elanwong-blog

[elanwong-blog]

The Roles of Philanthropy in Climate Action

Hey everyone! I have been interning at Pangea Giving which is a Seattle-based giving circle. Pangea Giving is a philanthropic group that supports grassroots organizations in the global south in the regions of East Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. During my internship, I worked on two main projects and then their communications. My first project was to create an Impact report to show the impact Pangea Giving members have made in the 2018 grant cycle. The second project is my climate philanthropy research paper I am writing for them which will include an overview of climate philanthropy and case studies on foundations that are similar to Pangea. My other tasks included communications (Facebook Posts and blog posts of my research), and some event planning.

         The most interesting piece of information I found was that trends in funding largely depend on the size of the grants. Large funders (which I define as those with average grant size above $25,000) play a role in funding large capital climate mitigation efforts, while small funders (those with average grant size below $25,000) tend to fund in the areas of adaptation. Also, when philanthropy’s role in addressing climate change is discussed (In the news, among funders, and leaders) the focus is usually on large funders and large-scale mitigation efforts.

         The main challenge during my internship was balancing all these tasks I was asked to do per week with different timelines and different due dates with two projects I had to continue to make headway on. In order to overcome that, I made sure I blocked out time in my calendar to work on my internship and after each of my weekly meetings with the site supervisor. I would sit down and write down a to-do list for each day in order to meet my weekly goals. That really helped me a lot and saved me a lot of time in the long run.

If you are interested in reading my blog post and Impact Report click here!

Blog #1: Evolving Nature of Philanthropy

Blog # 2 Two Scales in Philanthropy, Two Approaches to Climate Action

Impact Report 

I always need a big table to work on my projects. So much color color-coding and highlighting!

Questions:

What do you think are the gaps and opportunities for climate philanthropy to do more in climate action? 

What do you think the main pros and cons are of grassroots philanthropy?