For more than a decade, Rachel Leon headed the Environmental Grantmakers Association, the biggest and broadest funder group in environmental philanthropy.
But in late 2020, the lifelong New Yorker left that post to return to life as a grantmaker with the Park Foundation, based in Ithaca, New York.
She now serves as executive director under the mother-daughter duo of Adelaide Park Gomer and Alicia Park Wittink, the daughter and granddaughter of the media magnate Roy Hampton Park, Sr., who established the foundation. The pair, who serve as president and vice president, respectively, are “super-passionate, super-serious and super-activist,” Leon said.
The environment and local sustainability are two of the foundation’s focus areas, but so are other themes from Leon’s professional past. She spent a decade as executive director of Common Cause New York, working to make voting easier for everyone, as well as a nearly two-year spell as an elections grantmaker at the JEHT Foundation, and now funds democracy and civic participation. Early in her career, she worked her way from organizer to associate director of the Hunger Action Network of New York State, and one of the foundation’s other priorities is school food and nutrition.
Leon also still has ties to EGA. Park is a member of the network, and she is an enthusiastic supporter of the new president and CEO, Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, who I spoke to last month. O’Laughlin credits Leon with doing the work on racial equity that set the stage for her to come to the organization. Yet due to the pandemic, it was only last week at a climate conference that the pair — after many phone calls and Zoom chats — met in person for the first time.
I caught up with Leon to hear about her transition from network head to grantmaker, her perspective on environmental philanthropy and what lessons other foundations can learn from Park. The foundation, which has a $440 million endowment, puts an average of 20% of its grants and investments toward local causes, with the rest focused nationally. That includes putting assets to work through impact investing and shareholder activism. Below are excerpts from that conversation, edited for clarity.
You led EGA for 11 years and six months. How do you think you approach grantmaking differently than funders with other professional backgrounds?
There’s nothing like working with hundreds of foundations and that 30,000-foot view. You get a sense of how every foundation has its own unique niche. EGA made me respect how all of these things interconnect and how important it is to collaborate. Everyone thought that if everyone would do just what they did, we could achieve our goals. But really, it was by working together and finding common threads that we were able to make progress.
Do you see that awareness spreading more broadly?
The field has been undergoing an evolution, with more than a decade of reckoning around what it means to be an environmentalist, and particularly how environmental philanthropy can be more effective. Making sure we think about people and not just planet is really important. During my time at EGA — working with members, staff, the board and the community — we made some headway in shifting culture and connecting funders across silos. For instance, I saw a shift in environmental funders, especially in the last five years, taking on more democracy issues. It’s not just thinking about the environment differently. It’s also thinking about, “if we lose our democracy, we’re not going to be able to advance on climate change.” I’ve seen more connections being made that are really crucial.
You’re now a grantmaker. Does everyone laugh even harder at your jokes now?
God, I hope not. [Laughs.] The biggest lesson that I learned at EGA, and before, is to be humble. So my jokes are still not funny. I really try to put people at ease and let them know that we are in service to them, not the other way around. When I was young, I worked as a waitress all through school. I often said that was the best training for the Environmental Grantmakers job. It was a lot of serving, a lot of knowing when to challenge and when to hold your tongue, and being able to juggle a lot at once.
But seriously, you’ve now spent a year and a half as a grantmaker at Park. What has that shift taught you or reinforced?
I was privileged at EGA to be able to think globally and work with funders and changemakers who are working in the global arena. But it is incredible to see the work that’s happening that’s rooted in community, in Ithaca, in the surrounding rural areas. As a grantmaker, you’re not the front lines. Your goal is to support those that are doing the work and to invest in good people who are trying to move the needle. It’s wonderful to be able to help support local leaders who are really making a difference at the same time that you’re trying to connect to the broader change that needs to happen.
Ithaca, New York, where the Park Foundation is based, recently voted to decarbonize every building in the city, the first such initiative in the country. What broad lessons can other foundations take from that multi-partner effort and the role of philanthropy in such work?
It’s important for philanthropy to understand that we’re a very small piece of the puzzle. Park has deep roots in Ithaca, and we’re a decent-sized foundation, so we’re able to do a lot. But philanthropy should be thinking that there’s not one strategy, or one group, or one way that’s going to get us where we need to go. It’s about helping connect and support a variety of components. It is especially about making sure that community voices and folks who have been disenfranchised don’t get left behind as usual.
Ithaca is unique in that there’s all this great experimentation and passion, but you have the same structural inequities in Ithaca that you have everywhere. We are trying to help and support, but there are structural issues that are deep. We have a lot more to do. And there are many people that need to play a part in that.
Last December, Park Foundation and two partners submitted a shareholder letter to Meta, Facebook’s parent company, asking for an independent audit of the risks posed by the social media giant. Tell me about that choice.
It’s really exciting to work at a foundation that doesn’t just see its role as grantmaking, but that actually tries to holistically think about what is in our toolkit. What can we do with our endowment? How can we help make a difference?
Our concern with Meta/Facebook is the disinformation [on the platform] and the outsized role that they’ve played in elections. We also fund democracy and civic participation. In this case, we worked with a number of different partners. If we can be of use to those groups and use our shareholder power, we try to do that. We try to use every ounce of our assets to make a difference.
In addition to shareholder letters, Park Foundation makes program-related investments, practices impact investing, maintains investment screens, and banks locally, among other measures. Recently, the foundation gave a loan to a local solar effort and partnered to set up a BIPOC-focused fund at an Ithaca credit union. What stage do you think we’re at in terms of philanthropy using such approaches?
At some point, fossil fuels will be seen as stranded assets. We’ve already started to see it. We screened out fossil fuels and we’re doing really well. More and more foundations are at least doing some kind of screening. But there’s still a long way to go — and we’re in an emergency. We have cascading crises and foundations have to connect the dots. They need to look at their assets and their grantmaking as one.
Foundations spend a lot of time measuring impact and asking for metrics from grantees. But if philanthropy wants to have a bigger impact, they have to look at their own investments and assets. That is where the real money is. Shifts have already happened around mission-related investing, divest-invest and creating new markets. There were no advisors, markets and things to invest in. Part of it is “if you build it, it will come.” Philanthropy has to see itself as being part of the solution.
Many people I speak with credit EGA and your leadership with helping advance justice, equity, diversity and inclusion within environmental philanthropy. Where has the sector most improved during your time, and where is change most urgently needed?
During my tenure at EGA, there was a real intentional effort and eventual shift to look at the human impact of climate change. In the early days of EGA, and environmental philanthropy in general, there was a lot more focus on land and lakes. Some funders were focused on people and environmental justice, but not a lot. It’s always been the smallest percentage of the funding, and there has really been a shift. In the beginning, it was hard to even have it featured in a conversation. A lot of folks did a lot of work to lift it up and change the conversation.
In the last few years, with the racial reckoning since the murder of George Floyd and the protests, we have seen philanthropy stepping up and beginning to shift where the dollars go. The question is, will it last? There’s still a long way to go. You want to see change institutionally: Who is in leadership, and are dollars going directly to BIPOC groups and community-led change? We’re seeing change, but the verdict’s still out on whether it is lasting and structural. But there’s a lot of wonderful and amazing work. And we are very different than when I first entered the arena.
Any parting thoughts?
We are in incredibly important times. It’s critical to not lose sight of the attacks on our democracy and the sacredness of the right to vote. It’s all connected, and we try to keep that front and center in everything that we do.