OVERVIEW: The Global Greengrants Fund maintains a strong focus on environmental conservation and justice, funding grassroots organizations working in the areas of clean energy, sustainable agriculture, land and water conservation, indigenous rights and sustainable global development.
IP TAKE: This funder avoids working with large, bureaucratic organizations, favoring grassroots and indigenous groups. While it’s an open-minded and supportive grantmaker, avoiding bureaucracy when it can, Greengrants is not accessible. It identifies potential grantees through advisory boards working on the ground in its geographic areas of interest. Unless you can network with members of its advisory board, funding is limited here and depends on being found.
PROFILE: The Global Greengrants Fund was established in 1993 to support “grassroots-led efforts to protect the planet and the rights of people.” It is supported with funds from foundations, corporations and private donors. With headquarters in Boulder, Colorado and London, the fund takes a frontline approach, placing trust in “local people to advance solutions and strategies that will best fit their needs.” This funder supports local efforts for land and water conservation, clean energy, sustainable global development and women and girls. Its areas of geographic priority include Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America and the Pacific Islands.
Grants for Environmental Conservation and Justice
The Global Greengrants Fund is predominantly an environmental funder, and its environmental conservation and justice funding focuses on pollution mitigation, land conservation and helping indigenous and other local communities develop awareness of environmental issues and resist harmful land and resource development projects. Recent grants have gone to the International Persistent Organic Pollutants Elimination Network, Client Earth and CHEM Trust, which aims to prevent chemical damage to human and animal life around the world.
Grants for Climate Change and Clean Energy
Global Greengrants supports the development of clean energy resources through its Climate Justice initiative. This program prioritizes initiatives led by indigenous communities and local grassroots organizations. Recent climate grantees include Chile’s Sustenarse and Fiscalia del Medio Ambiente, both of which are involved in sustainable energy development. In the Philippines, the fund has invested in the Samdhana Institute, which works with indigenous peoples on sustainable development and conservation projects aimed at limiting harmful emissions.
Grants for Marine and Freshwater Conservation
The Greengrants Fund has demonstrated a strong commitment to water conservation and sustainable fishing initiatives. In Canada, the fund has supported the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition, which has worked with the indigenous Tahltan people to resist a natural gas extraction project by Royal Dutch Shell in British Columbia. Another grantee Fundación Geute Conservación Sur used Greengrants funding for conservation projects concerning rivers and lakes in the Puerto Varas area of Chile. Another Chilean grantee, the Foundation to Promote Sustainable Development, received a grant for its sustainable fishing initiative.
Grants for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems
Greengrants has worked extensively with organizations in rural and developing areas of the world on efforts to promote soil conservation and sustainable farming methods. Grants for agriculture and food stem mainly from the fund’s Local Livelihoods focus area. In Indonesia, the fund supported a local leader who reintroduced sorghum, a crop that requires less water and no fertilizer, to local agricultural practice. And in India, the foundation has supported a nation-wide initiative for sustainable and organic farming spearheaded by a retired teacher.
Grants for Human Rights
Human rights grantmaking overlaps considerably with the fund’s work in the environmental arena, focusing on the rights of indigenous people to resist development of lands and resources that “put basic human rights to life-giving resources at great risk.” Through its Right to Land, Water and Resources and Local Livelihoods initiatives the fund has supported Argentina’s Centro de Estudios sobre Tecnologias Apropriadas and Mexico’s Fondo Accion Solidaria, which supports the rights of indigenous groups to make decisions about land and resource development. The fund has also given to the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders.
Grants for Global Development
The Global Greengrants Fund supports sustainable global development via its Local Livelihoods initiative, which aims to help communities in the developing world attain a sustainable form of economic independence that includes “a resistance to boom-and-bust development and the dehumanization of indigenous communities and cultures.” In the Philippines, PASAKK, Inc. used funding to help the Manobo people clear invasive plant species from wetlands and use the harvested plants to make woven sandals and bags, creating sustainable businesses for local women. Another grant helped the Achuar people of Ecuador develop a solar-powered water transportation system that has mitigated water pollution in the Pastaza and Capahuari Rivers.
Grants for Women and Girls
The Global Greengrants Fund invests in Women’s Environmental Action, acknowledging the “intersection of women’s rights and the environment” and supporting women’s groups that work toward sustainable practices and conservation. The fund also shares its analysis of this work with the philanthropic community, encouraging other funders to support women’s environmental initiatives. To this end, the fund published an executive summary of its work in women’s environmental action. Past women’s projects to receive funding the Pari Women’s Development Group of Papua New Guinea, which used funding to protect and rehabilitate mangroves, and the Uganda Women’s Water Initiative, which works toward improved water access, conservation and the development of sustainable businesses in the greater Gomba area.
Important Grant Details:
The Global Greengrants Fund makes about $7 million a year. Its average grant size is about $10,000, but grants have been as high as $500,000 in a few cases. The fund’s geographic areas of interest include Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America and the Pacific Islands. For additional information about past grantmaking, see the foundation’s recent financial reports.
This funder does not accept unsolicited applications for funding, working instead through 24 separate regional and thematic advisory boards that identify groups and programs with strong potential for effecting change in the fund’s areas of interest. General inquiries may be directed to the fund’s staff via email, online form or telephone at 866-387-6155.
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