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Giving Green offers short-term and long-term recommendations. The long term include clean energy research and lobbying national policy and the short term are verifiable decreases in GHG emissions or increase carbon capture. Short-term recommendations seek to cause immediate, verifiable decreases in GHG emissions (or increase carbon capture). Long-term recommendations seek to make bigger, riskier bets with the hope of changing the long-term arc of climate change. These include avenues such as funding clean energy research, or lobbying national policy. Giving Green is trying to look at these markets and provide people with which they feel most comfortable working with and that make the biggest impact. See the original piece - an interview with Giving Green co-founder Dan Stein - here.

Last summer, when we discussed how to make your climate change donations count, our reporting suggested that one of the most effective strategies is donating to political campaigns. But what if you’re not into politics and would rather help out a nonprofit organization instead? Unless you’re a scientist or policy wonk, figuring out who’s actually making a difference can feel like an impossible task. Click here to read the original article on NY Times' website.

Here’s where to donate your money If you’re reading this, chances are you care a lot about fighting climate change, and that’s great. Maybe you’re thinking about making a donation to the cause as you watch wildfires burning in California, ice shelves shattering in the Arctic, and glaciers breaking loose in Antarctica, all at the same time. Climate change is the biggest emergency facing humanity. Our global response to it has been, in a word, pathetic. Over the past decade, our carbon dioxide emissions have actually risen 11 percent. We need to reverse that trend — and fast. The trouble is, it can be genuinely hard to figure out how to direct your money wisely if you want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There’s a glut of environmental organizations out there and a lack of rigorous research on their impacts and cost-effectiveness, though that’s beginning to change with the arrival of new evaluators like Giving Green. Click here to read the full article on Vox.

Dan Stein, the director of Giving Green, agrees that it’s important to fund advocacy with bipartisan appeal - hence Giving Green’s recommendation to donate to Clean Air Task Force. But he also thinks it’s important to fund grassroots activist groups, including those strongly tied to Democrats. “I would push for a two-part strategy, because I think the way policy gets made is through these insider-outsider coalitions,” he said. “You have people with close links in the halls of Congress and to the president, and then you have external pressure that’s forcing the politicians to pay attention to the issue". Click here to read the full article on Vox.

Giving Green advises people on how to fight climate change with their donations in the most evidence-based way possible. It emerged from beta and published new recommendations last month ... Some background: Giving Green is part of the effective-altruism movement, which tries to answer questions such as “How can someone do the most good?” with scientific rigor. Or at least with econometric rigor ... It asks: If you donate a dollar to fighting climate change, where will your money go furthest? Right now, it makes recommendations in two areas: carbon offsets and policy change. Each illustrates the benefits of its approach - and the potential problems. Click here to read the full article on The Atlantic.

This past weekend, temperatures in the Pacific Northwest began to rise to alarming levels, reaching well above 100 degrees in several cities. On Monday, the National Weather Service announced Excessive Heat Warnings throughout Washington, Oregon, and parts of California, Idaho, and Nevada, and it’s expected to remain extremely hot for most of the week. Giving Green was highlighted in The Cut’s roundup of climate organizations. Read the full list here.

We’re grateful to have received so much interest in our 2021 climate charity recommendations. Some excellent articles below, in chronological order, that highlight our work and some of our friends in climate & effective altruism: The Environment And Animals Deserve More Than Just 3% Of Our Charitable Giving - Brian Kateman, Forbes For those who are interested in stretching their philanthropic dollars as far as possible, there are a number of charity evaluators that can help. Giving Green evaluates and recommends the most promising environmental charities in terms of their effectiveness in fighting climate change, and so too does Animal Charity Evaluators with regard to animal protection groups. With so few dollars going to charitable causes, it’s crucial that we allocate them wisely. Which are the best climate change nonprofits? They’re not the names you know - Marc Gunther, Nonprofit Chronicles So where, if you care about the climate, should you donate? Giving Green, a small group of economists, data sciences and climate experts, has ideas. Shaped by the principles of the effective altruism movement, Giving Green recommends three small organizations that work to change US policy: Evergreen Collaborative, the Clean Air Task Force and Carbon180… Just two years old, Giving Green is a welcome addition to the philanthropy landscape. It is a meta-charity, one of a very few organizations that seek to help donors identify the most effective nonprofits. Want to fight climate change effectively? Here’s where to donate your money - Sigal Samuel and Muizz Akhtar, Vox: Future Perfect Important targets for change are ones that drive a big portion of global emissions. Tractable problems are ones where we can actually make progress right now. And neglected problems are ones that aren’t already getting a big influx of cash from other sources like the government or philanthropy, and so could really use money from smaller donors. Founders Pledge, an organization that guides entrepreneurs committed to donating a portion of their proceeds to effective charities, and Giving Green, a climate charity evaluator, used these same criteria to assess climate organizations. Their research informed much of the list below. Holiday Gifts That Actually Fight Climate Change - Ciara Nugent, Time Right off the bat, we’ve got to acknowledge that the vast majority of the changes we need to make go far beyond what you can spend this Christmas. Governments need to set policies and make huge investments to drive the expansion of clean energy, the electrification of cars and buildings, and much more. Big businesses need to take responsibility for their emissions and make the decisions to cut them as fast as possible. So, give your most committed friends and family a donation in their name to an organization fighting for those systemic changes. You could support the climate fund at The Founders Pledge, which analyzes the work of NGOs and charities to identify the most cost-effective donations. Or you can choose a specific NGO—if you aren’t sure which, consult the guides produced by the non-profit initiative Giving Green. The Green List Guide to Giving Green - Rose Mary Petrass, The Green List The gift for someone who doesn’t want anything: give to a cause that you know they care about. Want the biggest bang for your buck? Giving Green has released a list of the top three charities working the hardest to accelerate climate action and make the greatest impact. If you want your donation to go the farthest, donate to one of the following: Beyond Zero Emissions is an independent think-tank helping emissions-intensive industries and regional communities work towards net zero. Farmers for Climate Action helps farmers lead climate solutions on-farm. Original Power builds skills and capacity of Australia’s Indigenous communities to resist fossil fuel developments and support a transition to renewables. A New Estimate of the ‘Most Effective’ Way to Fight Climate Change - Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic On a dollar-for-dollar basis, where will your money do the most to fight climate change? The economist Daniel Stein has a clear answer: You should give to groups that lobby for aggressive climate policies. And if you’re an American, he has three such groups in mind: the Evergreen Collaborative, Carbon180, and the Clean Air Task Force. “If you’re like Joe Schmo, and you’re looking to do something for climate, I think you should give to policy,” Stein told me. “We think it’s something like 10 times more effective to give to policy than to give to one of these projects that are directly doing emissions reductions.” A Giving Guide - The New York Times: The Morning newsletter Even if you know you want to donate to charities that focus on climate change, it can be hard to pick which one. Vox compiled a list of what it says are “the most high-impact, cost-effective and evidence-based organizations.” If you need more, Forbes also has tips and recommends using Giving Green, an organization that “evaluates and recommends the most promising environmental charities in terms of their effectiveness in fighting climate change.” Give it away now 💸🌪🌎 - Mike Coren, Hothouse Solutions Everyone agreed on one thing: We need to fund more boring stuff. Planting trees and banning plastic straws feels right. But achieving net-zero emissions means getting laws into the federal registrar (70,392 pages and counting). Daniel Stein, an economist who runs Giving Green, an evidence-based donor guide, says climate philanthropy can have the greatest impact, dollar for dollar, in the halls of national legislatures and the White House. “The main things you have to do to fight climate change are not sexy,” he said. “It’s coal plant regulation, electric vehicle subsidies, figuring out clean concrete. Systematic stuff.” Also praising the virtue of tedium is Michael Thomas, the founder of CarbonSwitch, the rare people, he says, who likes to look at IRS tax filings. “The groups creating a huge amount of impact aren’t getting a lot of money,” he says. “We need to be funding the boring work, we need to get the tedious details right—fund groups that give donors the highest leverage for their money.” And who’s doing that well? Stein and Thomas both arrived at similar conclusions in their reports: Small, nimble organizations that punch above their weight advancing strategic policies.

Introduction We believe that the most effective giving opportunities are organizations working to enact systemic policy change. The United States, as a leader on the global stage and the world’s second-largest emitter, holds immense power and responsibility to shape the global fight against climate change. The US is also the largest global funder of research and development, so its actions can have global impact. In 2021, we continued our research into organizations seeking to shift US national climate policy. In particular, we researched insider policy advocacy groups and “outsider” activist groups, which we viewed as the two highest priority methods for influencing policy. Advocacy refers to engagement in the policymaking process in order to shape priorities and influence specific pieces of legislation and regulation; activism seeks to influence political outcomes by mobilizing citizens to take actions that generate public attention around specific issues or demands. In making our recommendations, we sought out organizations that are impact-focused with clear evidence of effectiveness, have a strong organizational structure with experienced staff, and have the capacity to absorb additional funds effectively. As part of our investigation, we interviewed experts in academia, policy, and philanthropy; spoke with representatives from each organization; verified accomplishments by speaking with other organizations working in climate policy; analyzed relevant climate policy reports; and built cost-effectiveness analysis models that estimated how much it would cost (in expectation) for each organization to remove a metric ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. (To learn more about our research process, please see “Giving Green’s Approach to Policy Change Recommendations.”) Our recommendations We are excited to recommend three insider policy advocacy groups this year. We recommend the following organizations on the basis of their strategy, impact, cost-effectiveness, and financial need: Clean Air Task Force – Pushes for technologies and policies that are relatively neglected in the climate space. Its recent accomplishments include its role in pushing for clean energy technologies in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which includes a total of $45 billion in funding for carbon capture and sequestration, direct air capture, nuclear, and hydrogen programs and for plugging methane leaks from abandoned wells. For more information, please see our Clean Air Task Force overview. Evergreen Collaborative – Develops and advocates for innovative and progressive climate policy. Evergreen Collaborative was a driving force behind the Clean Electricity Performance Program, which was considered a key part of President Biden’s ambitious plan to slash US greenhouse gas pollution by 50% from 2005 levels by 2030. For more information, please see our Evergreen Collaborative overview and deep dive. Carbon180 – Focuses on an important and neglected problem: carbon removal. Its recent achievements include advocating for billions of dollars in funding for carbon removal research and development, direct air capture hubs, and carbon storage in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. For more information, please see our Carbon180 overview and deep dive. Climate activism in 2021 Our research on activism suggested that activism has played and will continue to play an important role in affecting climate policy in the US. However, for various reasons (detailed in our research documents), we did not include any specific activism organizations among our primary recommendations in 2021. For donors who would like to support progressive activism, we instead suggest considering an umbrella organization: the Green New Deal Network (GNDN), which coordinates and supports a coalition of grassroots organizations. We did not include GNDN among our list of top organizations because it has a limited track record thus far and does not actively seek small-scale retail donations. We think that supporting GNDN is appropriate in the following cases: Institutional donors – Because GNDN’s fundraising strategy does not seek out small retail donations, we recommend contributions to GNDN for institutional donors who would like to contribute a substantial amount of money (roughly $20,000 or more). Volunteers – For individuals who would like to donate time rather than money, we tentatively recommend volunteering for one of GNDN’s coalition members, all of which rely on grassroots support. We have not vetted each of GNDN’s coalition members and cannot recommend which provide the best volunteer opportunities. For more information on GNDN, please see our GNDN deep dive. Changes from our 2020 recommendations Our list of recommended charities contains mostly new recommendations; Clean Air Task Force is the only charity that was previously included in our 2020 list. We removed the Sunrise Movement Education Fund from our list because we are unsure of its future plans beyond 2021 and its room for more funding. We plan on reviewing the Sunrise Movement Education Fund again when we have a better understanding of its future strategy. For more information on the Sunrise Movement, please see our deep dive on the organization. Where do we recommend donors give? You can donate to our top insider policy advocacy organizations through their individual websites and in the links below. Carbon180 Clean Air Task Force Evergreen Collaborative If you are an institutional donor interested in donating to GNDN, you can contact GNDN by emailing marygrace@greennewdealnetwork.org. We do not have a preference between our top organizations for a couple of reasons. First, all of these organizations are engaging in work that is fundamentally uncertain, which makes it difficult to rank different highly-promising organizations and their work against one another with a high degree of precision. Second, although we estimated the cost-effectiveness of each organization, their estimates were all in the same order of magnitude, and we think that the inherent uncertainty in the cost-effectiveness makes them unsuitable for ranking the organizations. Finally, our recommended organizations use different theories of change for shifting climate policy (e.g. mobilization of the political left and technology innovation and regulation). These different theories of change are accompanied by good, evidence-based arguments for their assumptions. Decisions about these different approaches are a matter of both judgement and evidence. Rather than taking a stand on which of these theories of change is most likely to hold, we at Giving Green wish to provide well-researched evidence on organizations that could productively employ additional funds and are working in an evidence-based manner across different theories of change. Giving to support Giving Green’s operations As a nonprofit organization, Giving Green relies on donations from its readers. If you appreciate our research and would like to support our operations, you can donate to us here. Donations to Giving Green help us grow as an organization and support our research and communications. Questions? Want to collaborate? Please reach out at givinggreen@idinsight.org.

What I do have an issue with is this idea that what we should be doing to fight climate change is making all kinds of tiny little marginal tweaks in our lives that are probably really annoying and don’t do much, right?... When you think about climate change, climate change is an existential problem for humanity, in my opinion. It’s going to cause cities to flood. It’s going to cause crop fields to go barren. It’s going to cause famine. It’s going to cause war. So none of that has to do with plastic straws in a turtle. Dan spoke to the Motley Fool about what brought him to climate work, what we should be focusing on to solve the climate problem, and which recent private sector ESG commitments are worth their salt. Watch the full interview here.

Giving Green’s other work focuses on recommendations of where individuals can donate to effect positive change in the climate crisis. Yet, donations are not the only way that individuals can mobilize their money to combat climate change. Investment -- from retirement funds to venture capital -- has a role to play as well. In late 2021, we began our research on a variety of “sustainable investment” strategies for individuals, including ESG funds and pro-climate impact investing. We describe how these “sustainable” investments work and which -- if any -- are most likely to actually help the climate. Note: This article is intended for research and information purposes only in order to review the potential positive climate impacts of available investment opportunities, not their financial performance, and therefore should not be construed as investment, financial, or other advice, or construed as a recommendation to buy, sell, or otherwise transact in any investment. We do not endorse any specific product that is referenced in this article. This article is not a replacement for personal financial advice and it is strongly recommended that you review your own personal financial situation and seek professional investment and/or financial advice before engaging in any investing. Reading this article does not create a professional relationship and we are not in the business of providing investment or financial advice. The information provided in this article is as accurate as possible, however errors may occasionally occur and we are not responsible for any errors. We expressly disclaim any liability or loss incurred by any person who acts on the information, ideas, or strategies discussed in this report. ESG funds & climate impact: We started our work with a question: Is it possible for normal people to save for retirement, a home purchase, or college tuition while also pushing corporations to act on climate change? We think it might be, but unfortunately, we did not find any simple solutions. In order to evaluate climate investments, we interviewed experts, examined fund materials, and reviewed academic literature and industry reports. Our examination of ESG investments is concentrated on mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). These are the kinds of investments that you might use to save for retirement, a home purchase, college tuition or other big expenses. They generally have lower minimum investment amounts and are easier for normal people (or “retail investors”) to directly invest in. ESG funds use environmental, social, and governance-related information -- as well as financial information -- when they decide which companies to purchase stocks from. Many climate-oriented investors gravitate towards the E in ESG, hoping to make an impact on climate. Our research, in short, found that it’s not that simple, for a few reasons: ESG is an unreliable shorthand for climate. Climate-relevant criteria, like data on emissions, carbon intensity, etc, can get lost or obscured in the mix of other ESG criteria. ESG funds tend not to be designed to have real-world impact on the companies they hold stocks in. The evidence shows that an ESG fund investing in or divesting from a given company has little sway over that company’s actions. So if ESG is not the answer, what can a fund do to have a real climate impact? ​​Although investment managers use an array of terms, we suggest it boils down to two main approaches: portfolio composition, or “what the fund holds”; and shareholder activism, or “what the fund does.” What the fund holds: Climate funds vary in the type of information they use to build their portfolio (e.g., ESG scores, industry, specific practices) and the way they use that information (e.g., screening or weighting certain companies). Fossil fuel divestment is an example of a portfolio screening approach to climate impact. What the fund does: Climate funds also vary in the degree of shareholder activism they engage in. These funds can pressure companies to change behavior by introducing shareholder resolutions, voting on proxy ballots, negotiating directly with management, and other strategies. Many climate funds combine some type of portfolio composition approach with shareholder action. The evidence we found broadly supports that shareholder engagement causes real change. We suggest that a track record of climate-oriented shareholder engagement is a good indicator of whether a mutual fund or ETF will influence a company to do better for the climate. Examples of funds that use shareholder engagement are: Medium-sized, older funds like Green Century Funds, Trillium Asset Management, and Zevin Asset Management, which have track records of successful shareholder engagement actions, but may charge higher fees Smaller, recently launched funds like Engine’s No. 1’s Transform 500 ETF or robo-adviser Carbon Collective’s portfolios, which have transparent and methodical approaches to climate investing and shareholder engagement and claim to offer competitive fees Bigger, generic funds run by large asset managers that have outsize influence on proxy voting results and consistently vote in favor of climate measures, such as Hartford Funds and Columbia Threadneedle. Read the full report here. Impact investing for climate impact: We also investigated climate-focused impact investing opportunities available to non-accredited retail investors in the United States. We considered two classes of investments: Private equity refers to direct holdings in private companies. A relatively new mechanism known as “Regulation Crowdfunding” allows retail investors to make limited private equity investments. Cash equivalents and fixed-income investments are more conventional, and offer many more opportunities for retail investors. These generally offer a fixed, low to moderate return. We found a range of climate-related offerings, including savings accounts at climate-focused banks, notes offered by loan funds that make climate-related loans, and bonds offered by companies or municipalities looking to fund climate-positive projects. The impact of these investments really depends on what project the investment is funding. We suggest focusing on two concepts to assess whether a hypothetical project or firm will impact the climate: causality, or the reduction of atmospheric greenhouse gases attributable to the project, and additionality, or an individual investment’s contribution to increasing the impact of the project. While conclusions on impact cannot be perfectly generalized across an asset class, we observe some patterns: Startups promise transformative impact, but it is difficult as an investor to predict the likelihood of actually achieving that impact. On the other hand, cash equivalents and fixed-income investments usually have strong and defensible links to impact, even if that impact is limited in scope. We also noted many opportunities to invest for non-climate co-benefits, including economic development and providing financing to low-income communities. We’re heartened to see the vast array of options available to climate investors. We aren’t yet sure which is the most impactful for the retail investor. Choosing individual investments involves a lot of sophistication and risk, and we don’t think that betting on specific companies or projects is the right route for most investors. We found one low-cost, low-risk way to support existing climate solutions: moving money to a bank that specializes in lending to clean energy projects, such as the Clean Energy Credit Union. We hope to more rigorously assess these options in the future. Read the full report here. We hope these findings serve as a guide to the available opportunities to leverage investment capital for climate impact. We at Giving Green have barely scratched the surface of this wide-ranging and fast-growing industry, and we hope to continue to highlight new opportunities as we discover them.

The message from COP26 global climate conference couldn’t be clearer: without forceful action the planet is headed on a dangerous and irrecoverable path toward environmental catastrophe. In response, more organizations are making carbon neutrality commitments, including 211 companies that have signed the Amazon-led Climate Pledge. Achieving carbon neutrality, o is a helpful first step for companies looking to do their part in the fight against climate change. But is it the right course for nonprofits?... Read the full article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Coldplay’s new album, Music Of The Spheres, is the feelgood tour de force the world has desperately needed. It’s cheerfully absurd, utterly over-the-top and features a brightly-attired Chris Martin going into interstellar overdrive in his capacity as the Teletubby Bono. But this cosmic pick-me-up has arrived with a sting in the tail, with the band having just gone back on their 2019 pledge to stop touring until they could do so “in a more sustainable way”... “We can't comment too much on the specifics of Coldplay's tour, as we would need to look much more deeply at the changes they make and the offsets they purchase. That being said, I think it's right to be skeptical about whether these actions are doing much good,” says Dan Stein, chief economist with IDinsight, a global advisory, data analytics, and research organisation, and founder of Giving Green, which produces “an actionable and dynamically updated set of recommendations of organisations that are demonstrably reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases”. “It seems like Coldplay is achieving much of its emissions reductions via offsetting,” says Stein in an email. “But the carbon offset market is rife with over-promises, and in general it's pretty safe to assume that most carbon offsets are not actually causing emissions to decrease….They specifically mention that one of the things they will do is plant trees, and this intervention in particular is not well-supported by research. For instance, a recent study found that ‘decades of tree planting have had almost no impact on forest canopy cover or rural livelihoods’.”... “We probably wouldn't specifically chastise Coldplay for going on tour, since their tour is taking place in a complicated global system in which almost anything that anyone does requires energy and emits carbon,” agrees Dan Stein. “It's our view that guilting people about flying or eating meat is not the way out of the climate crisis. This isn't going to work and is going to cause backlash. Instead, we believe that everyone should work together to support systemic change to our energy system. As super-famous musicians, Coldplay can play a part in that, but I think that by just focusing on their own carbon footprint they are taking a very self-centered view of the problem, when instead they could be fighting for systemic changes that really matter.” Read the full article in The Telegraph.