Using Philanthropy to Tackle Environmental Challenges
As part of her role advising individuals about their philanthropy and charitable giving activities, Castlefield adviser Olivia Bowen frequently comes in to contact with a wide network of philanthropic organisations. In this interview, Olivia meets Jane Cabutti from the Environmental Funders Network (EFN). They discuss how the EFN was started and some of the initiatives they’re involved with, and outline how Castlefield clients can get involved.
Olivia Bowen (OB): To get us started, please could you just give a brief summary of the EFN, when it was created and for what purpose?
Jane Babutti (JC): Certainly. The Environmental Funders Network (EFN) was created over 20 years ago by the Goldsmith family and a small group of environmental funders (individual donors and trusts & foundations), who recognised the transformational power of philanthropy in tackling environmental issues. Even then, they could see that there was not enough funding given the scale of the challenges that were ahead. So, we were formed with the aim of transforming environmental philanthropy in the UK, by increasing funding levels and improving the effectiveness of funding. Ben Goldsmith and Jon Cracknell, our two co-founders, are still involved in EFN today.
OB: What are your main areas of work?
JC: We help to grow the amount of environmental funding and work closely with networks, giving circles and donors who are interested in, starting or growing their environmental funding. We support individual donors, trust/foundations, advisors and family offices to make their environmental funding more effective. We also have a programme of work to support the people and organisations helping to create a thriving planet.
A lot of our work explores the connections between the environment, justice and other social causes. Nature loss and climate change affects everyone but not equally - the most marginalised in our societies are hit first and hardest. Without a healthy environment, we can’t survive and flourish, and so any cause that you care about will be affected.
All of our work involves bringing people together to learn from one another and from experts, through meetings, events, our annual retreat, field trips, collaborations, special projects and research.
Without a healthy environment, we can’t survive and flourish, and so any cause that you care about will be affected.
OB: It sounds like a rewarding environment to be involved with. What would you say have been your greatest successes and challenges?
JC: We started with around six funders around the table in 2003, and are now a thriving community of over 1,000 people receiving our funder newsletter and over 500 attending our meetings and events each year, as well as our programme of work supporting the environmental charity sector.
Numerous collaborations develop from our network, and we know that our research and events help to make funding more effective. Environmental funding is growing in the UK – our research report “Where The Green Grants Went 9” showed that environmental funding from UK-based trusts and foundations has almost tripled in recent years.
We are also proud of some of the unique and progressive programmes we’ve developed, such as our Earth Funding Lab, which supports funders to collaborate together to bring about systems change. There is still much work to do though – funding the environment is still not seen as being as important or urgent as funding for other causes.
OB: Many of our clients are thoughtful individuals who want to use their money for good. How could they engage with your work?
JC: Anyone with an interest in funding environmental causes is welcome to get involved – despite our name, you don’t have to already be funding in this area! You can join our mailing list and come along to any of our in-person or online events, field trips and meetings. If you are new to environmental funding, there are plenty of resources on our website, and we are always happy to have a chat and help in any way that we can.
OB: Thank you Jane, that’s really helpful. Final thoughts - what do you hope for the future longer-term?
JC: Ideally, that there was no need for any kind of philanthropy, because we lived in a just and sustainable world! But until we get there – we want everyone to recognise the priority for a healthy, resilient environment and to encourage anyone in a position to give to feel empowered to give to environmental causes.
We want everyone to recognise the priority for a healthy, resilient environment and to encourage anyone in a position to give to feel empowered to give to environmental causes.
Written by Olivia Bowen
For more information on the EFN please visit their website at: https://www.greenfunders.org/
If you’re interested in signing up for their newsletter, to stay updated on the latest events, meetings and reports, please follow this link here.