Evergreen Collaborative: Grantee Spotlight (2025)

Grantee spotlight: Evergreen Collaborative

The Giving Green Fund plans to award a grant to Evergreen Collaborative for its work centered around removing siting barriers and advancing grid regulatory reforms to increase the deployment of clean energy. Evergreen Collaborative is a U.S.-based climate policy advocacy group.

Evergreen Collaborative’s work falls within our philanthropic strategy of unleashing clean energy in the U.S. Please see Giving Green’s strategy report for more information, including recommended sub-strategies, theory of change, and key uncertainties.

Last updated: October 2025

What is Evergreen Collaborative?

Evergreen Collaborative is a U.S.-based climate policy advocacy group that was founded by former staffers of Washington state Governor Jay Inslee’s 2020 presidential campaign. Since its founding, Evergreen Collaborative has focused its efforts on supporting policies that aim to power the economy with 100% clean energy, invest in jobs, support environmental justice, transition the U.S. from fossil fuels, and influence U.S. leadership to confront climate change. Building on its strong track record of influencing federal legislation, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, Evergreen Collaborative has expanded its policy research and education efforts to federal regulatory agencies and state policy.

What are we funding, and how could it help address climate change?

We are funding three clean energy projects of Evergreen Collaborative:

• Bipartisan siting reform: Together with the Private Property Rights Institute (PPRI), Evergreen Collaborative will defend existing and propose new siting policies in politically-divided states that open up land and property to clean energy projects. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, Evergreen Collaborative and PPRI plan to elevate rural landowners and conservative voices to defend and advance siting reforms that protect property rights, speed up approvals, and unlock new income streams.
• PJM grid reform campaign: Evergreen Collaborative will provide state leaders with clear options to reform transmission planning, interconnection, and governance across Pennsylvania and the wider Eastern U.S. region serviced by the PJM Interconnection.
• Affordable Clean Power Agenda: Evergreen Collaborative will equip state-level leaders with playbooks, narratives, and coalitions to adopt affordability-centered clean energy policies that cut pollution and lower bills.

In our strategy report on unleashing clean energy in the U.S., we identified addressing local permitting and siting challenges and government engagement for grid interconnection as promising approaches to expand clean energy. Both of these strategies can speed up the deployment and de-risk clean energy projects by reducing costs and making project timelines shorter and more predictable. We believe that Evergreen Collaborative’s proposed work is well-aligned with our strategy. In general, we think Evergreen Collaborative’s work can address climate change by making it easier to deploy clean energy in the U.S., which will, in turn, reduce reliance on greenhouse gas-emitting energy resources.

Why do we think Evergreen Collaborative will use this funding well?

Evergreen Collaborative has a strong track record of driving climate and energy policies at the state level. Some big wins include: 

• Advocates in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York are actively integrating Evergreen Collaborative’s data and recommendations into electrification and cap-and-invest campaigns. 
• Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer highlighted Evergreen Collaborative’s modeling when discussing the benefits of climate policies. 
• Recently introduced permitting reform legislation in California (SB 318) draws heavily on Evergreen Collaborative’s recommendations.

Moving forward, we have confidence that Evergreen Collaborative has the technical and policy experience to drive siting and grid reform progress at the state and regional levels.  

Giving Green believes that additional climate donations are likely to be most impactful when directed to our top nonprofits. For several reasons, we may choose to recommend grants to other organizations for work that we believe is at least as impactful as grants to our top recommendations. We are highlighting this grant to offer transparency to donors to the Giving Green Fund, as well as to provide a resource for donors who are particularly interested in this impact strategy. This is a nonpartisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes.

Evergreen has 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) entities. As Giving Green is itself a charitable, tax-exempt organization, we are only offering an opinion on the charitable activities of its 501(c)(3) arm, Evergreen Collaborative, and not on its 501(c)(4) entity, Evergreen Action. This is a nonpartisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes.

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