FAQs

Giving Green is a research and grantmaking organization dedicated to making high-impact climate giving easier for everyone—from small-dollar individual donors to large foundations.

Through rigorous, open-source research and targeted grantmaking, we identify and support effective, evidence-based strategies that drive systemic emissions reductions through actions such as policy change, technology innovation, and market transformation. Each year, this research culminates in a list of Top Climate Nonprofits providing donors with timely, high-leverage giving opportunities to maximize climate impact. This research also informs the allocation of funds from the Giving Green Fund, our regranting vehicle. 

Since our founding in 2019, Giving Green has moved over $56 million for highly effective climate initiatives, including $39.3 million disbursed directly through the Giving Green Fund since 2022.

Our research team produces every recommendation, drawing on advanced backgrounds in climate science, engineering, and policy, and decades of collective experience in research-backed climate philanthropy. They spend thousands of hours each year assessing impact strategies and finding organizations where your philanthropic dollars can have an outsized impact. They evaluate every climate change charity we recommend using our “Scale, Feasibility, and Funding Need” framework, which looks at the magnitude of potential impact, the likelihood of success, and funding gaps.

All of our research, methodology, and recommendations are open-source and publicly available, along with a transparent breakdown of any remaining uncertainties. We want donors to examine our work, interrogate our reasoning, and reach their own conclusions. Our approach is unbiased and data-driven, meant to guide donors through their climate giving without dictating. When new evidence emerges, we update our recommendations, and we are willing to admit past mistakes and publish corrections so donors always have the most accurate information. We always welcome critique and suggestions from readers, which we use to improve the quality and robustness of our research and grantmaking.

Our research is independent. Giving Green does not accept funding from the climate charities we evaluate or recommend, and donor preferences do not influence our analysis. We are a research organization, not an advocacy group, and our goal is to democratize access to climate giving information so you can direct your resources where they are most likely to have an outsized climate impact.

Climate is complex. We acknowledge that our solution to the problem is just one of many. If our recommendations do not align with your giving, we hope our research reports on key sectors and technologies can still be a resource. Beyond our public resources, our team can also offer one-on-one consulting and bespoke recommendations.

Giving Green’s research and recommendations are for anyone who wants their climate donation to do the most good possible, but doesn't have the time or technical expertise to evaluate climate change charities and strategies on their own.

Our audience spans the full spectrum of giving. Individual donors use our Top Climate Nonprofits list and the Giving Green Fund to direct donations both large and small to high-impact climate solutions. Philanthropists and foundations draw on our rigorous, independent research to inform their grantmaking strategies. We work in close partnership with philanthropic advisors and effective giving organizations who use our analyses to guide their clients. We often engage with climate philanthropy novices as well, who seek us out to overcome the decision paralysis and fear often associated with first-time donations and build a foundational understanding of the landscape.

We also offer climate impact consulting, providing custom, evidence-based counsel on climate grantmaking and corporate climate strategy for individuals, foundations, and businesses seeking more personalized advice tailored to their goals and interests.

The Giving Green Fund is a regranting fund operated and advised by Giving Green. 100% of every dollar donated is granted directly to thoroughly vetted climate charities, with no fees shaved off for overhead or operations. Giving Green's research team advises on where these grants go, based on our latest analysis of the climate change nonprofit landscape.

The Giving Green Fund supports a range of climate nonprofits working within our prioritized, high-impact climate strategies—including our Top Climate Nonprofits—and other high-impact grantees actively advancing the goals identified as most promising in our strategy investigations. Grants are allocated quarterly based on Giving Green's latest research, ensuring the portfolio always reflects the team's most current information and analysis. A small portion of the Giving Green Fund supports particularly timely or high-impact opportunities outside of our prioritized strategies through our Discretionary Grants Program.

Giving Green is committed to transparency on all disbursements, which are documented publicly on our blog.

Giving Green considers the Giving Green Fund our highest-impact giving option because it is a one-stop shop for donors to funnel fast, flexible, and strategic grants to the portfolio of effective climate change nonprofits with the greatest need and potential for impact at any given time. Every GGF grant is informed by deep research, inside intelligence, and a keen attention to timeliness. This allows you to contribute to grants that respond rapidly to time-sensitive, high-potential opportunities; fund climate nonprofits facing unexpected fundraising shortfalls; and provide seed capital for new programs that require risk-tolerant philanthropic investment to launch. The fund's capacity to pursue these strategies grows as the pool of donor contributions grows.

Top Climate Nonprofits are climate change charities that Giving Green has identified through rigorous, independent research as among the most impactful for donors seeking to maximize their climate impact. To receive this designation, an organization must demonstrate a strong track record, a stable and cost-effective emissions-reduction strategy, and meaningful capacity to absorb additional unrestricted funding and allocate it toward highly impactful work. Because the designation is intended to serve donors who may not have the bandwidth to conduct their own due diligence, Giving Green sets a high bar. We tend to recommend established climate nonprofits whose work is well-understood and whose risk of mismanagement or significant strategic drift is low. Top Climate Nonprofits are asked to provide more in-depth financial information, and we are likely to speak with them more frequently throughout the year than other Giving Green Fund grantees to check in on progress. It is also more likely that we will highly recommend them to funding partners seeking recommendations, given their consistent capacity to absorb and allocate funding effectively.

To decrease decision fatigue among our readers, we aim to have a small number (under 10) of Top Climate Nonprofits each year. Typically, we aim to designate 1-2 climate change charities within each philanthropic strategy that we think are especially deserving of support compared to others working on similar problems. Please note that removal of the Top Climate Nonprofit designation is often unrelated to any action by the nonprofit itself, but likely due to changes in the funding landscape or our assessment of a strategy.

In general, Giving Green does not rank its Top Climate Nonprofits relative to one another. The team aims instead to identify a set of climate change nonprofits that each meet a defined cost-effectiveness threshold (targeting roughly $1 per metric ton of CO2-equivalent reduced) and views additional donations to any of these organizations as similarly impactful within a range of uncertainty.

Other Giving Green Fund grantees are high-impact climate change nonprofits from across the globe that Giving Green has identified as promising based on their alignment with a specific sub-strategy (or multiple) in its research, but that either have not yet been evaluated or may not (yet) meet the full criteria for Top Climate Nonprofit status. This category can include smaller, newer, or more nimble climate nonprofits—or particularly aligned programs or projects—that are well-positioned to pursue an emerging opportunity or execute on a particularly promising or time-sensitive strategy or sub-strategy. These organizations may receive Giving Green Fund grants precisely because their work addresses a priority sub-strategy more directly than any available Top Climate Nonprofit.

Both categories reflect Giving Green's judgment that additional funding will be deployed effectively, and as of 2026, all organizations selected for funding share a grant update within one year of disbursement. The distinction between Top Climate Nonprofits and other Giving Green Fund grantees lies primarily in organizational maturity, alignment, and track record—Top Climate Nonprofits represent established and stable Giving Green recommendations appropriate for any donor, while other grantees may reflect more targeted, strategy-specific decisions.

Giving Green's selection process is grounded in its research function. The team publishes strategy reports identifying which sub-strategies are most likely to have an outsized impact with additional funding. From this research foundation, each strategy lead builds and maintains a longlist of aligned climate change charities and conducts investigations to determine their strategy alignment. For those it views as strong candidates for Top Climate Nonprofit status, the relevant strategy lead conducts in-depth nonprofit evaluations, including significant organizational due diligence and organization-specific cost-effectiveness analyses. We publish nonprofit evaluations for each of our Top Climate Nonprofits and update them annually.

For Giving Green Fund grants to effective climate change charities without Top Climate Nonprofit status, the process typically involves inviting organizations to submit a proposal, which is assessed against Giving Green's published sub-strategies across several dimensions: organizational credibility and track record, the strength and clarity of proposed activities, anticipated climate impact, room for additional funding, and the appropriate type of funding (restricted or unrestricted).

We need climate action on all fronts. Rather than definitively ranking the impact of our Top Climate Nonprofits, we use a combination of metrics and heuristics to inform our search for “best bets.” This includes climate impact strategies and initiatives that, in our assessment, wield significant influence in addressing climate change with the necessary speed and scale.

As such, we do not rank our Top Climate Nonprofits, and we list them in alphabetical order. While some may be more impactful than others, we doubt we will ever be certain enough about relative organizational impact to consistently justify actively fundraising more for one than the others. Though unsatisfying from a truth-seeking perspective, this reality aligns with our value of humility.

Top Climate Nonprofit status is awarded by Giving Green following an internal research and evaluation process. Organizations do not apply directly for this designation. Giving Green proactively identifies and evaluates climate change nonprofits whose work aligns with the strategies our research team develops through our research process.

We follow a five-step research process, using a combination of metrics and heuristics to guide our evaluation: 

• Identify climate change mitigation strategies
• Assess identified strategies using our Scale, Feasibility, and Funding Need framework
• Longlist organizations implementing prioritized strategies (in high-priority geographies)
• Evaluate funding opportunities
• Publish recommendations

Throughout our research process, we aim to stay true to Giving Green's organizational values of truth-seeking, humility, transparency, and collaboration. We are transparent about our key uncertainties, and we document our mistakes. 

For more information, see this overview of our full research process.

Giving Green Fund grants are awarded through an invitation-only proposal process. Whether new to Giving Green or previously funded, prospective grantees are invited to submit a proposal via Giving Green's grant application form. The form asks organizations to describe their proposed activities, demonstrate alignment with one or more of Giving Green's published sub-strategies, articulate their anticipated impact on greenhouse gas emissions, and provide a high-level budget.

For more information on our current grantmaking priorities, please see the strategy reports listed under “Priority Climate Giving Strategies” on our research page.

Grant sizes vary considerably depending on the nature and scope of the proposed work, the size and location of the organization, the extent to which additional funding can be deployed effectively, and the availability of Giving Green Fund funds. Based on our most recent grantmaking cycle, grants to Top Climate Nonprofits have generally ranged from approximately $800,000 to $4 million per year, while grants to other GGF grantees have typically ranged from approximately $100,000 to $1 million per year, with many falling between $150,000 and $500,000. Multi-year grants (currently up to two years) are available for qualifying climate charities.

Giving Green generally sets a minimum grant size of $100,000 and does not apply a predetermined maximum. The appropriate amount in any given case depends on the organization's room for additional funding, the scope of the proposed activities, and the degree to which a grant can be tied to meaningful, measurable outcomes.

We do not publish a list of all climate nonprofits we have assessed. While on the one hand, doing so would align with one of our fundamental organizational values—transparency—we have decided to keep this information confidential to balance transparency with two of our other values: collaboration and humility. We seek to be positive members of the climate philanthropy community, and believe that making the case for funding standout organizations is more impactful and more in line with our values than highlighting organizations that, though they may be quite effective, do not ultimately receive funding from us.

If you are curious about a specific organization, you are free to reach out with questions, and we will do our best to answer them.

You can visit our research dashboard to see the public list of climate impact strategies we have assessed or plan to assess. We additionally keep an internal list of strategies we may consider in the future. Please feel free to reach out if you are aware of a particularly impactful philanthropic strategy we have not added to our public dashboard.

We use quantitative cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs) as one of several inputs into our assessments of strategies and organizations. The weight we place on CEAs depends on (a) the strength of other available evidence and (b) the confidence we have in our CEA. 

The CEAs of many of our Top Climate Nonprofits include highly uncertain parameters, so we use them primarily as plausibility checks to ensure an organization’s cost effectiveness meets our criteria for the designation (i.e. roughly $1 per metric ton of CO2-equivalent reduced). 

However, some of our offset evaluations (e.g., BURN stoves) have relatively well-defined parameters and stronger quantitative evidence, allowing us to use CEAs with greater confidence. 

In all cases, we aim to be transparent about our confidence in our CEAs and to provide our best-guess cost-effectiveness estimate along with a reasonable confidence interval that captures high-impact and low-impact scenarios. See Giving Green’s Research Process for additional details.

In general, we are most focused on climate change mitigation benefits—in the literal sense, reducing warming—and our decision-making does not typically place substantial weight on other benefits, which we call “co-benefits”. However, there are instances in which a co-benefit may (a) attract additional funding (e.g., Good Food Institute’s work on alternative proteins may also have positive animal welfare effects) and/or (b) reduce human suffering (e.g., BURN stoves allow households to reduce spending on cooking charcoal). In these cases, we think it is useful to consider and highlight co-benefits. 

We also continue to think carefully through the impact in related issue areas. For instance, in 2025, we published an in-depth consulting report summarizing extensive research on highly promising biodiversity-related funding opportunities. Moreover, due to perceived donor interest and our commitment to doing the most good, we have recently begun research to identify interventions that may meaningfully advance both climate change mitigation and global health and/or development. We hope to publish our methodology and initial findings in 2026, and may prioritize some of our identified strategies for grantmaking if they are competitive with our prioritized mitigation strategies in terms of emissions reductions.

We believe there are many highly cost-effective impact strategies that pose no substantial risk of adverse effects. Therefore, we deprioritize strategies that we think might have large and/or inequitably shared adverse effects.

We do not currently evaluate work in climate adaptation because we do not believe our research process or our team’s skills are directly transferable. We developed preliminary approaches to assess climate adaptation in our consulting work on impactful climate opportunities in Puerto Rico. Conditional on funding and research capacity, we may consider expanding into climate adaptation in the future, since we think there could be opportunities to fund important and impactful work.

At Giving Green, we believe in decarbonizing the future, not just offsetting the past. 

1. For most people and institutions, we suggest you reconsider buying carbon offsets. While well-intended, the offsetting framework can be limiting. Instead, we recommend Top Climate Nonprofits or the Giving Green Fund. We estimate that these high-impact climate donation opportunities in policy advocacy and technology advancement are an order of magnitude more effective than the best direct emissions reduction projects, such as carbon offsets.
2. If you are representing a business, we encourage you to explore our comprehensive white paper on higher-impact corporate climate action. If your business is required to adhere to ton-to-ton carbon emissions accounting, we also offer a select set of recommendations for high-quality carbon offsets, outlined in the white paper.

Giving Green is not an offset broker and does not sell any offsets on our own website.

We understand the instinct behind this question, but we want to be upfront that we don't treat climate giving as carbon accounting, and we don't claim that a specific climate donation can "erase" a specific number of tons of emissions.

Frameworks built around neutralizing your personal footprint focus on carbon arithmetic that tends to overlook the deeper changes that drive lasting emissions reductions. The highest-impact climate solutions are almost always precisely the ones that don't fit neatly into a cost-per-ton metric. Their value comes from transforming the systems that produce emissions in the first place, and those outcomes depend on political shifts, adoption trajectories, and innovations that are hard to model in advance. 

Rather than asking how much is needed to cancel out your personal emissions, we encourage donors to ask how to fund the solutions with the greatest potential to transform the systems driving climate change—solutions that will shape technology, policy, and markets. A donation to one of our Top Climate Nonprofits or the Giving Green Fund is not an offset; it is a contribution to cross-sectoral decarbonization at a scale no individual action can match.

For more information about why we encourage donors to think about their impact in terms of systems change rather than offsetting carbon emissions, head to our blog.

It is impossible to precisely measure or predict the emissions reductions per dollar donated to our Top Climate Nonprofits and other Giving Green Fund grantees. High-impact climate donations fund systems change, and those outcomes don't lend themselves to neat per-dollar measurements. 

Our research team uses cost-effectiveness analyses alongside deep qualitative research into each grantee's track record and capacity for systems change, so our recommendations rest on a fuller picture than any single metric could provide.

However, we understand that quantifiable metrics, especially when compared with alternative forms of climate action, can provide a helpful frame of reference. 

For donors who want a loose numerical frame of reference, our research suggests that $1 donated to a high-impact climate charity has the expected value of preventing approximately one ton of CO₂e from entering the atmosphere. We believe this is an order of magnitude more effective than even high-quality carbon offsets, or popular solutions like tree planting. 

You can read more about how to think about the impact of your climate donation on our blog.

You can support Giving Green’s recommendations in three ways:

1. Give to the Giving Green Fund. Donations to the Giving Green Fund are granted directly to a range of high-impact, thoroughly vetted climate change charities working within our prioritized, high-impact climate strategies—including our Top Climate Nonprofits—and other high-impact grantees.
2. Give directly to our Top Climate Nonprofits.
3. Support the research behind the recommendations and support our role as an impact multiplier. Donations to Giving Green's research and operations help us identify high-impact climate charities with the potential to drive systems change. For every dollar donated to the fund, we unlock $25.90 for high-impact climate initiatives. 

Thank you for joining our community of high-impact climate givers!

The Giving Green team conducts comprehensive research into the climate landscape to identify high-impact climate charities we believe are doing high-impact work. 

If you would like to support Giving Green’s research and operations, we accept donations online, via check, via bank transfer, through DAFs, and more. See more detail on how to support Giving Green’s operations here.

If you would like to give in another way, reach out to us for support.

No. 100% of climate donations to the Giving Green Fund are regranted directly to high-impact climate change nonprofits.  Our operations are funded by individual and institutional donors who share our vision of making high-impact climate giving easier for everyone.  

If you find our research and recommendations useful, consider donating to Giving Green’s operations. These donations will fund Giving Green’s research to find high-impact giving opportunities, as well as our communications effort to introduce our research to more climate supporters. We are an impact multiplier: every dollar donated to Giving Green has thus far translated into $25.90 raised for high-impact climate initiatives.

Yes. Giving Green is a registered 501(c)(3) public charity (EIN: 33-2390990). The Giving Green Fund is a grantmaking vehicle operated by Giving Green, so all donations to the Fund are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by U.S. law.

For questions about tax-deductibility in your jurisdiction or international giving options, please reach out to us.

Gifts by check can be mailed to: 584 Castro Street #3048, San Francisco, CA 94114. Please make the check out to Giving Green Research Group and indicate whether you’d like your gift to be made to Giving Green Fund, to Giving Green to support our work directly, or a split between the two.

You can find Giving Green Research Group Inc. on most DAF (e.g. Fidelity) and workplace giving programs (e.g. Benevity) using our EIN: 33-2390990. If you don’t see us listed, please contact us, and we will work with you to register on your platform.

For gifts through a DAF or workplace giving platform, your tax receipt will come directly from that platform. For gifts through an IRA, you will receive a tax receipt directly from us.

Please contact us, and we can walk you through how to give via bank transfer details, gifts of stock, to set up your own fundraiser, and more.

Yes. Regardless of the amount that you are looking to give, we are always happy to have a one-on-one chat to better understand your motivations and constraints. Say hello here. 

For deeper engagement, we can conduct bespoke research on a consulting basis for:

1. Individual and institutional donors who are looking for tailored recommendations
2. Businesses that wish to maximize their corporate climate impact

Climate change does not stop at borders. As described in our research process, we evaluate impact strategies based on their potential to reduce global emissions, regardless of where the work happens. 

Many of our recommendations are U.S.-based for two reasons: 

1. U.S. holds a comparative advantage in developing key clean-energy technologies, meaning U.S. nonprofit advocacy can drive far-reaching global impact. 
2. Our team has historically been U.S.-based, which has shaped what we've evaluated most thoroughly. To reduce geographic blind spots, we've expanded our research team—half of our researchers now work outside the U.S., primarily in Europe and India. 

However, our grantmaking outside of the U.S. is growing rapidly. In early 2026, we granted to climate nonprofits in India, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, South Korea, and the Netherlands—and the list is growing. Moreover, a significant proportion of the organizations we fund work internationally, with branches or initiatives in regions across Europe, Asia, Africa, and (to a lesser degree) Latin America.

We understand that for many climate donors, it is important and meaningful to support initiatives in their own communities. If you are interested in supporting initiatives in your region, we may have ideas for you. Get in touch with us here.  

If you want to take advantage of tax deductibility when donating from outside of the U.S., contact us to learn more about tax-efficient international giving options.

If you are donating from a UK or European bank account (in GBP or EUR), you can donate tax-efficiently through Giving What We Can, to our research and operations, or to the Giving Green Fund.

If you are donating from a Swiss bank account (in CHF), you can donate tax-efficiently via Trustbridge (enter “Switzerland” as the country, say that you do want a tax deduction, and then search for “Giving Green Research Group”).

We are often able to facilitate tax-efficient giving for donors outside the U.S., either by donating through one of our partner organizations, or by donating directly to climate charities or effective giving organizations that operate in your country. Please contact us to discuss your unique situation.

You can view, edit, and cancel a recurring donation set up on our website by creating a user account on GiveLively (click “Donated with us before? Create an account”). You will need to create your account using the same email address you used to donate to us.

‍Please note: if you set up your recurring donation prior to October 2025, it may not appear correctly or may not be editable in GiveLively. Rest assured, we have been receiving your donations! Please contact us to make any changes to your donation, and we will be happy to assist you right away.