‘Lot of light, not much heat’: Climate lags among charitable causes in Canada

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Although climate change is top of mind in the media, serious funding has been slow to come via philanthropic sources.

But experts point to a promising shift. Last fall, the 75-year-old Ivey Foundation — an early supporter of climate change mitigation and one of Canada’s largest and oldest philanthropic foundations — raised eyebrows when it announced it would be dispersing its entire $100 million endowment in the next five years because the need was at a crisis level.

This has paved the way for other foundations to follow, says Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute. His charitable organization, which is part of a worldwide network that offers research and advisory work on climate change, is the largest of its kind in the country.

“There’s no question that globally, philanthropic investment in climate change has dramatically increased in the last few years,” says Smith, who is the best-selling author of two books, Toxin Toxout: Getting Harmful Chemicals Out of Our Bodies and Our World and Slow Death by Rubber Duck: How the Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Life Affects Our Health, both co-written with environmental expert Bruce Lourie.

“I haven’t been able to find calculations for Canada, but I can tell you anecdotally that Canadian foundation giving for climate change over the course of my working career — which is now 25 years or so — has dramatically increased. We’re talking orders of magnitude,” Smith says.

“This is the first example that I’ve seen of a Canadian funder … stepping up and saying, ‘You know what? The best use of our money is out in the world, in this next short critical period of time, not sitting in our bank account. And we’ve started to see this type of leadership in the United States and Europe.”

About 2 per cent of total giving

Philanthropic giving toward climate change mitigation worldwide increased 25 per cent in 2020-21, according to a report by ClimateWorks Global Intelligence. However, the dollar amounts remain small. Of the total of $810 billion given by foundations and individuals in 2021, only about $7.5 billion to $12.5 billion was focused on climate change. That’s about 2 per cent, according to the report.

“Given the ever-increasing urgency of the climate crisis, it is time for philanthropy to step up,” the report says.

Bernard Mercer is a consultant and researcher in Britain who provides guidance on forests, biodiversity, green philanthropy and other topics. He was also the first chief executive officer for the U.K. non-profit New Philanthropy Capital.

“I’ve probably got half a dozen examples of great climate philanthropy,” he says from his home in Devon, England. “But if you look at the metadata — and it’s pretty similar in whatever country you look at — in the U.K., the money that goes to the environment is still the same as it was about 20 years ago, about 2 per cent. So there’s a lot of light but not much heat.”

If we could speak with Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, Mercer supposes, “She would say, ‘Yeah, I get a lot of column inches and everyone knows my speech where I said, ‘How dare you,’ but actually the number of people who are really motivated and work full-time on all this stuff is still a tiny number of people in any aggregate sense.”

Giving in all the old familiar places

Mercer guesses that Canada isn’t so different. In his experience, wealthy people often give to causes that other wealthy people give to.

Sure enough, a report from Philanthropic Foundations Canada showed that between 2013 and 2018, 21 per cent of foundations in Canada gave to education and research causes, followed by 16 per cent for health. Social services followed at 11 per cent, with environment ranking way down the list, at 4 per cent.

Mercer suggests 4 per cent could be an overestimation, as well.

“I suspect it’s not 4 per cent, because the way the charitable trade bodies categorize data is they lump animal welfare in with the environment, things like donkey sanctuaries, cats and dogs, and, in Canada, injured seals, things like that. But that’s not the climate.”

Climate change has now become the third most common charitable cause across all generations of givers, driven in large part by the determination and activism of younger generations of donors.

Sharilyn Hale

“So if you strip out animal welfare, my guess is without having looked at the Canadian data, you might be around the 2 to 3 per cent mark, and it’s the same in the U.S., so nothing much has changed.”

Philanthropists can be divided into two camps, he says: those who follow and generally give to causes such as their alma-mater schools, and a minority who foment change by contributing to education, advocacy and policy change regarding something entirely different. He cites foundations that forever changed the way we view the burning of coal and advocated for solar panels on houses.

“They basically did what I think is really good, which is to say, ‘Let’s find a gap where nobody is doing this thing, and let’s do it.’”

Change happening among younger generations

Sharilyn Hale, a philanthropic advisor and president of Watermark Philanthropic Counsel in Toronto, points out that the choice of causes is often generational in nature, with younger people increasingly concerned about climate change.

Anecdotally, she thinks there’s been an increase in climate change giving since the Philanthropic Foundations Canada report cited above.

She points to The Giving Report 2022 from CanadaHelps, an online donation and fundraising platform, as a possible indication of a shift. It says that climate change is the No. 1 charitable cause in Canada among the young cohorts of Generation Z and millennials, and the third top cause for baby boomers.

“For decades, environmental causes were often viewed as being on the fringe compared to other charitable priorities,” Hale wrote in an email. “What we do know is climate change has now become the third most common charitable cause across all generations of givers, driven in large part by the determination and activism of younger generations of donors.

“I certainly see this in my work with multi-generational families.”

Some examples of this funding, she says, are ocean health, nature conservancy, climate change mitigation and adaptation, pollution and recycling and clean water. Funding can go toward education, shaping policy, advocacy, collaborating with community, research, and even land purchase, she says.

“There are many well-established organizations in Canada focused on the environment and climate change,” she says. “Investing in them and learning from them can be a good place to start.”

Bernard Mercer says there’s still a long way to go, and he’d like to reiterate the Ivey Foundation’s call for other foundations to step up their work in the climate change space.

“That would be a powerful call, to say that we need philanthropy could really help, to pull your chequebooks out. The forest freaks around the world, my community, we think that’s the story that needs to be told.”

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