While U.S. foundation leaders see climate change as an urgent problem, foundation efforts to address climate change are relatively limited, a report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy finds.

Funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and based on a survey conducted between January and March 2022, the report, Much Alarm, Less Action: Foundations & Climate Change (43 pages, PDF), found that 60 percent of foundation leaders (69 percent of climate funders and 43 percent of non-climate funders) and 60 percent of nonprofit leaders (80 percent of climate-focused nonprofits and 53 percent of non-climate nonprofits) believe that climate change is “an extremely urgent problem,” while 29 percent and 22 percent believe it is “a very urgent problem.”

But while 72 percent of foundation leaders and 68 percent of nonprofit leaders overall agreed that “climate change is one of the top three most important problems to address right now,” only 9 percent and 10 percent said that it was “the most important” problem. According to the survey, a larger share of foundation leaders and 33 percent of nonprofit leaders said they believe that climate change would have a significant negative effect on the lives of the people they serve (60 percent and 33 percent), their geographic rea (59 percent and 49 percent), their issue area (36 percent and 9 percent), and their organization’s ability to achieve its goals (28 percent and 9 percent).

The report also found that 54 percent of foundation leaders and 48 percent of nonprofit leaders thought nonprofits could be doing more to address climate change and 67 percent and 60 percent thought foundations could be doing more, while 87 percent and 89 percent thought the public sector could be doing more and 86 percent and 88 percent thought the private sector could be doing more. Still, even among climate funders, only 29 percent currently allocated at least 20 percent of their grant dollars to climate efforts: 2 percent allocated 100 percent, 1 percent allocated between 75 percent and 99 percent, 4 percent allocated between 50 percent and 74 percent, and 22 percent allocated between 20 percent and 49 percent. The largest segment, 42 percent, allocated between 1 percent and 9 percent.

Among foundations that explicitly address climate change, 81 percent reported funding climate change mitigation, 70 percent funded climate change adaptation, 65 percent funded climate justice, and 43 percent funded all three. In addition, 22 percent of foundation leaders and 10 percent of nonprofit leaders said their organizations had divested from fossil fuels or other carbon emitters, while 31 percent and 10 percent were engaged in climate-related impact investing.

Among non-climate funders, the top reasons for not funding climate efforts were that climate change is not part of their mission (79 percent), the board has limited interest in or willingness to address climate change (39 percent), and the problem is too big relative to their foundation’s resources or geographic area of focus (35 percent). Still, 33 percent of non-climate funders indicated they were open to funding efforts to address climate change, and 12 percent hadn’t yet decided whether or not to fund climate efforts.

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