Introduction

As the summer unfolds, Giving Green takes a moment to reflect and recharge. Below are some recent outputs that have helped us take stock. 

We hope they can be a resource to other organizations as well. As always, if you have any questions or ideas, we would love to hear from you at givinggreen@idinsight.org 

Organizational updates 

• 2022 annual impact report

2022 marked a pivotal year for Giving Green. With our team growing from three to six, we made significant strides in formalizing our processes and amplifying our impact. The result was outlined in Giving Green’s first-ever annual impact report. 

In 2022, we assessed 20 climate strategies and 50 organizations, culminating in the identification of five high-impact climate nonprofits. Additionally, we unveiled a comprehensive business climate strategy, enabling companies to navigate greenwashing pitfalls and maximize genuine climate impact.

We estimate that we influenced $2.8 million of donations and purchases towards our recommendations in 2022. And since founding in 2020, we have influenced an estimated $5.5 million in high-impact climate giving, 7.5x our operating costs. 

• Giving Green Fund disbursements 

In late 2022, we launched the Giving Green Fund (GGF) to make effective giving easier and facilitate donations to our top recommendations. As of the end of Q1 2023, generous donors have contributed around $300,000 to the fund; to date, the fund has raised over $500,000. 

We outlined the first disbursements here, in which we recommended that grants from GGF be divided equally among our top five nonprofits: Clean Air Task Force, Evergreen Collaborative, Good Energy Collective, Good Food Institute, and Industrious Labs. We also recommended that $50,000 of the fund’s balance be kept in reserve to potentially fund a time-sensitive, high-impact opportunity.

We plan for GGF to become a more impactful vehicle as it grows in size and we adopt more sophisticated regranting strategies.

Thanks to our operational partner, Giving What We Can, for hosting and managing the operations of GGF. 

• Public research dashboard and research process document

Truth-seeking, humility, transparency, and collaboration are the guiding values of Giving Green. We wrote in a forum post in March about plans to create a public research dashboard that will share more detail on impact strategies that we have assessed or are planning to assess. The dashboard on early-stage prioritization, with an evolving list of around 40 impact strategies, was launched in June. 

Additionally, we published a comprehensive research process document, an overview of our high-level methodology, evidence sources, and key uncertainties.  We hope this increased transparency helps donors make more informed decisions, as well as opens us up to additional scrutiny to improve our work. 

• Hosted a business climate strategy webinar

We hosted our first-ever webinar in May, centering on effective corporate climate action. Based on our new research into the limitations of conventional net-zero strategies and higher-impact options, the webinar featured guest speakers and case studies from Google, Microsoft, Stripe, and Mapbox. You can watch the recording here.  

More than 200 businesses and corporate members signed up, which signaled an exciting expansion of Giving Green’s audience from individual and institutional donors to businesses. It is a critical time to get involved in guiding corporate climate action, as businesses are under increasing pressure to go green, but recent investigations revealed many uncertainties with using carbon offsets to wipe off emissions on paper. We are excited to bring evidence-based guidance to help businesses avoid greenwashing and truly maximize corporate climate impact. 

• On navigating uncertainty

When Giving Green started in 2020, we were focused on looking for evidence-based climate solutions, and the carbon offsets market seemed like an obvious place to start. But eventually, we came to the conclusion that to maximize our impact, we have to support strategies that are less measurable but can bring about grand, systematic changes. 

We documented this learning journey in a blog for Alliance Magazine, and we hope our experience can resonate with other organizations that are navigating impact and uncertainty. 

Before you go

We thank donors, supporters, and partners from the Effective Altruism community and beyond for joining us on this journey. 

If you are interested in making donations to high-impact climate nonprofits, you can donate to the Giving Green Fund here. 

Also, we rely on the support of generous donors to support our research. You can make a contribution to Giving Green’s operations here.