Climate change is the challenge of our lifetime, and we should applaud the millions of people across the globe engaged in this fight. Leaders like Sir David Attenborough, Peggy Shepard, Elizabeth Yeampierre, and Jason Momoa have shown us that no matter your vocation, age, or country, everyone has a role to play in the effort to safeguard our planet for generations to come.

According to a survey of 130,000 individuals across 125 countries published in Nature Climate Change,“89% wanted to see more political action [and] 86% think people in their country ‘should try to fight global warming.’” With such broad support for climate action across the world, why do we still face this crisis?

We cannot prevent environmental degradation in a vacuum. To drive real progress, we need collective action and partnership. Rather than thousands of disjointed, piecemeal efforts to combat climate change, it’s time to pool our resources – funding, advocacy, environmental expertise, technology – and halt climate change in its tracks.

Windward Fund works to make this kind of collective action possible through our fiscal sponsorship model. We act as a shared operational hub for several environmentally focused, independent nonprofit projects. When a natural disaster hits or a new carbon removal technology is developed, a project can spring into action and respond at scale, while we handle back-office support.

Time is not on our side when it comes to climate change, and the ability to quickly distribute aid or provide funding for innovative solutions is key to our projects’ success and impact. The benefit of this model is the ability for Windward Fund projects to easily collaborate while pursuing their own, individual programmatic activities.

I am incredibly proud of the way our projects and grantees have demonstrated the kind of collaboration needed to create a ‘big tent’ response to environmental challenges. Our recently filed tax forms detail the bold solutions, partnerships, and progress we facilitated in 2023. This year, Windward Fund awarded over $154 million to 337 grantees across 48 states and territories and reached 25 countries.

Today, I’d like to offer a glimpse into our work to empower the environmental movement in 2023.

Resilient Foundation

Our project, the Resilient Foundation, unites a global network of environmentally focused nonprofits to drive collective action through storytelling. They partner with changemakers and experts to uplift the experience of local communities impacted by the climate crisis to engage and encourage climate advocacy and solutions globally. When we are connected to an issue emotionally, it removes any sense of separation or abstractness and instead yields long-term commitment.

For instance, last year, the foundation launched an effort to combat plastic pollution by producing a docuseries, amplifying the voices of scientists and experts who understand the detrimental impact of plastics on human health. Resilient Foundation leaders understood that making the fight against plastic pollution personal to viewers – we’ve all dealt with illness in some form – was key to driving engagement. Once folks are bought in, the foundation provides the tools to take action – big or small – in their communities.

Global Methane Hub

Global Methane Hub (GMH) is a global donor collaborative, focused on rapid, systemic reduction in methane emissions and a goal to catalyze $1 billion in philanthropic funding by the end of the decade. The group serves as a centralized resource to plan funding and create common infrastructure for methane reduction advocates across the world.

In 2023, GMH collaborated with partners like the World Bank and issued $84 million in grants to reduce emissions and build capacity among nonprofits that share GMH’s mission. As GMH noted in their impact report, “our theory of change prioritizes building capabilities, inviting participation, and amplifying the role of leaders in the Global South while always looking at the big picture: expanding the role of methane mitigation across geographies and sectors.”

Windward Fund is proud to fiscally sponsor an organization that shares our unified approach to climate change mitigation.

Carbon to Sea Initiative

The Carbon to Sea Initiative is an innovative and ambitious project aiming to systematically evaluate whether we can enhance the ocean’s natural ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the air, in order to mitigate the worst effects of climate change — as a complement to dramatic emissions reduction. The nonprofit serves as a shared home for research, technological innovation, and field work based on responsible science.

According to leading scientific experts, we must remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide in the coming decades. That’s why it is essential we advance research into ocean-climate solutions, like ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE). OAE has been identified by the National Academies of Science as a high potential climate solution that needs more study. Because Carbon to Sea has the administrative and operational support of Windward Fund, the group can efficiently deploy funding to dozens of grantees, focus on their mission-driven work, and accelerate this potentially groundbreaking solution to the climate challenge.

These projects underscore how fiscal sponsors like Windward Fund are uniquely positioned to foster philanthropic collaboration and collective action. We’ve continued this work to connect leaders, tools, and resources and look forward to supporting the scientists, experts, and advocates as they combat the climate crisis and advance a sustainable future for years to come.