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

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

Open Philanthropy Project

We do foundational mathematical research to ensure smarter-than-human artificial intelligence has a positive impact.

The Machine Intelligence Research Institute is a research nonprofit studying the mathematical underpinnings of intelligent behavior. Our mission is to develop formal tools for the clean design and analysis of general-purpose AI systems, with the intent of making such systems safer and more reliable when they are developed.

The field of AI has a reputation for overselling its progress. In the “AI winters” of the late 1970s and 1980s, researchers’ failures to make good on ambitious promises led to a collapse of funding and interest in AI. Although the field is now undergoing a renaissance, overconfidence is still a major fear; discussion of the possibility of human-equivalent general intelligence is still largely relegated to the science fiction shelf.

At the same time, researchers largely agree that AI is likely to begin outperforming humans on most cognitive tasks in this century. Given how disruptive domain-general AI could be, we think it is prudent to begin a conversation about this now, and to investigate whether there are limited areas in which we can predict and shape this technology’s societal impact.

Researchers at MIRI tend to be relatively agnostic about how the state of the art in AI will change over the coming decades, and how many years off smarter-than human AI systems are. 

Machine Intelligence Research Institute

Delivering unconditional cash directly to the world's poorest households via secure mobile transfers. 

Since 2009, GiveDirectly has delivered more than $580 million in unconditional cash transfers to families in need. These one-time cash transfers allow recipients to invest in what they need most and have been shown to improve their earnings, children’s school attendance, health, nutrition, and mental well-being.
 
GiveDirectly uses government data to target villages where most or all residents are living in extreme poverty, defined by the World Bank as earning under $2.15/day. In-country GiveDirectly staff enroll one member of each household in the entire village to receive a one-time transfer of about $1,000 USD sent in two installments using mobile money. Recipients can then withdraw the mobile funds as cash with local agents and use the funds to invest in what they need – whether it’s on starting a business, education, making their home safer/sturdier, healthcare, or livestock.
 
GiveDirectly uses rigorous experimental research (randomized controlled trials) to measure the impact of their unconditional cash programs and answer public policy questions, generating evidence on key design and implementation questions across varied contexts. You can find over 300 studies on the positive impacts of cash transfers in GiveDirectly’s Cash Research Explorer.

GiveDirectly

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

The Founders Pledge Climate Fund exists to leverage each dollar and fund the most effective, neglected climate solutions.

Climate change is an incredibly complex problem borne out of how we produce and consume energy; it's intertwined with challenges of economic development, energy poverty, and emissions-fueled air pollution. It is an environmental and humanitarian crisis we must urgently address.

We aim to take a holistic approach that recognizes the global nature of this challenge and the fact that, despite its urgency, we are still in the early days of climate action. We address the worst-case scenarios of climate damage, and look for solutions that can reduce current carbon emissions and accelerate the transition to clean energy to meet global demand, especially in developing countries. Through the Fund, we:

- Accelerate innovation in neglected technologies
- Catalytically grow the most effective climate organizations
- Promote policy leadership and paradigm shaping

### 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. This means that you can rely on the Funds to create meaningful, real change, rather than just maintaining the status quo.
- **Impact-driven philanthropy.** This fund prioritizes the highest-impact solutions to challenges. We assess where the gaps are, which opportunities may be neglected by other funders, and where the biggest wins are in terms of making the biggest difference.
- **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. 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.

### Frequently-Asked Questions

**Can charities apply for money from the Fund?**
The Funds do not generally accept applications from charities, and we request that charities do not send unsolicited applications for funding. If the Fund Managers choose to open up an application round, this will be publicized.

**How frequently will you make grants from the Fund?**
In general, Fund Managers will review grantmaking decisions on a quarterly basis. Decisions will be made based on the value of Funds and the available options for high-impact grantmaking. We may disburse funds outside of quarterly review dates if we become aware of a particularly promising and time-sensitive funding.

**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 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 Fund

The Top Charities Fund supports the highest-priority funding needs among our top charities.

We find and recommend outstanding giving opportunities and publish our research to help donors give more effectively and with greater confidence.

All donations here support our Top Charities Fund. Donations to the Top Charities Fund are granted on a rolling basis to support cost-effective funding opportunities at our top charities. We use our latest research to grant the funds to the top charity (or charities) where we believe they’ll do the most good.

Learn more and view past grants at https://www.givewell.org/top-charities-fund


Photo caption: At health centers in Sierra Leone supported by Helen Keller Intl, mothers who bring their children in for twice-yearly vitamin A supplemention can also receive comprehensive counseling about birth control options that are available to them free of charge. Combining family planning and children's healthcare services benefits both mother and child. 2019.

Top Charities Fund

1067431123

1435915265

148788709

2074652487

2352003526

2535103040

2547000601

2551237796

2595251256

2808155606

2883383521

2970598858

3107677517

316638097

339774024

3497063662

3797661376

3868271524

410756082

4124487947

4172451122

496574456

698107245

91415239

2729980760

3440869557

671754822

87081813

1014384873

1112422858

153399038

2028390811

220342792

2266630408

2456389719

2519810400

2539558839

2826465835

We are a nonprofit, so instead of charging fees we rely on the generosity of donors like you.

Choose a donation for Every.org

2843798242

2898624300

2916352438

3125568929

3259439560

3583328878

3642494300

3902459442

4136002033

4177183036

4250940449

585491400

641510716

91682487