The potential to avert such a significant amount of CO2 per dollar is an immediate, highly effective strategy to conserve our CO2 budget and buy time for further efforts in policy change, carbon capture, research and development, etc. to hopefully turn the tide of this climate crisis.

Matching contributions through 12/31 for this effective fund...how could anyone concerned about climate change say no to an extra holiday donation? Thank you Erik Bergman!

Grateful for the ability to maximize the CO2 mitigated per dollar donated by funneling my donations into a combined fund managed by those more knowledgeable about and dedicated to the real-time analysis of impactful climate change mitigation. 

Upfront donation to push for bipartisan climate policies at the beginning of Biden's term (early "honeymoon" phases of presidencies tend to be the most productive)

The mission of Coalition for Rainforest Nations (www.cfrn.org) is to slow, stop and reverse global deforestation.

The Coalition for Rainforest Nations (CfRN) is a 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering rainforest countries to assume a leadership role in the fight against climate change. Through policy support, capacity building, and direct finance, CfRN incentivizes developing countries to slow, stop, and reverse deforestation through the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) mechanism. REDD+ is now universally recognized as one of the most immediate mitigation actions that preserves the planet’s rainforests and directly addresses the climate emergency.

CfRN’s Origins and the Promise of REDD+
Inspired by the call of Papua New Guinea’s former Prime Minister, Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare, to equitably preserve the planet’s rainforests, CfRN’s Executive Director, Kevin Conrad, who grew up in Papua New Guinea, and Managing Director Federica’s Bietta, who is from Italy, lead the Coalition for Rainforest Nations. By advancing REDD+, their aim was to give rainforest nations a voice within international climate negotiations and define rainforests as worth more alive than dead. 

REDD+ was introduced in 2005 at the Eleventh Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) by the newly formed Coalition for Rainforest Nations. Founding nations, Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea, envisioned REDD+ as a way to assign a financial value to forests for the role they play in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and not just as a source of logged timber, agriculture, or grazing lands.  REDD+ (Forestry) is the only sector to enjoy a unique article in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement (Article 5).  Furthermore, REDD+ preserves forests at the scale and speed needed to keep 1.5 alive – the goal prescribed under the Paris Agreement of limiting temperature rise to 1.5°Celsius. 

The REDD+ mechanism was developed over the years at successive COP meetings, as shown in the timeline below. As a result of CfRN’s leadership, rainforests are now recognized as a critical climate solution under the UNFCCC.  

What We Do
CfRN’s work encompasses three key areas: policy support; capacity building; and direct finance. The collective goal of these programs is to effectively reward countries for the work they do to preserve their forests. The Coalition provides direct policy support during all UNFCCC negotiating sessions and works in-country to help develop conservation policies, laws, and national forest protection plans. CfRN also trains countries’ experts to build the expertise needed to gather data required by the UNFCCC to report forest conservation results. CfRN works to ensure that rainforest countries are compensated for verified emission reductions under REDD+, as promised under the Paris Agreement. 

Policy Support
As a UNFCCC-recognized Negotiating Group, CfRN establishes and advances positions on behalf of its countries – over fifty rainforest nations —at all UNFCCC sessions. In this capacity, CfRN strives to advance the REDD+ mechanism and ensure that climate finance is allocated equitably to rainforest nations. Currently, CfRN is working to ensure that REDD+ is fully represented in the rulebook of the Paris Agreement. 

Technical Training & Capacity Building 
Countries’ results are eligible for financial compensation through REDD+ only after rigorous measurement, reporting and verification data are submitted, reviewed, and deemed to conform to UNFCCC guidelines. REDD+ results are then registered on the UNFCCC REDD+ Information Hub and made available to the public to review in detail. In its capacity building role, CfRN helps countries develop national technical expertise to take stock of their forest resources, create national plans to preserve them, and submit their data to the REDD+ registry at the UNFCCC in a consistent manner with their climate pledges, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) to the Paris Agreement. 

Direct Finance
To date, rainforest countries have not been compensated for the majority of their REDD+ emissions reductions, as promised. Though certain governments including Norway, the U.K., and Germany, have paid bilaterally for some results, this is far from sufficient. CfRN’s finance work helps rainforest nations raise debt funding and receive performance-based compensation. The sale and trading of REDD+ Paris Agreement-compliant carbon credits is a growing source of climate finance. These credits are available for purchase through CfRN’s REDD.plus platform. Over the next few years, our member countries will bring a pipeline of sovereign carbon credits to market representing Paris Agreement-compliant emissions reductions, resulting from member country efforts to keep their rainforests standing. 

Coalition for Rainforest Nations

Supporting highly-impactful, evidence-based solutions to the triple challenge of climate change, air pollution and energy poverty.

## The Founders Pledge Perspective

Climate change is one part of a triple challenge surrounding energy production. Not only does most current energy production lead to damaging carbon emissions, the effects of which are devastating ecosystems and changing our planet beyond recognition, it also pollutes the air and leaves many of the world’s poor without sufficient energy. This adds up to an environmental and humanitarian crisis.

Thus, we face a triple challenge: we not only need to drive down carbon emissions to near zero by mid-century, and drastically reduce air pollution, but we need to do so while supporting work to reduce global poverty that will often be accompanied, or even driven, by increased energy consumption.

We aim to take a holistic approach that recognizes the global nature of this challenge, as well as the fact that, despite its urgency, we are still in the early days of climate action. This means that the solutions that we focus on will not only reduce emissions now, but will do so in a way that avoids future emissions, while also creating opportunities for the world’s poor and eventually ending energy poverty entirely.

We aim to do this in three ways:

- **Audacious advocacy**: By focusing our grantmaking on organizations leveraging large amounts of money through policy advocacy. There are highly effective organizations with budgets in the millions of dollars which have influenced government innovation budgets, orders of magnitude larger than their costs. By looking for opportunities with leverage like this, we can have an outsize impact.
- **Accelerating low-carbon innovation**: By finding and funding advocacy opportunities that strengthen the energy innovation eco-system or promote particularly neglected technologies. As the success of solar has shown for electricity, the availability of cheap, low carbon alternatives to our current energy sources can make a very significant difference. Efficient, low-cost technology can spread around the world without inter-governmental cooperation or expensive policies to spread around the world, making it a more robust strategy in a world where climate action will often not be the first priority of policy makers and the public.
- **Focusing on blindspots and bottlenecks**: By focusing on areas neglected by other stakeholders, we can ensure that fund dollars make as much difference as possible. While some technologies, such as solar, enjoy widespread popularity and significant policy support, this is not similarly true for other approaches, resulting in a huge imbalance in resource allocation. By finding and funding advocates for overlooked solutions, such as carbon capture and storage technology, we can ensure we are making the most of every tool available to us in the fight against climate change.

Managed by two members of the Founders Pledge Research team, the Climate Change Fund identifies and supports sustainable, evidence-based solutions to the “triple challenge” of carbon emissions, air pollution, and energy poverty.

## Our Approach to Grantmaking

When evaluating potential grants, we consider several key points:

- **Counterfactual impact**. Our grants are designed to create a meaningful outcome that would not otherwise have happened. In particular, we aim to make grants that otherwise wouldn’t have been made, rather than those which just take the place of other philanthropists’ donations. This means that you can rely on the Funds to create meaningful, real change, rather than just maintaining the status quo.
- **Impact-driven philanthropy**. The goal of this fund is maximal positive impact, irrespective of this impact being “sexy” or visible. This means we will focus on opportunities that others focused on clear attribution of their work or shiny outcomes might neglect. For example, we are very comfortable funding organizations to increase their general capacity and strategy when we perceive this as their bottleneck to higher impact, rather than being tied to specific outcomes or deliverables.
- **The organization’s funding gap**. Not all organizations are set up to scale up their programming and many can’t productively absorb large amounts of unsolicited funding. We evaluate all potential grantees’ capacity for growth and consider how much money they could put to good use.
- **Organizational strength**. Particularly with unrestricted funding, it’s important to have trust in the leadership and capacity of the organizations we support. We look at their track record of success and their transparency about failures as well as successes, and we only support those organizations which are exceptionally well run.
- **Time-critical opportunities and funding certainty**. While Founders Pledge members give to our top climate charities regularly, sometimes there are time-critical opportunities which require fast decisions. Or there are needs for certainty of funding streams to allow new hires and start new campaigns and programs. We will use the Fund to make grants that enable such short-term opportunities and stability for high-impact funding opportunities thereby increasing the impact compared to individual giving to specific organizations.
- **Portfolio approach**. Because most climate damage comes from particular severe outcomes – with a world of 4 degrees of warming being much worse than twice as bad as a world with 2 degrees – and because every particular strategy – such as energy innovation – might underdeliver, we pursue a portfolio approach to maximize positive impact. This means we will diversify our bets in ways that, when one approach fails (such as energy innovation), the others we promote (such as carbon removal) can be expected to be particularly important and still available. This maximizes the expected impact of your donation in a world characterized by huge uncertainty about the success of different high-impact solutions.

## Frequently-Asked Questions

**Can charities apply for money from the Fund?**

The Funds do not generally accept applications from charities. If the Fund Managers choose to open up an application round, this will be publicized. Charities are requested not to send unsolicited applications for funding.

**How frequently will you make grants from the Fund?**

Fund Managers will review grant-making decisions on a quarterly basis. Decisions will be made based on the value of Funds and the available options for high-impact grant-making. We may sometimes delay grant-making if we believe that waiting for more promising opportunities will be more impactful. Conversely, we may disburse funds outside of our quarterly review dates if we become aware of a particularly promising and time-sensitive funding opportunity.

**How will my contribution be used?**

All funds are granted out. The Fund is not an investment vehicle. The Fund does not use any percentage of contributions to cover staff time or other overhead costs. Every dollar contributed to the Fund will be used to make grants directly to end-user organizations creating a real difference.

## More Questions?

To learn more about the Founders Pledge Climate Change Fund, please visit [founderspledge.com](https://founderspledge.com/funds/climate-change-fund) or email the Fund Managers at [funds@founderspledge.com](mailto:funds@founderspledge.com).

Founders Pledge: Climate Change Fund

Catalyzing resilient solutions, scaled to meet the climate challenge.

CATF is a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing atmospheric pollution through research, advocacy, and private sector collaboration.

Clean Air Task Force

Founders Pledge is a global nonprofit empowering entrepreneurs to do the most good possible with their charitable giving. 

We equip members with everything needed to maximize their impact, from evidence-led research and advice on the world’s most pressing problems, to comprehensive infrastructure for global grant-making, alongside opportunities to learn and connect. We’re grateful to be funded by our members and other generous donors. 