In May of 2006, Greengrants awarded its $10,000,000th dollar in grants. That makes 2,754 grants made in 120 countries over 13 years.
It’s been a long road since our first grant, made to a group in Burma that had written a guide to sustainable agriculture in the rainforest. That grant, to a small group of grassroots environmentalists operating in the midst of a civil war, had to be delivered in cash by friends who were traveling to the appropriate part of the appropriate forest. It turned out to be a successful effort: a booklet was printed in both Thai and Burmese and distributed to people who were otherwise clearing the rainforest for agriculture.
In 1993—Greengrants’ first year of formal operation—we made a total of 21 grants, worth $83,000. By 2005 those numbers had expanded to a total of 610 grants for the year, worth $2,680,605.
Some other favorite grants along the way:
The League of Environmental Journalists, in Ghana, provided training in pollution issues for two dozen Ghanaian journalists, which in turn resulted in dozens of articles all over the country and embarrassed the Ghanaian EPA into enforcing the law at one polluting factory.
Yunnan Entomological Society of China, which eventually turned into the Pesticide Eco-Alternatives Center of Yunnan Thoughtful Action, became a major player in setting World Bank policy on pesticides in agricultural development, and then spawned a women’s organization of concerned farmers, Eco Women.
The South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, in South Africa, and the Sipcot Area Community Environmental Monitors, in India, both utilized community “bucket brigades” to carry out independent air sampling and to pressure polluters such as refineries into reducing emissions.
Altervia, in Ecuador, helped rural communities employ such innovative alternative-energy technologies as bio-digesters, solar powered water heaters and fruit dehydrators, and a wind turbine made largely from recycled parts.
In Indonesia, the Mining Advocacy Network (JATAM) and others worked to hold Newmont mining company accountable for dumping toxic tailings into Buyat Bay, a process which led to the jailing of four Newmont officials and an agreement under which Newmont will pay $30 million in reparations.
Our growth, and the milestones we have passed along the way, are always occasions for introspection. Are we staying true to our original goal of “supporting grassroots groups working to help people protect the environment, live sustainably, preserve biodiversity and gain a voice in their own future?” Are we maintaining, or better yet improving, the quality of our grants while expanding their quantity?
Happily, the best indications are that we are. The first part is pretty easy to judge: we are still, in fact, providing grants to a wide range of small groups carrying out an even wider array of projects in support of environmental sustainability.
It is harder to measure whether our grants have improved in quality as well as quantity. The understanding of how social change actually takes place is still far from complete, and many of the battles our grantees are fighting will not be won or lost within a few years. Nonetheless, there are several indications that we are supporting key actors in addressing important environmental issues, and that we are doing that more effectively over time:
- Our network of advisors—the experts we rely on to review and recommend grant proposals—has grown to over 120 individuals around the world. These volunteers are the “open secret” to our success in finding committed, effective grantees, and to keeping our own overhead costs low enough that we can effectively make small grants.
- We have worked hard to expand support for those advisors in their work, working with them to develop new evaluation materials, including a “project results toolsheet,” and providing them with an ever-expanding access to relevant information, including an electronic newsletter and a new advisor “intranet.”
- We completed our first comprehensive case study of Greengrants grantmaking, covering our Brazil program from 1993 to mid-2004. This study indicated that Greengrants had accomplished a number of objectives, including increasing the survival rate and development of environmental organizations, providing opportunities for those organizations to participate in policy-making, giving early support for key networks, and generally increasing the visibility of environmental organizations and issues.
- In Brazil, Southeast Asia, and Mexico, advisors for the Global Greengrants Fund are stimulating a vibrant new philanthropy by pioneering the creation of local environmental grantmaking organizations for grassroots and community action. The Greengrants Alliance of Funds are independent, locally constituted and governed grantmaking organizations for environmental justice in their regions. And, along the way, we find we’ve made initial inroads in changing the way Western philanthropy views the environment. Supporting small groups in the Global South is no longer seen as a bizarre idea, and reducing grantmakers’ “transaction costs” so that small grants can become practical is now a common point of inquiry.
We are also promoting exploration of alternatives to traditional grantmaking among the foundation community. A Council on Foundations Annual Conference session entitled “The Power and Role of Intuition in Powerful Grantmaking” was so popular that we were asked to repeat or expand upon at other CoF sessions, as well as conferences of the European Foundation Centre, the Environmental Grantmakers Association, and other organizations.
Bringing change to the philanthropic sector can be a slow process, like turning an enormous ship, but we are seeing indications that this particular ship is turning.
We’ll let you know when we manage to award the next $10 million. We suspect it will be a bit quicker than the first $10 million.