Resources
Below is a collection of resources that we have found useful. This is an evolving page, so please feel free to contact us with additional ideas for resources or publications.
Climate Change
Climate Change Publications Co-authored by Joanna Messing, Paul Growald and Eileen R. Growald
- Winner of the Alliance Magazine Essay Prize. Alliance Magazine asked "As a philanthropist, how would you spend $10 million to combat global warming?". This essay, "The key is coal", was published in the December issue of Alliance. The prize money was donated to further the Growald Family Fund's efforts to fight coal.
Articles and Papers on Coal and Climate Change
- Coal's Assault on Human Health, Physicians for Social Responsibility. This paper outlines the devastating health impacts of coal use.
- Health and Safety Risks of Carbon Capture and Storage
- 2030 Blueprint Architecture 2030 paper outlines a pathway to reducing emissions and stimulating our economy
- Sierra Club's coal factsheet
- Sierra Club website has a great number of resources on coal and mountain top removal
Climate Change Foundations
- ClimateWorks is an international philanthropic network dedicated to achieving low carbon prosperity.
- Energy Foundation is a regional partner of ClimateWorks, working in the US and China.
- European Climate Foundation aims to promote climate and energy policies that greatly reduce Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions and helps Europe play an even stronger international leadership role in mitigating climate change.
- Flora Family Foundation supports public benefit organizations working throughout the world in education, health, arts and culture, the environment, global security, civic engagement, and the advancement of women.
- Garfield Foundation supports holistic solutions in two key areas: environmental sustainability and community revitalization.
- John Merck Fund fosters innovative advocacy and problem solving in the fields of Developmental Disabilities, Environment, Reproductive Health, Human Rights, Job Opportunities, and Civic Engagement/ Defense of the Public Interest. Its objective is to act as a catalyst, supporting organizations that can effect constructive and measurable change in each of these areas.
- Mertz Gilmore Foundation is a private, independent grantmaking institution that supports and promotes human rights, healthy communities, the performing arts, and a sustainable environment.
- Sea Change Foundation is dedicated to achieving meaningful social impact
through leveraged philanthropy that addresses the most pressing problems facing
the world today. The Foundation's initial focus is addressing the serious threats
posed by global climate change. - Rockefeller Family Fund For almost forty years, the Rockefeller Family Fund has worked at the cutting edge of advocacy in such areas as environmental protection, advancing the economic rights of women, and helping citizens hold public and private institutions accountable for their actions. The Fund is best known for its creative and leveraged grantmaking, its role as a catalyst in the nonprofit as well as the funding communities, and its record of public policy innovation.
- Rockefeller Brothers Fund Dedicated to improving the well-being of people in transition to global interdependence.
- V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation has emphasized environmental grantmaking since it was founded in 1991.
Organizations Working on Climate Change and Coal
- 1Sky's goal is to build a diverse, society-wide mobilization that will convince our federal government to take bold action on climate change in 2010.
- Appalachian Voices brings people together to solve the environmental problems having the greatest impact on the central and southern Appalachian Mountains.
- CARMA reveals the carbon emissions of more than 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies in every country on Earth.
- Center for Biological Diversity Climate Law Institute was founded to confront global warming, which poses the greatest threat in human history to the natural systems that sustain life.
- Conservation Law Foundation Clean Energy and Climate Change Program is developing and implementing, innovative strategies in New England to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming and provide a positive model for the nation and the world.
- Corporate Ethics International works to mprove the effectiveness of corporate campaigns worldwide in order to make business practices more ethical in terms of the environment, health, social justice, and labor.
- Creation Care Fund provides a new and strategic vehicle for supporting the grassroots of the Christian creation care movement and its unique efforts.
- Earthworks is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting communities and the environment from the destructive impacts of mineral development, in the U.S. and worldwide.
- Energy Minerals Law Center is a non-profit law firm dedicated to protecting communities and the environment from the adverse impacts of energy development.
- Environmental Grantmakers Association is a voluntary association of foundations and giving programs concerned with the protection of the natural environment.
- Environmental Integrity Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization established by former EPA enforcement attorneys to advocate for more effective enforcement of environmental laws.
- Kentuckians for the Commonwealth is a statewide citizens organization working for a new balance of power and a just society.
- Natural Resources Defense Council works to protect wildlife and wild places and to ensure a healthy environment for all life on earth.
- Physicians for Social Responsibility is a medical and public health group working to prevent the use or spread of nuclear weapons and to slow, stop and reverse global warming and toxic degradation.
- Plains Justice is a Great Plains public interest law center defending the right to environmental justice and a sustainable economy through community partnerships.
- RE AMP is an engaged and active network of nonprofits and foundations working on climate change and energy policy in an eight-state region in the upper Midwest. This ambitious project is aimed at transforming the upper Midwest energy sector into a model of clean, efficient and safe energy use, while reducing global warming pollution economy-wide 80% by 2030.
- Southern Alliance for Clean Energy promotes responsible energy choices that create global warming solutions and ensure clean, safe and healthy communities throughout the Southeast.
- Southern Environmental Law Center uses the power of the law to protect the environment and health of the Southeast.
- Sierra Club Since 1892, the Sierra Club has been working to protect communities, wild places, and the planet itself.
- Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world.
- Vermont Law School has the largest and deepest environmental program of any law school.
- Western Organization of Resource Councils is a network of six state grassroots organizations working for change on the environment and family agriculture.
Social Enterprise
Social Enterprise Publications Authored by Joanna Messing
- The Journey of a Mutant Manager Written for the REDF Box Set, this article explores the challenges facing managers bridging the for-profit and non-profit worlds.
- Real Sustainability for Virtual Projects This Manual is a guide for non-profits considering self-financing opportunities through the Internet. The Manual is based on real case-studies (including that of the public policy website politika.lv), and offers ideas and examples of how Internet-based, non-profit projects can generate revenues for the purpose of sustaining their mission. With contributions from Nicole Etchart.
Social Enterprise Publications Co-authored by Joanna Messing, Lee Davis and Nicole Etchart
- Enterprising Mentality: A Social Enterprise Guide for Mental Health and Intellectual Disabilities Organizations
- Get Ready, Get Set: Starting Down the Road to Self-Financing is a hands on primer for non-profits interested in social enterprise or earned income activities.
Other Social Enterprise Publications
- Kim Alter's social enterprise typology provides an excellent overview of the range of definitions and types of social enterprise present in the field
- Jed Emerson and Sheila Bonini's Blended Value papers have led the field in looking at value as consisting of economic, social and environmental components.
- REDF has an excellent list of publications available for download on social entrepreneurship, venture philanthropy and performance measurement.
- CASE Research on Scaling Social Entrepreneurship has a collection of articles on scaling social impact.
Social Enterprise Organizations
- Ashoka is the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs—men and women with system changing solutions for the world’s most urgent social problems.
- Business for Social Responsibility is the world leader in corporate social responsibility (CSR) research and consulting.
- Beyond Grey Pinstripes MBA programmes and faculty infusing environmental and social impact management into the business school curriculum.
- Enterprising Nonprofits (Canada) provides grants and resources to non-profits organizations for technical assistance along the entire business development path.
- Net Impact is an international nonprofit organization with a mission to inspire, educate, and equip individuals to use the power of business to create a more socially and environmentally sustainable world.
- The School for Social Entrepreneurs (UK) exists to provide training and opportunities to enable people to use their creative and entrepreneurial abilities more fully for social benefit.
- Social Enterprise Alliance is an advocate for the field, hub of information & education, and builder of a vibrant and growing community of social enterprises.
- Social Enterprise London is an agent for change, run by social enterprises, for social enterprises. It works to unite, inspire and lead London’s social enterprise movement.
Universities with a Social Enterprise Focus
- Bainbridge Graduate Institute
- Columbia University
- Duke Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship
- Harvard Business School
- NYU Reynolds Program in Social Entrepreneurship
- Oxford's Said Business School Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship
- UC Berkeley's Haas Business School
- Yale School of Management
Venture Philanthropy / Social Investing Organizations
- The Acumen Fund is a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty.
- Blended Value is the website of Jed Emerson, an internationally recognized thought leader in the areas of sustainable investing, social enterprise and venture philanthropy.
- Calvert Foundation works to make community investment a safe and logical option for all investors seeking to make a positive social impact. CF uses investment capital, rather than conventional philanthropy, to create a sustainable, scalable model that enables nonprofit organizations and social enterprises to address critical social problems.
- Center for Venture Philanthropy was launched in 1999 to create an environment where community donors could collaborate and drive positive change in our communities. Using a venture capital model, local investors base "social venture funding" on results-oriented business plans focused on specific causes.
- Common Good Ventures is a team of experienced business people applying their professional expertise, their networks and their passion for change to help strong nonprofits realize their potential to accomplish even more for Maine.
- Endeavor transforms the economies of emerging markets by identifying and supporting high-imapct entrepreneurs.
- European Venture Philanthropy Association The European Venture Philanthropy Association is a membership organisation for venture philanthropists in Europe.
- The Nature Conservancy Eco Enterprises Fund provides technical and financial support to environmental entrepreneurs in Latin America and the Caribbean - committed individuals who are pioneering new ways of doing business to bring economic benefits to local people and help protect fragile ecosystems.
- NESsT works to solve critical social problems in emerging market countries by developing and supporting social enterprises that strengthen civil society organizations' financial sustainability and maximize their social impact.
- New Profit Inc is a a national venture philanthropy fund that seeks to harness America's spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship to help solve our country's biggest social problems.
- New Schools Venture Fund is focused on transforming public education -- particularly for low-income and minority children in urban communities, who need and deserve better schools.
- REDF (formerly the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund) uses the practices of venture philanthropy to create job opportunities through support of social enterprises that help people gain the skills to help themselves.
- Skoll Foundation drives large-scale change by investing in, connecting, and celebrating social entrepreneurs and other innovators dedicated to solving the world’s most pressing problems.
- Xigi.net is an online capital market for good.
Performance Measurement
- BTW Informing Change is a consulting firm with very helpful publications on measurement.
- Social Return on Investment
Nonprofit and Philanthropy Newsletters / Magazines
- Alliance Magazine provides news and analysis of what's happening in the philanthropy and social investment sectors across the world.
- Idealist.org connects people, organizations, and resources to help build a world where all people can live free and dignified lives.
- Stanford Social Innovation Review publishes a montly magazine which provides strategies, tools and ideas for nonprofits, foundations and socially responsible businesses.
