Announcing our new Executive Director
We are thrilled to announce Nick Gardner as our new Executive Director.
Announcing our new Executive Director
We are thrilled to announce Nick Gardner as our new Executive Director.
Blog
WATCH | Behind the smokescreen: what role can funders play in combating global and local disinformation?
With the support of CAAD, this panel explored the challenge of disinformation and the role funders can play.
WATCH | Blue carbon: what power does it hold to protect and restore coastal and marine ecosystems?
Learn what role voluntary carbon markets and philanthropy play in protecting coastal and marine ecosystems.
A call to action: Why funders should join the UK Overseas Territories Fund
Explore the UK Overseas Territories Fund and our latest report which shows the successes of the fund so far and why funders should get involved.
Innovation in environmental funding in the UK Overseas Territories
A report from the third of four events in our funder learning series about the UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs), focusing on innovative approaches to financing vital conservation and restoration work.
Watch | Report Launch: Exploring the role of wealth and philanthropy advisors in green giving
This is the launch event to highlight the key findings from our new report, Exploring the role of wealth and philanthropy advisors in green giving.
What happens when you bring together 100 funders and fundraisers for a one-day conference?
Oscar Brennecke-Dunn, our Events Coordinator, shares his reflections on our one-day conference that brought funders and fundraisers together to discuss how we can make environmental philanthropy work more effectively for everyone.
Watch | Creating the ‘Comic Relief’ for climate
With our partner, Big Give, we share more about the Green Match Fund, it's future ambitions and how funders can get involved.
How can we improve funder-fundraiser relationships in the environment sector?
Sophia Cooke, co-author of our latest report, Increasing the effectiveness of environmental funder-fundraiser relationships, shares why we’ve researched this intersection, what we learnt and key takeaways for funders.
Watch | Eating our way to net zero: what does consumption look like in a sustainable food system?
In this event, we explore consumption, diet shifts, regenerative farming practices and more, from the perspective of what needs funding and how it might work going forward.
Watch | Report Launch: Where the Green Grants Went 9
Watch our launch event for Where the Green Grants Went 9. Co-author Jon Cracknell and the EFN team summarises the key findings from the report and outlines clear next steps.
Watch | Innovation in environmental funding in the UK Overseas Territories
Watch the third event in the UKOTs Learning Series run in partnership with the John Ellerman Foundation.
Watch | What goes up must come down – the art and science of carbon removals
Watch our latest exploration in carbon removals and what it means for funders and future action.
Funding the UK’s most biodiverse regions – what’s working and what isn’t?
The UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs) are at the forefront of the world’s biodiversity and climate crises. Yet many UK environmental funders are not aware of the UK's responsibility for them, or that they host 94% of the nation’s biodiversity.
Watch | Environmental Impact Investing Group learning programme
EIIG members can find all the recordings from the learning programme here.
Announcing our new report: Where the Green Grants Went 9
Where the Green Grants Went 9 reveals that environmental grants from UK-based foundations have almost tripled since our last report in 2021 Yet, the report highlights worrying trends in environmental philanthropy that need addressing for the sector as a whole to maximise its potential.
Watch | Funding the UK’s most biodiverse regions: what’s working and what isn’t?
Watch the second event in the UKOTs learning series in partnership with the John Ellerman Foundation.
Lessons and reflections from 15 years in the climate community
Tom Brookes updates his 'Ten – reflections on a decade in the climate community' from June 2019, which shared key lessons on joining the climate movement. Now five years further on, Tom looks back on what he wrote and presents us with a revised and powerful: 14 reflections on 15 years in the climate community.
The incredible nature of the UK Overseas Territories
Inspired by our new UKOTs learning series, this piece explores some of the UK's most biodiverse regions, why we need to protect them, and how funders can get involved.
How funders and EFN can support youth-led organisations catalysing youth-led nature recovery
Jack Durant, the Co-Founder & Co-Director of Youngwilders, shares how funders and EFN stepped up to help their youth-led organisation in its early days by providing much more than financial support and helping them grow more effectively.
Watch | The incredible nature of the UK Overseas Territories
Watch the first event in the UKOTs Learning Series run in partnership with the John Ellerman Foundation.
Watch | Climate Funders Group: Addicted to aviation
With aviation only increasing and adding to greenhouse emissions, the Climate Funders Group explored what funders can do to support work to limit the negative impacts of aviation.
Watch | EFN’s Forest Series
Explore our series of events highlighting the approaches, challenges and opportunities in funding forest conservation.
Demystifying impact investing: an interview with impact investor, Shishir Malhotra
Shishir Malhotra, the Impact Investment Director for Treebeard Trust, joins us to demystify impact investing. He shares his personal story of how he got into investing, explains why it can work alongside philanthropy, offers some tips for beginners and explains why the free Environmental Impact Investing Group (EIIG) can help.
Clamping down on illicit finance: new opportunities to protect nature and accelerate the climate transition
Alex Jacobs, Executive Director of the Joffe Trust, reveals the truth about illicit finance, how it funds anti-environment forces and why funders can both help stop dirty money and accelerate a just climate transition around the world.
Planning to save the planet
Kat Jones from Action to Protect Rural Scotland raises awareness of Scotland's new planning system, National Planning Framework 4, and how it could better address the environmental and nature crises.
How gender-based violence affects environmental action | #IWD2024
This #InternationalWomensDay, we wanted to spotlight this incredibly important intersection: how gender-based violence affects environmental action.
Can we talk about organisations and not just projects?
CEO of Pilotlight, Ed Mayo, shares findings from their new research, 'The organisational needs of charities and social enterprises in the UK working on climate and sustainability'. Learning from a survey of 298 organisations, Ed proposes that funding organisations rather than projects is key.
Moving our finances out of fossil fuels
Following a decision by staff and trustees, in late 2023, we closed our business bank account with HSBC after reporting showed that they are still heavily financing fossil fuels. This blog shares our decision, the full letter and further resources for those interested in greening their finances as well.
Where’s the funding for council and community climate action?
Climate Emergency UK have recently published the first-ever UK-wide assessment of local government climate action: the Council Climate Action Scorecards. The results? Not good! Annie Pickering from Climate Emergency UK shares the barriers to local climate action and why funders can help spark real progress.
The challenge of light pollution
Climate change and the destruction of entire ecosystems attract most of our attention. But we face another environmental threat - one which is insidious and fast-growing: light pollution.
Inspiring People: Supporting the emerging Scottish seaweed industry
In this episode, Grace Yu (Aurora Trust) speaks to Alison Baker (EcoCascade CIC), Jemima Cooper (EcoCascade CIC) and Dr Kyla Orr (KelpCrofters Ltd) about seaweed.
Why aren’t we putting our money where our mouth is?
Marie-Amélie Viatte discusses the need for a food revolution and how deliberate investment into regenerative urban food growing can be the catalyst for change we’ve been looking for.
It’s time we stopped ignoring the ‘Cinderella issue’ of consumption
Why is it that campaign groups and funders are neglecting consumption, a fundamental driver of environmental harm? Libby Peake explores why this is, the significant impact overconsumption has on greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss and why we must turn our attention to it.
Supporting young people to transform biodiversity policy
Last December, we attended COP15, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, together with many other young people of our network. This was not the first summit where youth was represented. However, our voices were never as strong as at COP15, where the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) was decided on.
Harnessing the law for climate justice: EFN 2023 retreat keynote talk
Nani Jansen Reventlow’s keynote talk during our annual retreat for funders this year was titled ‘Harnessing the law for climate justice.’ Nani laid out what long-term funding in strategic litigation can achieve and how to use it as a tool for climate justice.
How funders can make conservation more effective
Whatever the scale, and wherever the location, most of our funding could be better spent if we ensure the work being proposed is based on reliable evidence, whether that be from academia or from centuries of local understanding. Funders can be instrumental in encouraging applicants to check and use available evidence for their work.
COP15 in Montreal: Reasons to be cheerful?
COP15 set a course for nations to significantly step up their actions to halt the loss of biodiversity. But will the new ‘plan of action’ for nature adopted at COP15 – termed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework – succeed? Catherine shares her reflections and the 'reasons to be cheerful', despite the challenges left unresolved.
Five ways to become a better climate justice funder
To truly address the impact of the climate crisis, funding must be anti-racist and address social injustice. In this blog, Nani Jansen Reventlow sets out five ways to become a better climate justice funder.
What does addressing root causes look like?
Why is 'new economy' work relevant to environmental philanthropy? Reflections on how can funders support work to redesign the economic system to be life-supporting, not life-eroding.
What does it take to win on environmental issues and how can funders help?
Insights from our new sector survey show that there is a vital role for philanthropic funding in recognising the importance of environmental action and giving it the stability needed to really make a difference.
Making climate action everyone’s business at the UK’s leading community funder
As the largest funder of community activity in the UK, The National Lottery Community Fund plays a critical role supporting communities to unleash their energy and potential, especially on the climate and environmental emergencies. John Rose discusses the work the National Lottery Community Fund is doing to take environmental action and support grant holders.
Ancestral land rights of Indigenous Peoples are essential to conservation
Katy Scholfield shares how the Arcus Foundation's Great Apes and Gibbons Program works to reconcile the well-being and resilience of local, Indigenous, and forest-dependent communities with wildlife conservation objectives.
Mission critical: how third sector organisations can play to their strengths in responding to the climate emergency
Third sector organisations have a critical contribution to make in response to the climate emergency. But reducing their carbon footprints isn’t it. In this blog, Nick Addington offers some thoughts about a possible framework to help organisations think more broadly about their role and recognise opportunities to help achieve a sustainable future.
Inspiring People: Forgotten freshwater
In this episode, Catherine Bryan (Synchronicity Earth & EFN) speaks to Brian Zimmerman (Bristol Zoological Society), Mike Baltzer (Shoal), Monti Aguirre (International Rivers) and Tess Gatan-Balbas (Mabuwaya Foundation) about freshwater.
UK foundation giving to environmental causes is on the up, but still a drop in the ocean
Annual giving from UK foundations for environmental work nearly doubled between 2015/16 and 2018/19. We summarise the key findings from the latest edition of the Environmental Funders Network’s 'Where the Green Grants Went' series.
Inspiring People: Toxics and pollution
In this episode, Devika Waney, (Savitri Waney Charitable Trust) speaks to Dr. Apolline Roger (ClientEarth), Elizabeth Salter Green, (CHEM Trust), Josie Cohen, (PAN UK) and Dr. Kerry Dinsmore, (Fidra).
Healthy planet, healthy people – funding the environment to improve human health
Our Healthy Planet, Healthy People series explored the many interconnections between human health and the environment.
Inspiring People: the UK Overseas Territories
Sufina Ahmad, Director of the John Ellerman Foundation, speaks to Dr Esther Bertram, Annick Jackman and Hugh Raven about the UK Overseas Territories.
Inspiring People: Building the next generation of environmental leaders
In this episode, Robert Macfarlane (author) and Hendrikus van Hensbergen (Action for Conservation) speak to two young environmental leaders.
What does a good food system look like? (Says who?)
Summary of Dr Garnett's presentation at the EFN Retreat. Most people agree that our food system is broken, but views on what constitutes a good food system are wildly divergent. Tara sketched out four different sustainable food discourses, the arguments they make, and the questions they leave unanswered.
EFN 2021 retreat keynote with Farhana Yamin
How can funders use the tools we have — our power, privileges and positions — to tackle those things that are most systemic? How can we support climate action that is truly intersectional? Farhana Yamin put forward various suggestions in her keynote talk at EFN's annual retreat.
Building an effective coalition for radical climate action in the UK
Notes from Steven Smith's presentation on his hugely useful research on climate-focused organisations, followed by a discussion with his collaborator, Ian Christie, at the 2021 EFN Retreat.
Mental health and the underfunded environmental determinants
It is widely documented that mental health is affected by a complex interplay of genetic, psychological, social / lifestyle factors, and environmental exposures. In recent years evidence of the environmental determinants of mental health has grown, yet these emerging concerns are often under the radar in the third sector.
Where the climate grants went in 2020
Explore EFN's information on climate-related grantmaking from funders that participated in EFN’s Climate Funders Group in 2020.
Grant funding versus the climate crisis
In the summer of 2020, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation were considering how they could help tackle the climate crisis. They engaged us – Lucent Consultancy – to help with some background research. Today we share what we learnt about green funders’ grantmaking, as one of the main tools to influence change.
Inspiring People: Marine conservation in Scotland
In this episode, philanthropist Hugh Raven, Alison Lomax (Hebridean Whale & Dolphin Trust), Dan Renton (Seawilding), Kerri Whiteside (Fauna & Flora International) and Phil Taylor (Open Seas) reveal what most excites them about marine conservation in Scottish waters.
Inspiring People: Youth & climate
In this episode, funder Kristina Johansson (Solberga Foundation) speaks to Hilma Angula (Next Generation Climate Advisory Board, Global Greengrants Fund, Namibia), Joy Munthali, (Green Girls Platform, Malawi) and Shamiso Mupara (Environmental Buddies Zimbabwe).
Inspiring People: Plastics
In this episode, Julia Davies, environmental funder and the founder of We Have The Power, speaks to Louise Edge, (Greenpeace), Jo Morley (City to Sea), Julian Kirby (Friends of the Earth) and Tanya Bascombe (European Outdoor Conservation Association).
Inspiring People: Rewilding
On this episode, passionate environmental philanthropist, Ben Goldsmith, who funds rewilding projects, speaks to Isabella Tree from Knepp Estate, Alastair Driver from Rewilding Britain and Derek Gow, ecologist.
Watch | ReFrame: shaping frames and shifting culture workshop videos
With Ella Saltmarshe and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, EFN co-hosted a workshop for people from across the environment sector (funders and NGOs) on reframing issues.
How connecting young people to their sense of rebellion, their values and their community can save the planet
Why we need to connect young people to their sense of rebellion to help improve their mental health and protect the environment at the same time.
Rethinking consumerism for the sake of young people’s mental health (and the planet)
British millennials have the second worst mental wellbeing in the world, second only to Japan. What if the solution to the mental health crisis facing young people is the same as tackling environmental degradation?
The most effective environmental groups, as rated by their peers
We asked 92 chief executives of environmental organisations, “Which non-profit UK environmental organisations (not including your own) do you think accomplish the most, given the resources at their disposal?” Here's what they told us.
Some thoughts on systems change
It becomes clearer with each passing day that simply ameliorating current problems is not going to be sufficient. This blog is about how we might scale up transformative change.