties and concerns around solar geoengineering, we think we should only fund solar geoengineering governance and coordination if we think there is strong evidence to suggest that funding solar geoengineering governance is likely to increase the safety of solar geoengineering research and reduce the risk of moral hazard. How you can take effective climate action If you’re interested in helping us implement our strategy, here are a couple of ways you can take climate action, effectively: Donate to climate nonprofits : You can donate to the Giving Green Fund , which regrants to highly effective giving opportunities identified by our team, with no management fees. Alternatively, you can donate directly to any of our top nonprofits.  Support Giving Green’s research: Each year, the Giving Green team spends thousands of hours to find and fund effective climate charities. We do not take any cut of donations to our recommendations, so we rely on generous donors to fund our research and communications efforts. Historically, every dollar donated to Giving Green’s operations has been converted into $11 of additional donations to high-impact climate charities. Support our work  to be a climate impact multiplier. Questions? Want to collaborate? Regardless of where you are along your climate journey, we would love to hear from you. Contact us here . Endnotes 1.  Gavlak et al (2018) “Evaluating the causes of cost reduction in photovoltaic modules” 2.  “In short, livestock production appears to contribute about 11%–17% of global greenhouse gas emissions, when using the most recent GWP-100 values, though there remains great uncertainty in much of the underlying data such as methane emissions from enteric fermentation, CO2 emissions from grazing land, or land-use change caused by animal agriculture.” https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-agriculture-environment/livestock-dont-contribute-14-5-of-global-greenhouse-gas-emissions 3.  “Recent analyses of economically optimal solutions to the climate problem have concluded that NETs will play as significant a role as any mitigation technology, with perhaps 10 Gt/y CO2 of negative emissions needed approximately at midcentury and 20 Gt/y CO2 by the century’s end.” 4.  Current emissions: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-share-of-co2-emissions?tab=table . 5.  “By 2050, around 2/3 of the world’s households could have an air conditioner. China, India and Indonesia will together account for half of the total number.” https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-cooling 6.  “However, the nuclear industry today is at a commercial stalemate between potential customers and investments in the nuclear industrial base needed for deployment—putting decarbonization goals at risk. Utilities and other potential customers recognize the need for nuclear power, but perceived risks of uncontrolled cost overrun and project abandonment have limited committed orders for new reactors.” https://liftoff.energy.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/20230320-Liftoff-Advanced-Nuclear-vPUB.pdf 7.  “However, a number of potential barriers exist for U.S. vendors in global markets, such as a complicated set of rules to market and sell nuclear products internationally, increased competition among nations, and potential expansion of nuclear reactors into newcomer countries that may lack effective government, industry, and societal frameworks to support the facilities. These potential barriers (some of which U.S. vendors have little control over) include development of regulatory oversight capabilities, financing mechanisms that provide market advantages to non-U.S. vendors, management of the fuel cycle, expanded transportation networks for nuclear materials, and education and outreach to local communities that may house reactors.” National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Laying the Foundation for New and Advanced Nuclear Reactors in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26630 . 8.  Increase in research and interest: “Historically, the topic of SG has been deeply controversial in the climate change community, with extreme hesitancy and taboo surrounding both scientific and governance engagement in the field. While there is still reticence, major institutions and organizations with strong influence are showing signs of a major shift in perception, activity, and interest over the last two to three years. Research efforts are starting to expand, there has been a significant increase in focus on SG governance—both domestically and globally, and press coverage is mounting.” https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/KCEP-Digest-59-Solar-Geoengineering.pdf

In November 2022, we launched the   Giving Green Fund (GGF)  which has since granted $1.8 million USD to support the work of our   top climate nonprofits . From its conception, we envisioned expanding the scope of our grants  beyond our top nonprofits, since we believed that a fund model would open up additional high-impact donation options. A recent anonymous donation of $10 million has presented us with this opportunity. In particular, it has prompted us to evaluate if and how our strategy should evolve to maximize impact given this new magnitude of funding, specifically if this means supporting work not housed in our top nonprofits when we believe it to be equally or more catalytic.  Contributing to our top recommendations will remain the fund's core function, and we will continue to recommend the majority of funds to these organizations. However, we will also begin exploring ways to expand the types of opportunities we support through specialty growth grants or ecosystem grants . How would this be distinct from our top recommendations? Each November, Giving Green releases a list of highly effective climate nonprofits and encourages donations to them. Our primary metric for selecting top nonprofits is that we think they are incredibly effective in reducing emissions per dollar spent. However, due to the nature of public recommendations, there are some additional constraints on the type of organizations we can support. A few additional requirements for our top nonprofits are: They have a strong and public track record such that we can transparently make the case for effectiveness. They have the ability to absorb at least $1 million productively, since our recommendations historically have received large donations due to our influence. We believe that unrestricted donations will go towards work that we believe is highly impactful, since it is difficult for many readers of Giving Green to make restricted donations.  To decrease decision fatigue among our readers, we aim to have a small number (<10) of top nonprofits every year. Therefore, top nonprofits are suited to situations where there are 1-2 organizations within a philanthropic strategy that we think are especially deserving of support compared to others working on similar problems.  During our research process, we sometimes identify high-impact funding opportunities that do not meet the above criteria. Going forward, we will consider recommending them for growth grants  or ecosystem grants  from the Giving Green Fund.  What types of opportunities would we consider for a growth grant? Young and promising organizations We may consider growth grants to emerging organizations – young organizations that are preparing to launch or have existed for such a short period of time that they have a limited track record and therefore would not qualify to be a top recommendation. This would most likely be organizations working on a topic area that we have deemed to be high-priority, but where there are few or no organizations working in the space. In the case of a very new organization with inherently limited or no track record, we would closely assess the experience and qualification of leadership and the proposed theory of change.  Similarly, growth grants would be appropriate for newer or small organizations that we think can only productively absorb a limited amount of funding, at least in the short run. We think this signals an opportunity to maximize the impact of the marginal dollar, especially in the case where Giving Green is an organization’s first institutional funder, and these organizations might not be in the position to productively absorb the magnitude of funding directed toward our top recommendations.[1] Supporting promising new organizations can strengthen civil society engagement by increasing the number and diversity of members in the ecosystem and filling critical gaps that may currently exist. Existing, highly effective organizations open to expansion in specific areas We would also consider established organizations, with strong track records, theories of change, networks, and influence, that are open to restricted grants directed at creating or expanding a specified work stream or launching a new project within a specific impact area. We think this can strengthen the ecosystem of nonprofits by expanding the capacity of effective, established nonprofits. We think the risk of our grant causing funding to be redirected to other areas can be minimized if these grants support new work streams or projects that did not exist before and for which funding would be additional. Funding specific research projects, analyses, and convenings We may also consider recommending funding to entities such as academic groups to perform technical analysis, develop public goods, or serve as conveners for key stakeholders. For example, we think there are political contexts in which traditional nonprofits are not well-positioned to influence policy and for which the route to influence policymakers may be through generating evidence-based reports or field building to influence the policy landscape over a longer period of time. We also envision instances in which more basic research is needed to bolster or inform nonprofit advocacy work. What types of opportunities would we consider for ecosystem grants? Giving Green’s research process  involves first identifying high-impact philanthropic strategies, and then identifying top organizations working on these strategies. When selecting top nonprofits, we have tried to find the strongest 1-2 organizations working on a particular strategy. However, we may encounter cases where we are excited about a philanthropic approach, but there are a number of key organizations working on this approach that we feel are highly cost-effective. In this case, rather than have our list of top nonprofits dominated by a specific type of organization, we may instead decide to recommend a number of smaller grants that support the ecosystem as a whole.  Mechanics of growth and ecosystem grants Growth and ecosystem grants considered outside of our top nonprofits would be single disbursements with no expectation for renewal.  Growth and ecosystem grants will not be accompanied by the usual in-depth material that Giving Green publishes for priority impact areas and top nonprofits. Instead, these grants will be supported through deep dives on the relevant philanthropic strategy, and shorter write-ups of the activities of grantees. In addition, we plan to allocate these grants on a rolling basis as opportunities arise instead of adhering to the cycle of our top nonprofits, which are released annually in November. Is this framework subject to change? We think that expanding the types of opportunities we consider enables the fund to be more dynamic, responsive, and catalytic, reflecting the rhythm of policy, technology, and social change. We plan to continually assess the impact of our recommended disbursements, and we expect to iterate on the functions and frameworks of our fund to reflect our learnings. As always, we will continue to prioritize transparency and share the evolution of our products and processes with you. Grant areas of focus We intend to recommend grants of at least $10 million from the Giving Green Fund during the rest of 2024; we intend for these recommendations to be a mix of grants to our top nonprofits and growth and ecosystem grants. In a companion post, we describe our research priorities for 2024, which will inform recommended grants.   Endnotes [1]  “ In 2023, Giving Green influenced an estimated $11.2 million towards our recommendations.” https://www.givinggreen.earth/post/2023-annual-report#viewer-yga1y142

As the Giving Green Fund reaches new heights, we will level up disbursement strategies to support more high-leverage climate initiatives. In April, the Giving Green Fund, our regranting fund, received an unprecedented and unexpected gift of $10 million from an anonymous donor. Our small team was floored and delighted. The above screenshot captured our reactions when we found out during a routine team meeting. We do not know the donor behind this generous gift, and we respect their wish to remain anonymous. We are now shifting our focus to level up the disbursement strategies to support more high-leverage and underfunded work by effective climate charities. The Giving Green Fund is our highest-impact donation option. It was launched at the end of 2022 to help donors increase the responsiveness of their climate donations by using dynamic disbursement strategies, which we believe could have outsized impact. The potential for these strategies grows as the fund grows. The latest gift, which comes at the heels of another transformative $1 million donation from the Ray and Tye Noorda Foundation, calls for a new level of creativity. The majority of the $10 million will be regranted to Giving Green's top climate charity recommendations. We will analyze each organization's current funding situation and plans to use additional funds, and use this information to determine an allocation that we think will be most impactful. We also plan to use this grant to support high-impact initiatives that we think are exceptionally high impact but do not qualify to be top charities. We will give more detail on our plans for these “growth grants” in an upcoming post. For instance, we will consider: Seeding new charities. Supporting young and promising organizations. Funding specific research projects, analyses, and convenings. As with all contributions to the Giving Green Fund, we intend to disburse this money quickly so that it can get into the hands of the organizations doing the real work on the ground. We plan to make major disbursements in Q3 of 2024 and intend to regrant all of this gift by the end of the year. We started Giving Green because we were frustrated by the lack of climate action while overwhelmed by the plethora of suggested personal actions, not all of which truly move the needle. We have always known that there are more people like us: those who want to support climate initiatives but need some guidance on giving with confidence. Four years later, we have had the privilege to cross paths with some of them: from youth who raised $20 at yard sales to employees who donate through workplace giving schemes to anonymous donors with no strings attached. Thank you all for letting us be a part of your climate journey.

The gift will be regranted to a portfolio of nonprofits to power high-impact climate initiatives Giving Green’s regranting fund has received a transformative $1 million donation to be disbursed to high-impact climate initiatives. The Giving Green Fund is a regranting initiative that supports high-impact climate projects, as identified by evaluator Giving Green. Our research team advises grants based on the latest funding needs and trends in climate. Launched at the end of 2022, the Giving Green Fund had received $700,000 as of the end of 2023. The $1 million donation in 2024, from the Ray and Tye Noorda Foundation, brings the total amount donated to the Giving Green Fund to $1.7 million as of Q1 2024. “The idea of giving to the Giving Green Fund that is operated by specialists in climate feels like we’re expanding our philanthropic staff,” said Brittany Erikson, executive director of the Ray and Tye Noorda Foundation. “Suddenly we have the Giving Green team and all the expertise they bring. It’s like an extension of RTNF’s own team members.” While the Giving Green Fund has received institutional grants before, we are particularly excited about this gift for a few reasons: With a larger fund, we can play an outsized role in catalyzing new ideas and organizations. We have assessed such opportunities in the past and look forward to evaluating more. Partnership with a well-respected foundation can send a signal to other institutional philanthropists: that the Giving Green Fund can be an impactful place to give, and that funds in general can be a powerful way to leverage expertise beyond your own and enable strategic grantmaking. The need for funding in high-impact climate work is much greater than $1 million. We believe this gift enables us to leverage further funds raised for even greater impact. The Giving Green Fund disburses quarterly. The latest $1 million grant, along with the money raised in the first quarter of 2024, will be disbursed in the second quarter. All of the fund’s disbursements are published openly on Giving Green’s website. Giving Green’s current top climate nonprofit recommendations work on the following high-leverage sectors: heavy industry decarbonization, next-generation geothermal energy, alternative protein innovation, shipping and aviation decarbonization, and advanced nuclear. Within these five sectors, Giving Green recommends six top climate nonprofits: Project InnerSpace Fast-tracking next-generation technologies to make geothermal energy available worldwide Opportunity Green Reducing emissions from aviation and maritime shipping through a multi-pronged strategy Industrious Labs Running comprehensive campaigns to decarbonize specific heavy industries Good Food Institute Making alternative proteins as affordable and tasty as conventional products Good Energy Supporting advanced nuclear as part of an environmentally just climate agenda Clean Air Task Force Speeding up the growth of low-carbon technologies to reduce emissions broadly and quicker (Listed in reverse alphabetical order) We want to thank the Ray and Tye Noorda Foundation and all Giving Green Fund supporters for trusting the Giving Green team to find high-leverage giving opportunities, as well as for supporting the Giving Green Fund, which in turn supports scalable, feasible climate initiatives neglected by traditional funding.

The Giving Green Fund (GGF) supports Giving Green’s top giving opportunities in climate. By donating to the Giving Green Fund, donors enable responsive and impact-first grantmaking to our recommended nonprofits. Generally, we work with our operational partner Giving What We Can to recommend quarterly grants from the Giving Green Fund to our top nonprofits. In Q1 of 2024, we are recommending the following allocations: Clean Air Task Force: $312,500 Good Energy Collective: $200,000 Industrious Labs: $200,000 Opportunity Green: $200,000 Project Innerspace: $200,000 In Q2 of 2024, we plan to recommend the following allocation: Good Food Institute: $312,500 Together, these recommended grants represent all the funds we have raised in Q4 2023 and Q1 2024, in addition to funds raised in Q3 2023 which were left in reserve to avoid the transaction costs of small disbursements. In general, we do not rank our top nonprofits, and our default choice for GGF is to divide the funds equally among all top nonprofits. (For more on this reasoning, see our blog post explaining how GGF allocates.) However, if we learn more information about the impact of additional donations to each organization, we shift our recommended allocations away from this default and towards what we think will be the most impactful use of donors’ funds. Therefore, our team reached out to each of our top nonprofits to learn more about (a) each organization’s progress towards its 2024 fundraising goals and (b) near-term projects in need of support. To come to a decision, several members of our team proposed example allocations, and we discussed our reasoning and points of disagreement. Ultimately, we agreed on a final allocation that primarily reflects three concerns: The larger organizations (CATF and GFI) are more able to absorb more funding at once. Each organization still has a compelling use for additional funding. We did not want to appear to rank organizations with false precision, and there were not large differences between our suggested grants to each nonprofit, so we instead split the nonprofits into two groups and divided equally within those two groups. Note that this is not an endorsement of donating to any one charity over any other charity among these six. For most donors, we still think any of our top nonprofits are excellent places to give to fight the climate crisis. For donors giving larger amounts, we encourage you to reach out to us to discuss information about funding need! While we strive to be as transparent as possible with the public, we are able to share some additional information about funding gaps and high-priority projects in a 1-1 context. We are grateful to the Ray and Tye Noorda Foundation for entrusting us to steward a $1M gift to the Giving Green Fund. We expect that the funds from that gift will be allocated as part of this series of disbursements.

In 2019, there was a concept called “SureCool”. “We propose a new organization, SureCool, to help funders find the most effective use of their dollars in fighting climate change.” “Sounds like an air conditioning brand” was the early feedback. We went back to the drawing board on the name, but the concept had staying power. Four years later, Giving Green has gone from a side-of-the-desk project to a team of seven, moving $16.5 million over the years to a portfolio of highly effective climate initiatives. In 2023, we continue to improve our research and grow our impact. Recognizing that multiple levers are needed for systems change, we increased the size and the diversity of our list of top climate nonprofit recommendations. Knowing that we need to meet people where they are, we diversified communications channels, reaching a wide range of audiences. Acknowledging the different manifestations of climate change across different geographies, we deepened partnerships in key regions in Europe and Asia-Pacific. Yet it still feels like the start of many new chapters. As the planet continues to heat up, the need grows for evidence-based climate action that truly moves the needle. In 2024, we are bolstering research and communications functions to further increase the size and the effectiveness of climate giving. We thank our supporters for joining us on this journey. Table of contents Who we are What we do Our organization Theory of change Our impact 2023 highlights Plans for 2024 Appendix: How we measure impact Who we are Giving Green guides individuals, foundations, and businesses to make more effective climate-giving decisions. We find evidence-based, cost-effective, and high-leverage organizations that maximize the climate impact of your money. What we do We offer two flagship products: For individuals, foundations, and other donors: top climate nonprofit recommendations and audience-specific recommendations (e.g., for Australian donors). For businesses: a comprehensive guide on effective corporate climate actions, featuring practical strategies and recommendations. We are also actively expanding the following services: Bespoke consulting: we deliver customized research and recommendations to individuals and organizations upon request. For investors: we have conducted initial research on climate-friendly investments for retail investors and we hope to expand this workstream in 2024. Our organization Our organization consists of two functions: Research: conduct climate-giving research and produce recommendations. Communications: disseminate findings to diverse audiences. Our products and functions are guided by our organizational values of truth-seeking, humility, transparency, and collaboration. Theory of change Our impact Our primary metric for measuring impact is “money moved”, i.e., donations and purchases directed to our recommendations due to our influence. We estimate the additional dollars we drove to our recommended organizations each year, accounting for scenarios where we only receive partial credit for the donation. We also calculate our impact multiplier, i.e., money moved to high-impact climate initiatives relative to the cost of our operations. However, these are imperfect metrics because we do not find out about all the donations we influence. Therefore, we also gauge our influence through intermediate indicators such as press mentions and corporate engagement. Money moved (in USD) In 2023, Giving Green influenced an estimated $11.2 million towards our recommendations, up from $3 million in 2022 and $2 million in 2021. One element that drove our impact higher in 2023 was a series of large donations made by an anonymous donor to all of our top recommendations. Since Giving Green’s inception in 2020, we estimate that we have influenced $16.5 million. See the appendix for details on how we calculated these estimates. Impact multiplier In 2023, we increased our “impact multiplier”—dollars we move to our recommendations, divided by our operating cost—to 19x. This means that every dollar donated to Giving Green in 2023 yielded about $19 in funding for our recommended high-impact climate organizations. Table 1: Calculating impact multipliers from operations cost and money moved. The vast majority of our expenses go to staff salaries and benefits. We have an overhead rate of 11% of expenditures that covers finance, legal, and administrative functions (provided by IDinsight, the nonprofit incubating Giving Green). Our spending decreased slightly in 2023 due to a staff departure. In 2024, depending on funding, we hope to grow our headcount by one to two additional people. We note that the projected expenditure for 2024 assumes that we make only one additional hire. We can absorb more funding for our operations to further increase our research and communications capacity. Intermediate indicators Press mentions We believe by making scientific, transparent, and actionable giving opportunities more accessible to the mainstream audience via media coverage, we are introducing more rigor to mainstream conversations around climate giving. In 2023, we were mentioned in the press 41 times, up from 28 in 2022. Notable mentions include op-eds published in philanthropy publications and our recommendations highlighted in popular outlets like Vox. Corporate engagement In 2023, we formally launched our business climate action guide, after initial previews in 2022. We hosted a webinar in April with over 200 registrants. Since the launch, we have engaged in a series of one-to-one consultations with seven companies, ranging from small startups to medium-sized finance companies to tech juggernauts. Our corporate engagement aims to advance two goals: Strategy change: encouraging concrete improvements to a company’s sustainability strategy to identify bigger levers. Field building: bolstering the growing “beyond value chain mitigation” movement to encourage the private sector to go beyond their carbon footprint and advocate for systems change. It is worth noting that it takes longer to shape corporate sustainability strategies than to update donation preferences, and money moved to our business recommendations does not fully capture the qualitative changes in strategic direction. We will continue to track and measure our impact from our business guidance. 2023 highlights Recommended two new top nonprofits In 2023, we identified two new impact strategies (next-generation geothermal energy and shipping & aviation decarbonization). Within these strategies, we made two new top recommendations (Project InnerSpace and Opportunity Green). In total, we recommended five climate-giving strategies and six top nonprofits, growing the diversity of our recommendations to reflect the multiple levers needed to change the systems of unsustainable emissions. Our 2023 top climate nonprofit recommendations are: 13261.8K $782,000 raised through the Giving Green Fund In late 2022, we launched the Giving Green Fund, a regranting fund featuring our top recommendations. The fund is our highest-impact giving option, and we were happy to receive $782,000 in donations to the fund in 2023. The median donation to the fund is $50, and we are pleased that the fund could help donors of all sizes give effectively. We make disbursement recommendations quarterly and document the decisions publicly. As the Giving Green Fund grows, we plan to experiment with more sophisticated funding strategies, such as funding catalytic, new initiatives that are not yet public. Improved research transparency and quality Major updates to research quality include: Made early-stage prioritization more transparent by creating a public-facing research dashboard, showcasing ~40 impact strategies that we have assessed or plan to assess Formalized the external feedback process and recruited external reviewers with domain expertise. Published detailed documentation of our research process. Nurtured key partnerships To amplify our impact beyond our own networks, we invested significant time in 2023 to build and deepen partnerships. Key groups include: Geographical: effective giving organizations based in specific countries or regions, such as Doneer Effectief in the Netherlands and Effectiv Spenden in Germany, Sectoral: networks centered around philanthropy and/or climate, such as the WINGS philanthropy network, Generation Pledge, the Asian Philanthropy Circle’s Climate Collective, and the Effective Altruism climate working group. Financial: financial communities that seek to use different forms of financial capital to generate positive social impact, such as the impact investment community. Reached new audiences through events In 2023 we experimented with events to reach specific demographics. We organized one in-person event with a group of high-net-wealth individuals. We also hosted two webinars, serving the business and philanthropy audiences, respectively. More than 600 people signed up to the two webinars, and 240 people attended live. With a bigger team, we also ramped up our attendance and speaking engagements at major sectoral events to promote effective climate giving, such as a panel talk at the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s annual gathering. Plans for 2024 Maximize the money moved to our recommendations Building on the momentum in 2023, we aim to raise even more money for our recommended organizations and drive our impact multiplier even higher. Expand research priorities to cover new intersections and regions We recognize the many facets of climate change across geographies and social issues. We plan to devote more time to finding high-impact giving opportunities based outside of the US and Europe, specifically in low- and middle-income countries. Continue to promote effective business climate action As more studies cast doubts on carbon offsets' efficacy, the need for more evidence-based corporate climate action grows. We plan to continue thoughtful engagement in the private sector as advocacy for the “beyond value chain mitigation” movement grows. Update research on sustainable investment We continue to observe a high demand for evidence-based guidance on climate-friendly investment. We will actively seek to secure funding to update our 2021 research on ESG funds and climate impact investment, Undertake new consulting projects We know that our flagship products—top climate nonprofit recommendations and corporate climate action guide—do not meet the needs of all donors and their unique constraints and opportunities. In 2024, we hope to take on a small number of research consulting projects, allowing us to widen our impact and diversify our revenue streams. We have taken on consulting projects of various sizes, from evaluating a specific organization to exploring giving opportunities in a particular sector to understanding the comparative advantage of a country. If you would like to explore consulting projects with us, please reach out. Expand communications efforts We plan to hire an additional communications and development officer in early 2024. We expect the new hire to boost existing outreach efforts and explore new growth channels, helping us convert existing audiences and reach new segments. We find high-impact climate initiatives. You can turbocharge them. Giving Green Incubated by IDinsight https://www.givinggreen.earth/ givinggreen@idinsight.org Appendix: How we measure impact Data sources To calculate money moved, we first ask each recommended organization for its best estimate of money directed from sources we have influenced. Example sources include: Donors who clicked on a recommended organization’s site from Giving Green’s site Donors who proactively mentioned hearing about a recommended organization from a media piece informed by Giving Green Businesses that purchased carbon credits based on conversations with our team Foundations that made a gift after considering several sources of evidence, including Giving Green’s research It is worth noting that different organizations have different tracking methods and capabilities. We cross-reference data from recommended organizations with other sources, such as our internal tracking, conversations with large donors or business purchasers, and regranters facilitating donations to our recommendations. Impact attribution Once we have this data, we multiply each dollar amount by a percentage that represents our estimate of the share of influence we had over that amount. This subjective assessment encompasses questions like: Were these donors influenced by multiple sources, and if so, does Giving Green only deserve “partial credit”? How certain are we that these donors were influenced by Giving Green versus another source? For example, if a recommended organization raised $50,000 from an effective altruist audience, but it was already well-known in effective altruist spaces, we might assign ourselves just 10%, or $5,000, of impact. However, if no other mention of that nonprofit appears in effective altruist spaces, we might assign ourselves 100% of the impact. We assign three such percentages: A “certain” percentage: what share of this money are we completely certain is attributable to Giving Green? A “best guess” percentage: taking into account the above factors An “optimistic” percentage: taking an optimistic view of the above factors By adding all “best guess” amounts together, we reach a total “best guess” for money moved. Similarly, adding the “certain” amounts together and “optimistic” amounts together gives us an estimated range of money moved. Table 2: Range of estimates of our money moved. In 2023, our “best guess” number is $11.2M, which is much higher than our “certain” number, $2.0M. This is primarily because we learned of a series of large donations to our recommendations. We have a lot of evidence that suggests that these donations are due to the influence of Giving Green, but we are not completely certain, so for transparency we have excluded these from our “certain” estimate. Uncertainties We are uncertain whether the “money moved” metric adequately accounts for the counterfactual impact of the money. If, for instance, a donor would have otherwise given to a nonprofit that is 50% as effective, should we credit ourselves with 50% of this money moved? Our current assumption, based on limited customer research, is that most donors would have given to significantly less effective nonprofits or not at all, but we recognize that this is a major uncertainty. We are also uncertain whether our data is capturing all of our donor audience, and therefore our impact numbers may be a significant underestimate. For instance, it is relatively easy for us to assess our impact on mass-market online donors whose clicks can be tracked. However, it is difficult to assess our influence with larger donors or business purchasers, who may give via check or wire transfer and not proactively mention Giving Green as an inspiration. For example, in several cases, we have heard that we influenced large gifts many months after the fact.

As our team looks back on our fourth giving season, here's a roundup of some of our recent conversations about effective climate giving: We spoke to Hothouse about the shifts in the climate landscape and why we have turned towards international, technological solutions to climate change: Short of asking developing countries to dramatically restrict their consumption of goods that much of the developed world has enjoyed abundantly for decades, Stein points out there aren’t very many high-impact options to offer developing countries equitable access to resources while still adhering to the road to sub-2C. “I think everything has to be done [through] the lens of massive energy demand increases in poor countries,” says Stein. “What’s scary about shipping and aviation—it’s about 6 percent [of greenhouse gas emissions] right now. Projections in the future you see almost all other industries going down… All that’s supposed to happen in aviation is demand goes up and we have no way to make it cleaner… Maybe [you could] argue we shouldn’t be flying, [but that’s] tough from equity perspectives.” This is where Stein theorizes technological innovations will need to come in. Our research was used by Doneer Effectief and the University of Amsterdam to develop their "champions league of charities": The University of Amsterdam and the Doneer Effective Foundation joined forces to make a selection of the most effective charities worldwide. 'This way we can help Dutch donors donate as impactfully as possible,' Smeets explains. “A thoughtful donation can have a major positive impact,” Schaper adds. 'The social challenges we now face, such as climate change and inequality, do not respect national borders. With this international selection we offer something unique for Dutch donors who want to help solve major world problems.' We spoke to Cardrate about the research process behind our top recommendations: “We look for initiatives that impact the leverage points within the system,” Stein said. “The organizations that make our final list can make a big difference with some extra funding.” And we celebrated the holiday spirit, with Thanksgiving gratitudes, an evidence-backed Giving Tuesday, and ways to not be an environmental Grinch!

The Giving Green Fund (GGF) makes donations to Giving Green’s top recommended organizations. By donating to the Giving Green Fund, donors enable responsive and impact-first grantmaking to our recommended nonprofits. In Q3 2023, for funds raised in Q2 (roughly $270,000), in addition to our $50,000 reserve, we recommended an allocation as follows: $100,000 to Industrious Labs, $70,000 to Good Food Institute, and $50,000 each to Good Energy Collective, Evergreen Collaborative, and Clean Air Task Force. Note that this is not an endorsement of donating to any one nonprofit above others, and is based on the knowledge we had at this particular moment in time! We share this reasoning primarily for transparency to existing supporters, and not to encourage individuals to donate to any one organization over another. In Q4 2023, for funds raised in Q3 (roughly $50,000), we recommended holding these funds in reserve so that they can be disbursed alongside money raised in Q4.  This is to decrease the transaction costs of having many small disbursements. For more on the Giving Green Fund, see Giving Green Fund: Why donate to an expertly curated climate fund? Our team’s reasoning for our recommended allocation In Q3, we had significantly more information about our top nonprofits’ funding need than in previous quarters. Each nonprofit had experienced varying success in fundraising, and as part of our annual reevaluations, we learned more information about their plans and progress. So our team sat down to discuss in depth where we thought the highest-impact use of funds could be. We considered questions like: How much has Giving Green helped this nonprofit so far? We considered directing more GGF funds to organizations that we have helped less. On the other hand, we also considered directing more funds to organizations that have relied on Giving-Green-related funding and therefore would be less likely to raise funds from other sources. What is this nonprofit’s funding need for the rest of 2023 and 2024? We asked each nonprofit about its progress towards its 2023 fundraising goal and any macro trends that have helped or hindered its progress. For instance, large, unexpected donations would decrease a nonprofit’s funding need. How impactful will additional funds be at this point in time? For instance, we think GGF funds can be especially important for an organization when it has: little unrestricted funding; it may need funds for work that is important, but in which larger philanthropists giving restricted funds have not expressed interest smaller reserves; it may need funds to shore up those reserves, which improves ability to attract staff and funders a smaller budget; early-stage funding can be catalytic, enabling growth and therefore future fundraising a compelling near-term project that we thought was exceptionally high-impact What do GGF donors want? We spoke to a few GGF donors (thank you!) to understand what they expected their donations to support. We found that donors value the idea of a “diversified portfolio”, so we avoided granting to only one or two organizations. We also found that donors want us to use our most up-to-date knowledge to maximize impact. Several spreadsheets and tables later, each member of our team proposed an allocation, we discussed our reasoning and points of disagreement, and we agreed on a final allocation that reflected the considerations above. We chose to round to the ten thousands because we did not want to give an impression of false precision in our estimates of funding need.

Few investors choose individual stocks. Why not let a team of experts curate your climate donation portfolio? It has been just over a year since we launched the Giving Green Fund (GGF), our highest-impact giving option. Here’s a quick explainer, for supporters new and old, of what the Giving Green Fund does and how it works. What is the Giving Green Fund? The Giving Green Fund is a regranting fund operated by Giving What We Can and advised by Giving Green. Regranting fund: This means that you can donate money to GGF, and all of that money will be granted to other nonprofits. We take no fees. Operated by Giving What We Can: Giving What We Can is the nonprofit platform that holds and manages donations. Giving What We Can has set up systems to accept and regrant donations to a variety of organizations, so we opted to use their existing infrastructure to host GGF. For more information, see our FAQ on donating. Advised by Giving Green: Our team recommends grants from GGF to high-impact climate work based on our latest research and analysis. GGF generally supports our top climate nonprofits, which are the highest-impact climate change organizations our team has identified. There are two important caveats to this: Donations are granted based on our top nonprofits at the time of disbursement, not those listed at the time of your donation. In other words, we always grant based on our latest research. We may want GGF to fund work not housed within one of our top nonprofits if we believe that it may be equally or more impactful (see below). We aim to always be transparent about where funds are going and why. Updates on disbursements will be shared here, on our blog. Why do we believe GGF is our highest-impact giving option? A fund can make strategic grants that could be more impactful than giving directly to each of our top nonprofits. Some examples of work GGF could fund that are not otherwise accessible to small donors: Responding quickly to a time-sensitive, high-potential project from one of our top nonprofits Bolstering nonprofits that had a weak fundraising year, using our knowledge of nonprofits' funding gaps Providing seed funding to a new project that may not be able to launch without a risk-tolerant charitable donor GGF helps donors increase the responsiveness and impact of their climate donations by using these kinds of dynamic funding strategies, which we believe could have outsized impact. The potential for these strategies grows as the amount of money we can raise into GGF grows. Practically speaking, it is also easy to give to GGF. You can give and know that you are supporting a high-impact portfolio with just one transaction, and you can set up a recurring monthly gift. We have heard that GGF makes it easier for donors to commit to giving in line with their intentions for impact. How are GGF allocations decided? We recommend grants based on our team’s understanding of the highest-impact available giving opportunities in climate. What does this mean in practice? Let’s examine examples of past disbursements: Example: Equal allocation In general, dividing the funds equally among our top nonprofits is our default choice. This is for two main reasons: We generally do not rank our top nonprofits. Instead, we aim to build a list of nonprofits that meet a certain bar for impact. (For the more quantitatively-minded reader: in our cost-effectiveness analyses, we target a threshold of around $1/tCO2e for our top nonprofits.) In line with our value of humility, we choose not to compare these organizations against each other, as we think that additional donations are similarly impactful, within a range of uncertainty. We aim to be transparent. Dividing the funds equally means donors can easily understand where their money is going. We do not want to create complexity for the sake of complexity. We describe an example of equal allocation in our blog post on GGF’s first disbursements in Q1 and Q2 of 2023. Example: Unequal allocation based on funding need In some cases, we have compelling evidence that funds should be divided unequally for maximum impact. For instance: Varying success in fundraising: Some nonprofits raise more money than expected, while others might be facing unexpected difficulty. It would be more impactful to direct funds towards nonprofits that still have budget gaps for the year, especially those that have limited unrestricted funding or limited reserves. New opportunities that require funding: While we make recommendation decisions yearly, in November, nonprofits are constantly responding to changing circumstances and opportunities for their work. This might increase the impact and/or funding need that a nonprofit has in the middle of the year. We describe an example of unequal allocation in our blog post on GGF’s disbursements in Q3 and Q4 2023. How can I use the Giving Green Fund to maximize the impact of my climate donations? Giving to GGF is easy through our partnership with Giving What We Can. Find ways to give here. More about the Giving Green Fund Find a record of all past allocations here: 2023 Q1 + Q2 2023 Q3 + Q4

Climate charity evaluator Giving Green announces annual top giving strategies and nonprofits As the planet warms, the race to tackle climate change is also heating up. The investments in clean hydrogen and breakthroughs in geothermal energy that we witnessed in 2023 are just the start of the green transition. At Giving Green, we believe that individuals can make a real impact by reshaping the laws, norms, and systems that perpetuate unsustainable emissions. One effective and accessible climate action you can take is supporting high-impact climate nonprofits advocating for systemic change. Giving Green is a trusted guide for individuals, foundations, and businesses to make more effective climate giving decisions. As the green transition unfolds, we believe there are more opportunities than ever for smart giving. 2023 top climate nonprofit recommendations Our team of researchers spent a year finding timely giving strategies that have huge potential impact, but are relatively neglected by traditional climate funding. Our findings led us to double down on one area where we believe climate donors can have an outsized impact: Advancing key climate technologies through policy advocacy, research, and market support. We think that technological progress provides a uniquely powerful and feasible way to decarbonize, as it allows the energy transition to proceed while minimizing costs to quality of life and the economy. Having surveyed the policy and technology landscape in 2023, we highlight five key sectors ripe for innovation. And within those, we recommend six top climate charities for 2023. Below are our top climate nonprofit recommendations, in reverse alphabetical order: Deep underground, the Earth’s crust holds abundant heat that can supply renewable, carbon-free heat and reliable, on-demand electricity. However, conventional geothermal systems have been limited to places bordering the Earth’s tectonic plates. Project InnerSpace is fast-tracking next-generation technologies that can make geothermal energy available worldwide. It has a bold plan to reduce financial risks for new geothermal projects, making geothermal energy cheaper and more accessible, especially in densely populated areas in the Global South. We believe Project InnerSpace is a top player in the geothermal sector and that its emphasis on fast technology development and cost reduction can help geothermal expand globally. For more information, see our Project InnerSpace recommendation summary. Aviation and maritime shipping are challenging sectors to decarbonize and have not received much support from philanthropy in the past. Opportunity Green has a multi-pronged strategy for reducing emissions from aviation and maritime shipping. It pushes for ambitious regulations, promotes clean fuels, encourages companies to adopt greener fleets, and works to reduce demand for air travel. We think Opportunity Green has a strong theory of change that covers multiple ways to make a difference. We are especially excited about Opportunity Green’s efforts to elevate climate vulnerable countries in policy discussions, as we think this could improve the inclusivity of the process and the ambition level of policies. For more information, see our Opportunity Green recommendation summary. Heavy industries like steel and cement are the building blocks of the global economy. They account for around one-third of greenhouse gas emissions but have not been a major focus of governments or philanthropists. Industrious Labs runs comprehensive campaigns to decarbonize specific industries, targeting corporate actors and governments alike to adopt policies necessary to transform the sector. Critically, through coalition building, regranting, and training, it is scaling advocacy well beyond their own organization. We are excited about Industrious Labs’ actionable, industry-specific strategies and the strength of its leadership team. For more information, see our Industrious Labs recommendation summary. Livestock production is responsible for at least 10% of global emissions—livestock belch methane, require substantial (often deforested) grazing land, and consume a large amount of agricultural production. However, there has been little government effort to meaningfully reduce agricultural emissions. We think one of the most promising pathways for emissions reduction is shifting demand from carbon-intensive conventional livestock products to alternative proteins, such as plant-based and cultivated meat. The Good Food Institute (GFI) seeks to make alternative proteins as affordable and tasty as conventional products. It pushes for more government funding for research, fights for fair labeling, and helps cultivated meat get to market. We think GFI is a powerhouse in supporting alternative proteins, with impressive wins under its belt. For more information, see our Good Food Institute recommendation summary. We believe nuclear power can play an important part in reducing emissions because it provides consistent, clean energy with low land requirements. As part of a diverse energy portfolio, it can complement other energy sources, such as wind and solar. Good Energy Collective supports nuclear energy as part of an environmentally just climate change agenda. It backs advanced nuclear reactors, which are designed to be safer, cheaper, and more versatile than conventional reactors. We think Good Energy has carved a unique niche in nuclear power advocacy by focusing on the intersection of expanded deployment, community engagement, and justice. For more information, see our Good Energy recommendation summary. Having had a successful track record of pushing for climate solutions in the US, Clean Air Task Force (CATF) is now going global. By identifying barriers to technology deployment, engaging with stakeholders, and advocating for supportive policies, CATF aims to speed up the growth of low-carbon technologies to reduce emissions broadly and quickly. We are particularly impressed that CATF has built momentum for areas of innovation that need more funding support, such as superhot rock geothermal energy, zero-carbon fuels, and the decarbonization of aviation and maritime shipping. For more information, see our CATF recommendation summary. How we find effective climate charities We started by assessing various impact strategies and narrowing in on ones that we believed could substantially reduce emissions, were feasible, and needed more funding. This assessment involved conducting expert interviews and performing a comprehensive review of research literature, policy briefs, and industry reports. After developing a short list of impact areas, we explored the ecosystem of nonprofits operating in each space by speaking directly with organizations and other stakeholders. We used our findings to evaluate each organization’s theory of change and its capacity to absorb additional funding. This process ultimately leads us to a new set of top recommendations each year. For more information, see Giving Green’s Research Process. How you can take effective climate action We believe donating to high-impact climate change charities is an easy way to connect your micro action with macro change. Here are several ways you can take climate action, effectively: Learn more at our webinar Join our webinar on November 29 to learn more about our research and hear from some of our top recommendations. Donate to top climate nonprofits To easily support our top nonprofits, you can make a donation to the Giving Green Fund, which regrants to our top charities, with no management fees. Alternatively, you can donate directly to any of the recommended nonprofits. Support Giving Green’s research Each year, the Giving Green team spends thousands of hours to find and fund effective climate charities. We do not take any cut of donations to our recommendations, so we rely on generous donors to fund our research and communications efforts. Historically, every dollar donated to Giving Green’s operations has been converted into $11 of additional donations to high-impact climate charities. Support our work to be a climate impact multipler. Questions? Want to collaborate? Regardless of where you are along your climate journey, we would love to hear from you. Contact us here.