Spotlight on

Reducing climate damage

Climate Fund Focus

In 2025, political change and growing uncertainty made it even clearer that betting on a single pathway to achieve global decarbonization would not be enough. By anchoring to robust diversification as a core principle, we focused on building a portfolio that can hold up across many possible futures and risks.

We focused our grantmaking on four promising interventions:

Shaping U.S. innovation policy
Building the Ecoright
Shaping EU innovation policy
Facilitating decarbonization in emerging economies

Climate Protest — ▲ Image Source: Markus Spiske on Unsplash

We knew after the 2024 U.S. presidential elections that we would be entering a different era of climate politics. And, indeed, 2025 was full of volatility and change – from the fight around the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S., to the increased pushback against Europe’s climate agenda, and much more.

Powered by our community's generosity, we disbursed nearly $40M in 2025. We plan to disburse at least another $40M in 2026 to equip climate philanthropy and the climate community to adapt to a radically changed and changing world. We've built the systems and methodologies for grantmaking at a higher scale and we are committed to the rapid spend-down of donations.

Thank you to our community for supporting Founders Pledge to meet this challenging moment.
Johannes Ackva
Climate Lead

Our global grantmaking portfolio in 2025

In November 2025, we published Robust to Risk, our comprehensive analysis of how climate philanthropy must adapt when political risks materialize. We mapped the potential impact of interventions in different regions, laying out our priorities for investigating future grants.

While broad political headwinds affect climate action everywhere, the specific risks facing different regions often operate independently. Our portfolio strategically positions us across geographies to ensure that our investments in some regions will remain promising, even when risks materialize in others.

Illustrative image — ▲ Climate Fund grantees by geography 2020-2025.

2025 Climate Fund headline figures

$55M

Contributed to the Fund

$38.8M

Granted to high-impact funding opportunities

1,485

Total donors

The impact our community created in 2025

Shaping U.S. Innovation Policy

The U.S. is the primary driver of global clean energy innovation capacity, making federal innovation policy critical for global decarbonization. Our investments supported crucial innovation policy work within the U.S., such as the Department of Energy’s capacity to deploy large-scale clean energy funding.

2025 grants included:

Innovation Initiative: ensuring coordination across the energy innovation advocacy ecosystem
Energy Futures Initiative (EFI) Foundation: supporting analysis and policy engagement related to U.S. Department of Energy reform
DEPLOY/US: expanding work to support Department of Energy priorities
Clean Tomorrow: supporting development of the Re-Energizing America report

Building the Ecoright

The 2024 U.S. presidential election exposed a predictable, fundamental vulnerability: climate progress built entirely on Democratic support collapses when power shifts to the right. Our investments aimed to correct this structural imbalance in climate philanthropy, ensuring that bipartisan progress could continue, regardless of party.

2025 grants included:

DEPLOY/US: a multi-purpose grant to strengthen right-of-center climate and clean energy civil society in the U.S., spanning innovation policy, permitting, trade, field building, and core capacity

Shaping EU Innovation Policy

Europe has traditionally been a global leader for climate progress. The European Union is currently negotiating its 2028–2034 budget, which could help scale nascent clean technologies of the future.

2025 grants included:

EU Climate Innovation Hub: coordinating infrastructure for European climate innovation policy advocacy
Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) & EU Climate Innovation Hub: supporting stronger business representation in climate policy

Facilitating Decarbonization in Emerging Economies

Emerging economies account for the vast majority of future emissions, yet receive a much smaller fraction of climate philanthropy attention. Our investments help shape global emissions long-term, such as by tackling the critical challenge of carbon lock-in in countries like China and Indonesia.

2025 grants included:

Quantified Carbon’s Repower Initiative: backing coal repowering advocacy in emerging Asia

Quantified Carbon team — ▲ Image courtesy of Quantified Carbon

Impact stories

Energy Futures Initiative (EFI) Foundation: $2M in grants

Starting in April, at the height of the Trump Administration’s effort to cut staffing and funding, we funded EFI Foundation's research documenting how severe staffing shortages at the Department of Energy were creating bottlenecks in deploying billions in clean energy funding.

This was the first quantitative assessment of this capacity crisis and led to recommendations for institutional reform. This work and its follow ups were the preeminent source of data on the Department of Energy (Politico, E&E News, Latitude Media, and others). Funded work in 2026 will enable the EFI Foundation to publish a public database on workforce and innovation metrics.

DEPLOY/US: $22.8M grant

Since 2023, we’ve been working through DEPLOY/US to build the vibrant field of Ecoright organizations, leveraging their decades of experience, deep field relationships, and ability to identify blind spots and seed new organizations.

In 2025, we made a $22.8M investment through DEPLOY/US to build the field for the long run, via multiple strategic priorities that will unfold over the coming years.

Climate in the media

Washington Post: On Giving Tuesday, how to make small donations with big climate impact

The Wall Street Journal: With Trump 2.0, These Climate Donors Are Thinking Differently

Vox: The best charities for climate change, according to experts

The New York Times: Bill Gates Says Climate Change ‘Will Not Lead to Humanity’s Demise’

Inside Philanthropy: Trump Calls Climate Change the “Greatest Con Job Ever.” What Paths Are Open to Philanthropy?

Heatmap: The Philanthropy Stepping in to Fund Center-Right Climate Groups

What our members say

“Climate change is a systemic problem, so solving it requires systemic thinking. What I appreciate about Founders Pledge is that their Climate research identifies the highest-impact opportunities and then enables members to act on them collectively through the Climate Fund. Pooling donations allows the team to move quickly and make meaningful commitments that individual donors might struggle to coordinate. I trust the research team to think critically and pursue the most effective strategies, and that’s why I’m happy to support their work as a member.”
Ignaz Forstmeier
Co-Founder, Personio

“I support the Climate Fund as the premier vehicle to tackle the world’s most pressing environmental problem. Backed by a strong research team, the Climate Fund works to maximize the effectiveness of every dollar to achieve gigaton-level emissions reductions on a global scale.”
Eric Ross
Investor, Accellos Holdings