Our team at Growald Climate Fund stands in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement for racial justice in the US, and are grateful for the massive global demonstration of demand for a new era of equity both in the U.S. and worldwide.

We recognize that The Black Lives Matter movement and the climate movement are both working to address systemic issues that are related, including both climate and equity, and which disproportionately impact poor and other underrepresented peoples. We believe that climate philanthropy everywhere around the world must incorporate efforts to dismantle inequality and systemic racism into its strategies and grantmaking.

We recognize that this work starts at home and with ourselves. At Growald, we value diversity and multiculturalism. This is reflected not only in our team, but in our portfolio of grantees and internal policies. We have always purposefully diversified our personnel recruitment, our grantee selection processes, and hiring practices to avoid perpetuating structural patterns that have kept people of color, women, low-income communities, and other marginalized communities out of positions of power and out of philanthropy. We take pride in our team’s and portfolio’s diversity, but we also know that diversity on its own is not enough. Growald also works to build an inclusive community in which we seek to understand each other’s perspectives, question our own biases, and actively listen to each other. 

It is beyond time for climate philanthropy to integrate racial and social justice into its grantmaking. As a foundation, our work has always been to connect with and support civil society partners that are working to create a vibrant, healthy, and balanced world in which all beings thrive. Our current grantmaking, which is focused outside of the U.S., reflects the social justice intersections in the countries where we work. Yet as we increase the number of grantees we support in the next year, we are committing to funding organizations that are advancing climate justice and that have Black, Indigenous, and other underrepresented groups of people as leaders.

One of our founders, Paul Growald, has launched an initiative called Stopping Stones to recruit and engage people in researching and honoring enslaved black Americans and repairing the echoes of slavery still entrenched in American society.

We are also asking ourselves how we can do more to address the intersections between climate change and social and racial justice. We’d love to hear ideas and suggestions through this webform.

In the meantime, if you are interested in reading some pieces that we found particularly interesting, we suggest:

“The difference between being an anti-racist and not being a racist has never been more stark.” by Todd Paglia of Stand.earth

“Opinion: If you care about the planet, you must dismantle white supremacy” by Tamara Toles

"Take action to defend Black lives", a toolkit from Greenpeace