How It Works

Giving Green's Mission

Giving Green's mission is to direct donors and volunteers towards evidence-backed projects that combat the climate crisis.

Knowing that we don’t have a minute or dollar to waste, we provide a guide to help people identify the highest-impact ways that they can fight the climate crisis.

Many nonprofits, corporations, and communities are working to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but only some of the activities are based on the best available scientific evidence. Giving Green identifies effective projects, backed by solid physical and social science.

Scientific

As the urgency of the climate crisis intensifies, resources need to be focused on the best buys – and donors and volunteers need clear, objective facts about what works and what doesn’t. Giving Green publicly posts all of our research and deliberations.

Transparent

We all know the basics about the science of climate change, but few individuals have the technical background to know what they can personally do with their charitable donations or volunteer time to make a difference. Giving Green makes effective climate action just a click away.

Actionable

The Problem

People and organizations want to combat the climate crisis but they do not know where to start; there is no actionable and evidence-backed guidance for using money and time to fight climate change.

Many of the projects that claim to reduce GHG in the atmosphere are deeply flawed or ineffective. We need to focus our resources on the most effective projects.

There is plenty of information on what policies or interventions could stem global warming, but nobody currently provides data-backed guidance on the most effective steps to take. We need an actionable guide that anyone can understand.

The Plan

Our research currently focuses on two areas in which dollars and volunteer hours can be spent tackling climate change:

US Policy Change – A major lever to reducing GHGs is through influencing national and international policies. Although impossible to be certain your donations are reducing GHGs, a successful policy change will have a large impact. We help donors and volunteers find the best high-impact bets available.

Offsets – Donation opportunities marketed as "offsets" provide a way to fund projects that are removing GHGs immediately with a high degree of certainty. Note that we do not subscribe to the idea that offsets allow people to undo the negative climate effects of their actions. See more about this in the Carbon Offsets section.

We also plan to research more donation and investment opportunities soon (e.g. tech investments).

The Solution

We leverage the best available data and evidence to make dynamic recommendations on where people and organizations should invest their time and resources for fighting the climate crisis.

Our initial research has produced best-in-class recommendations on Carbon Offsets and US Policy Change. These recommendations are backed by thorough research, all publicly available. We are constantly expanding our recommendations into new categories, as a multi-pronged strategy is necessary to attack the climate crisis.

Note: We can also undertake customized research and recommendations to meet the needs of specific organizations. If interested, please drop us an email.