Future Matters: Grantee Spotlight (2025)

Grantee spotlight: Future Matters

The Giving Green Fund plans to award a restricted grant to Future Matters for its climate program, which identifies and advocates for impactful EU climate policy opportunities. Future Matters is a policy think tank with offices in Berlin and Brussels that provides research-backed strategies for addressing global risks.

Future Matters’ work falls within our philanthropic strategies of reducing food system emissions, decarbonizing heavy industry, and supporting a clean energy transition in low- and middle-income countries. Please see Giving Green’s strategy reports for more information, including risks and potential co-benefits, recommended sub-strategies, theory of change, funding need, and key uncertainties. 

Last updated: October 2025

What is Future Matters?

Future Matters is a think tank that researches and advocates for policies that advance climate protection, biosecurity, and AI safety. Their climate work identifies and advocates for cost-effective and neglected EU policy opportunities to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Since its launch in 2020, Future Matters has built a strong reputation and network within the EU policy ecosystem. According to our conversations with civil society and policy stakeholders in the EU, Future Matters is known for its actionable research and strategic approach to impactful climate policy advocacy. Future Matters is headquartered in Berlin, with staff in Brussels, the U.K., and the U.S.

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

We are recommending a restricted grant to Future Matters’ climate policy prioritization project. During the first phase of this project, Future Matters published a report identifying the eight most promising climate opportunities for the EU’s 2024-2029 policy mandate using the criteria of impact, effort, and neglectedness. We think its emphasis on neglected and cost-effective policies fills an important gap in the climate policy ecosystem. 

Since the report's launch, Future Matters has been converting its findings into concrete policy change. First, it worked with influential members of the European Commission to advocate for these promising policies during the mandate’s agenda-setting phase. Now, it is focusing on advancing negotiations on two key priorities:

1. Advancing an EU–India green steel partnership: The EU could support India’s green steel transition through research and technology collaboration, private investment, and supportive trade policies.
2. Advancing market uptake of alternative proteins through EU industrial policies: Upcoming EU policy initiatives to boost innovation, investment, and industrial development offer an opportunity to scale emerging technologies. Integrating provisions for alternative proteins into these initiatives would accelerate their market entry and production scale-up.

We think Future Matters’ strategic approach to advocacy could result in more EU policies with substantial mitigation impacts.

Why do we think Future Matters will use this funding well?

We think Future Matters has been successful at winning influential allies across the EU policy ecosystem and coordinating action across institutions to advance its policy priorities. Our discussions with policymakers and nonprofits have highlighted Future Matters as a trusted and valued partner. Its analytical approach to policy engagement has also received praise for being especially actionable and unique in the EU’s nonprofit ecosystem. Its climate policy prioritization report was endorsed by the former EU Commissioner for Environment and the former head of the Directorate-General for Climate Action. Since the report’s launch, Future Matters has also seen strong engagement from key decision-makers on its highlighted policies. As a result, it has helped to: 1) secure the inclusion of a green steel partnership on the EU’s New Strategic EU-India Agenda, and 2) prevent the Biotech Act from focusing exclusively on health, which would exclude any incentives for alternative proteins.

Future Matters is currently fundraising to meet its 2026 budget and has further potential to grow its climate team, which currently comprises two full-time employees working on research and advocacy. The limited capacity of its current climate team has prevented Future Matters from pursuing all of its top policy priorities. Growing its climate team to five members would allow it to expand to a third policy priority, enhance its capacity for prioritization research and analysis, and strengthen its engagement capacity in existing policy areas.

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.

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