The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Barr Foundation have released data showing that they each allocated 10 percent of their climate funding over the last two years to minority-led environmental justice groups.

The data were released as part of the Donors of Color Network's Climate Funders Justice Pledge launched in February, which called on funders to commit, by 2023, at least 30 percent of their climate-related grant dollars to environmental organizations with majority-BIPOC boards and senior staffs and to make explicit commitments to building power within BIPOC communities. The Hewlett and Barr foundations have signed on to the transparency portion of the pledge, along with the JPB Foundation, which has allocated 31 percent of its climate funding to BIPOC organizations, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (data not yet available).

Three of the forty largest climate funders have signed on to the full pledge — the Kresge (33 percent), Pisces (17 percent), and Schmidt Family (data not yet available) foundations — joined by twelve others who are not among the top forty, including the Meyer Memorial Trust (19 percent) and the Open Society (36 percent), Libra (87 percent), Seventh Generation (65 percent), and Grove (81 percent) foundations. According to the network, five foundations among the top forty climate funders declined to take the pledge: the Ford and Margaret A. Cargill foundations, because their climate grantmaking is primarily outside the United States; the Kendeda Fund, because it is sunsetting in three years and its top priority is fulfilling existing multiyear commitments; and the Gordon and Betty Moore and Alfred P. Sloan foundations.

Hewlett Foundation president Larry Kramer told the Associated Press that the foundation declined to pledge 30 percent as a matter of "both legal and policy judgment" but is taking steps to increase diversity among its climate grantee pool, including efforts to make its own staff more diverse. "We don't think there are magic numbers," said Kramer. "We prefer to do our grantmaking, be transparent about it, and always be working to improve."

The Donors of Colors Network is in conversation with more than two dozen of the other top donors about the pledge, though some say they don't sign pledges, executive director Ashindi Maxton told the AP. "No one has said that they don't sort of agree with the ultimate end goals of what we're doing. A lot of people just have a lot of internal machinery to move to do this."