On Nov. 14, just three days after the start of the United Nations COP 29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, nine Canadian families and foundations pledged to spend $405 million over the next 10 years to fight climate change. Announced in Toronto, it is the largest philanthropic commitment to climate action ever in Canada. The announcement also marked the first major collaboration by climate philanthropists in this country—a “big bang” moment intentionally aimed at amplifying the impact of climate philanthropy and recruiting other high-net-worth individuals, families and foundations to the still new and growing space.
The commitment was made through the Climate Champions campaign, established by the Ivey Foundation, the Trottier Family Foundation and the Clean Economy Fund, a charitable independent public foundation founded in 2016 by four family foundations, including the Ivey Foundation, with a mandate to support and increase climate philanthropy in Canada. Specifically, the Clean Economy Fund, through the Climate Champions campaign, is looking to triple the amount of climate philanthropy in Canada, from $100 million to more than $300 million annually by 2030.
“This is a big opportunity to really lift us up and help us match the much higher levels of climate philanthropy in other countries,” says Eric Campbell, executive director of the Clean Economy Fund. “We ran an analysis earlier this year that found Canadians were giving less than one per cent of our philanthropy towards climate solutions, which puts us behind the global average of 1.6 per cent. It’s about half of what happens in the U.S. and about an eighth of what happens in the U.K.”
The funding commitment includes $150 million from the Trottier Family Foundation, $100 million from the Peter Gilgan Foundation, $18 million from the Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation, $15 million from the Chisholm Thomson Family Foundation, $10 million from David Keith and Kirsten Anderson, $6 million from the Sitka Foundation, $5 million from the Vohra Miller Foundation and $1 million from Allan Shiff, in addition to $100 million that was recommitted by the Ivey Foundation.
‘A team effort’
In late 2022, the Ivey Foundation, a private charitable foundation established nearly 80 years ago by Richard G. Ivey and his son Richard M. Ivey, announced it was going to spend down the entirety of its $100-million endowment over the course of five years and allocate all of those funds towards climate solutions. It was around this time that Eric St-Pierre, executive director of the Trottier Family Foundation, which has been active in climate philanthropy for almost a decade and was considering a big increase, started talking to Bruce Lourie, president of the Ivey Foundation, about the need to attract more wealthy individuals, families and foundations to climate philanthropy and mobilize capital.
Wealthy individuals and families understand the importance of addressing climate change, but we need to find a way to bridge the gap to help them join us.
Eric St-Pierre, Trottier Family Foundation
Together, the Trottier and Ivey foundations hit on the idea for the Climate Champions campaign (initially the Climate Solutions Platform) and brought in the Clean Economy Fund to implement it. By spring 2023, members of both foundations and the Clean Economy Fund, including St-Pierre, Lourie and Campbell, were meeting with foundations, family offices and wealthy individuals across Canada.
“It was a team effort over the course of 18 months,” says St-Pierre. “The announcement listed nine foundations. What you didn’t see were the hundreds of hours spent and the 90 other foundations and families we approached who were interested but not quite ready to get involved. We announced a $405 million commitment, but in an ideal scenario it could have been $1 billion. We learned wealthy individuals and families understand the importance of addressing climate change, but we need to find a way to bridge the gap to help them join us.”
About six months ago, the campaign pivoted to focus on those who were ready to make and go public with a financial commitment. From that point, momentum built quickly and, as hoped, has grown stronger since the Nov. 14 announcement.
How Canada’s Climate Champions will drive change
“We are focused on reducing the pollution that causes climate change and transitioning Canada into a low-carbon economy,” Campbell says. “That is the overarching guiding piece of the campaign.”
To that end, the campaign has identified five priority areas where philanthropy can have an outsized impact: clean energy and electrification; industry and economy, including agriculture, oil and gas; emission reduction in cities; impact on people and democracy; and policy and finance.
“We didn’t want to be overly prescriptive, but we did want to send the main message that Canada needs to decarbonize and there is a lot of work to be done to meet federal targets to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030,” says St-Pierre. “Each foundation has its own interests and strategy. It’s not a situation where everyone sends their cheque to one fund and it’s distributed. It’s a collective commitment where we learn from each other and collaborate.”
The participating families and foundations are individually responsible for implementing their own commitment, with support from the Clean Economy Fund as needed.
“Initially, this was designed as one ‘big bang’ to raise awareness about the potential impact of climate philanthropy and get people in the door to make a commitment,” says Campbell. “We’ve now had that big bang and we are seeing a lot of interest from others. Some will sign on and do everything on their own, and that’s great. But we do anticipate the Clean Economy Fund can help simplify the process for new folks entering the space.”
It’s estimated it will cost $2 trillion to transition Canada to a net-zero economy, and the window for keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius is closing. The size of the challenge and the urgency to act are not lost on the architects of the Climate Champions campaign, but neither is the role philanthropy can play.
Just one example of that powerful role, says St-Pierre, is the $400,000 in grants the Trottier Family Foundation invested in the Low Carbon Cities Canada (LC3) initiative, which works with local municipalities and communities to derisk and scale climate solutions. “Our $400,000 was able to help unlock $183 million from the federal government and that leveraged additional philanthropic and provincial funding.
“Philanthropic capital can be catalytic capital,” St-Pierre adds. “We can use it to multiply our impact and bring in much more.”
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