DISPATCHDISPATCHA new analysis reveals that the majority of climate funding bypasses the grassroots organizations best positioned to deliver it — and the foundations writing the checks may not know.
Between 2018 and 2024, $14.3B in climate-designated philanthropic capital flowed primarily through legacy intermediaries...
The gap between stated equity commitments and actual disbursement patterns has widened, not narrowed, in the post-pandemic period.
Program officers at major foundations are operating with outdated landscape maps. The data in this report changes that.
The crisis in climate philanthropy is not one of intention — it is one of infrastructure. Foundations are funding the wrong layer of the ecosystem, and the data makes this undeniable.
Misallocated across 6-year period
For six consecutive years, the Dispatch Research Desk tracked disbursement patterns across 127 foundations with climate mandates. What emerged was not a picture of negligence — it was a picture of structural blindness. Foundations were funding the organizations they already knew, through the channels already built, toward the outcomes already legible to their program teams. The grassroots organizations doing the hardest work in the most affected communities remained invisible to the systems that were supposed to find them.
This is not a story about bad actors. It is a story about bad maps. When the map is wrong, even well-funded expeditions arrive at the wrong destination.
"We thought we were funding the movement. We were funding a photograph of the movement."
— Dr. Amara Osei-Bonsu, Program Director, Greenfield Foundationof climate grants go to organizations with budgets over $5M
of funding reaches frontline community organizations
foundations analyzed across the 2018–2024 period
Source: Dispatch Research Desk, 2025 Annual Audit
Six years of disbursement data, mapped against stated equity commitments. The distance between intention and allocation tells the full story.
"The data doesn't lie. It just shows us a truth we were not prepared to act on."
— Reginald Okafor-Barnes, VP of Programs, Meridian Trust$12.6B via established conduits
$8.9B toward policy-adjacent work
$7.7B to academic bodies
$4.0B to service delivery
$860M to grassroots organizations
Three executive directors. Three organizations doing the work foundations say they fund. None of them have received a major grant.
We submitted seventeen grant applications in 2023. We received two responses. Neither was a yes.
Yetunde Adeyemi-ClarkeExecutive DirectorGulf Coast Climate Resilience CoalitionOperating budget: $380K · Serving 14,000 households in flood-risk zones
The foundations funding climate work have never visited the communities most affected by climate failure. That distance is the whole problem.
Marcus Delacroix-WebbCo-FounderSouthside Environmental Justice Collective8 years operating · No major foundation funding received to date
We don't need more listening sessions. We need unrestricted capital and the trust that comes with it.
Priya SubramaniamDirector of ProgramsIndigenous Climate Action NetworkServing 23 tribal nations across the Mountain West
The complete analysis — 84 pages, 340 citations, six years of disbursement data — is available in the Dispatch Reading Room. It is the most comprehensive audit of climate philanthropy allocation published to date.
The Dispatch Brief distills each week's most significant sector intelligence into a five-minute read — formatted for the inbox, built for the board deck.