On a Friday morning in April, Dan Stein, founder of Giving Green, a climate charity, found big news in a surprising email. An anonymous donor had given $10 million to his fund.
“I couldn’t quite figure out the number of zeros,” Stein said, adding that he was “tillified, amazed and surprised” by the gift.
Giving Green collects donations and distributes them to a handful of nonprofits it believes have the potential to make a significant difference in preventing climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The $10 million donation is the largest gift the nonprofit has ever received, and it essentially dropped from the sky without warning.
The mystery gift went to the Giving Green fund at Giving What We Can, an organization inspired by effective altruism that asks people around the world to pledge to give away a percentage of their income or wealth each year. The donor is anonymous because the gift comes from a donor-advised fund at Fidelity Charitable.
“At first they too were concerned that this was a mistake and went back to Fidelity to verify it before telling us,” Stein said of Giving What We Can.
By looking at their records and talking to the organizations they recommended, Stein and his team think the same donor may have donated as much as $17 million more directly to those organizations in the past two years. Because the gifts are anonymous, it’s impossible to confirm, but Stein says the timing of the gifts arriving in two groups indicates they may have come from the same person or organization.
Fidelity Charitable said it does not comment on specific grants or donors.
Tory Martin, director of communications and strategic partnerships for the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy, said anonymous donations — even large donations — are not uncommon, but such gifts are often behind-the-scenes relationship-building efforts.
“Most of the time, if you’re getting millions of dollars, stewardship has occurred. “The upbringing took place,” he said.
Martin said that giving anonymously is generally perceived as the highest form of giving, as the donor draws attention away from himself, adding that the donor thinks: “I do this with a sense of creating a better community, and I’m just saying: Money goes elsewhere instead of sitting in my pocket or in my bank account.” “It should go to the goals.”
But for any nonprofit individual, receiving an anonymous gift can pose reputational risks if the donor ultimately turns out to be controversial.
Stein doesn’t have a good lead on the identity of the mystery donor, but since he won’t get any public recognition for the gift, he suspects it’s a company trying to greenwash the donations. He sees the donations as proof that there are donors who want to donate to climate change but don’t know where to donate. Providing highly researched recommendations is why he started Going Green.
One of the proposed organizations, Industrious Labs, advocates for the decarbonization of heavy industries such as aluminum and steel. Evan Gillespie, a partner at the organization, said these sectors are often wrongly thought of as the hardest to eliminate. Giving Green reached out to them directly for a lengthy review process that resulted in Giving Green recommending them two years in a row.
“You have to take a leap of faith to say, ‘OK, we’re going to reveal our most private thoughts about how this is going to work,'” Gillespie said. He credits Giving Green’s advice with getting them several million dollars in funding, which, critically, is unlimited.
On their website, Giving Green explains why they decided to offer donations to Industrious Labs and other partners and includes detailed information about their campaign, theory of change and future plans. Giving Green says its methodology is inspired by the principles of effective altruism, a philanthropic social movement that developed philosophy departments in the United Kingdom in the 2010s.
Supporters say they try to maximize the good they can do in the world and give to what they think are the most effective charities and interventions. Some powerful and wealthy donors, particularly from the tech sector, have embraced effective altruism and poured funds into areas such as mitigating the worst possible impacts of AI, pandemic preparedness, global health and animal rights.
Many effective altruists also pledged to donate a portion of their income, while others argued that it was moral to make as much money as possible and that it was right to give it away.
“We think the climate problem is an incredible generational problem, and we think we need to do something as a society to stop it,” Stein said. “And the only thing people can do is donate, and they should try to make those donations effectively.”
Charitable donations to climate change-related issues have increased in recent years, but research from the nonprofit ClimateWorks shows that it is still a small portion of overall donations. ClimateWorks tracked $3.7 billion in philanthropic giving from foundations in 2022 to support mitigating or adapting to the effects of climate change. Major donations by individuals likely amount to between $4.2 billion and $9 billion in 2022, according to ClimateWorks’ report, but are harder to track.
The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy argues that more funds should go directly to communities most affected by the effects of climate change, rather than to think tanks or national environmental organizations. They also warn that investing in technologies that will take years to develop are “wrong solutions.”
“What movement groups are saying is: ‘It’s not climate change, it’s systems change.’ And most of the time when you’re looking at cost-effective things, you’re still thinking from an extractive mindset. It’s like trying to protect your profits. Save your money for a rainy day. “Just give as much as you need,” said Senowa Mize-Fox, director of movement engagement for climate justice at NCRP. “After all, what we always say is; A rainy day has come. The rainy day was here. “The climate crisis is happening right now.”
Stein said Giving Green plans to distribute the majority of the $10 million donation as quickly as possible, with most of it going to organizations they recommend. They will also direct smaller amounts to new organizations or programs within organizations that they support but are not prepared to include among their top recommendations.
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