Native Americans have been marginalized for too long

Works to exonerate innocent people through DNA testing and reform the criminal justice system to prevent injustice.

The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University to assist prisoners who could be proven innocent through DNA testing. More than 350 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 38 who pleaded guilty to crimes they did not commit and 20 who served time on death row. The Innocence Project provided direct representation or critical assistance in more than 200 exonerations.   The Innocence Project’s full-time staff attorneys and Cardozo clinic students provide direct representation or critical assistance in most of these cases. The Innocence Project’s groundbreaking use of DNA technology to free innocent people has provided irrefutable proof that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Now an independent nonprofit organization closely affiliated with Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, the Innocence Project’s mission is nothing less than to free the staggering numbers of innocent people who remain incarcerated and to bring substantive reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment.  With the generous support of individuals like you the Innocence Project has exonerated scores of innocent people and worked around the country to reform our criminal justice system. With the generous support of individuals like you the Innocence Project has exonerated scores of innocent people and worked around the country to reform our criminal justice system.

Innocence Project

We are Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples. We’re fighting for their survival around the world.

We are Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples. We’re fighting for their survival around the world.  More than one hundred and fifty million men, women and children in over sixty countries live in tribal societies. They’re mostly self-sufficient and depend on their land for their health and wellbeing. To tribal peoples, land is life.

Tribal peoples are our contemporaries. They’re not primitive. They have technology, laws, education, religions, and social, political and economic structures. They developed many of the medicines now used by industrialized societies, and created some of the principal staple foods like maize and potatoes that now feed millions. Tribal peoples shaped the environment and help make the world a better place.  Tribal societies are extraordinarily diverse and there’s a lot to learn from them. They understand the natural world and are expert conservationists.

Many tribal peoples have enlightened social values. They’re not brutal savages as is sometimes claimed. They put the community before the individual, share and exchange possessions rather than amass personal wealth, and embrace gender equality.  Tribal peoples are at the mercy of racism, land theft, forced development and genocidal violence. Their human rights are being violated. Their lands and resources are stolen for profit, even though land theft is a crime under international law. Tribal lands give them food, housing, medicines, clothing and a sense of identity and belonging. Land theft causes destitution, disease and death, and it’s wiping out uncontacted tribes.   The world needs tribal peoples. Our work is preventing their annihilation. We work in partnership with tribes and give them a platform to speak to the world. We need your support to bring about a radical change in public opinion to make sure they have a future. Help us fight one of the most urgent and horrific humanitarian crises of our time. Tribal peoples need you. Let’s fight for their survival, together.

Survival International

We need an all-out mobilization of our economy and society to protect humanity and restore a safe climate.

We are already experiencing catastrophic climate impacts, and they are accelerating. Our climate politics have not kept up with the ever-worsening scientific reports and demonstrated reality. We don’t have 30 years to decarbonize.  We need to reach zero emissions and to reverse the 6th mass extinction through a just transition as quickly as humanly possible.

Climate Emergency Fund has been turbo-charging the climate movement by supporting its most brave and adamant activists since our founding in 2019. We support the people who tell the truth, demand transformation at emergency speed, and put everything on the line to protect humanity and the living world.

Climate Emergency Fund

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

 The oldest, largest nonprofit legal org asserting and defending the rights of Indian tribes, organizations, and individuals.

Since 1970, the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) has provided legal assistance to Indian tribes, organizations, and individuals nationwide who might otherwise have gone without adequate representation. NARF has successfully asserted and defended the most important rights of Indians and tribes in hundreds of major cases, and has achieved significant results in such critical areas as tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, natural resource protection, and Indian education. NARF is a non-profit 501c(3) organization that focuses on applying existing laws and treaties to guarantee that national and state governments live up to their legal obligations.

The Native American Rights Fund is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, with branch offices in Washington, DC, and Anchorage, AK.

NARF is governed by a volunteer board of directors composed of thirteen Native Americans from different tribes throughout the country with a variety of expertise in Indian matters. A staff of approximately 16 attorneys handles over 50 major cases at any given time, with most of the cases taking several years to resolve. Cases are accepted on the basis of their breadth and potential importance in setting precedents and establishing important principles of Indian law.

With credibility built over 50 years of service, NARF has become a respected consultant to policy makers and others engaged in drafting legislation. As a consensus builder, NARF works with religious, civil rights, and other Native American organizations to shape the laws that will help assure the civil and religious rights of all Native Americans. NARF attorneys, many of whom are tribal citizens, use their understanding of Indian legal issues to assist tribes in negotiating with individuals, companies, and governmental agencies.

Since NARF’s inception, Indian law has changed dramatically. It has become a recognized specialty with a well-documented body of statutes and case law. However, that has not made it a simpler field. In the 1970’s and the early 1980’s, courts were generally receptive to Indian rights cases. However, since the mid to late 1980’s, an increasingly conservative federal bench has made Indian rights cases more difficult to win. Combined with the huge cost of litigation—in time and in money—this means NARF and its Indian clients are always attuned to opportunities for negotiation, consensus, and settlement.

Native American Rights Fund

Realizing the promise of the Bill of Rights for all - the ACLU dares to create a more perfect union.

The ACLU dares to create a more perfect union — beyond one person, party, or side. Our mission is to realize this promise of the United States Constitution for all and expand the reach of its guarantees.

ACLU Foundation

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. 