Want to do your bit for the climate? Donating to activists may offer more bang for your buck than buying carbon offsets. That’s the conclusion of research group Giving Green: even their conservative estimates suggest advocacy organisations are “much more cost-effective than even best offsets”, they say.

Philanthropists tend not to direct their dollars to grassroots movements. Many mega-donors and their foundations – especially those who’ve made their millions/billions in venture capital or as entrepreneurs – like to back people they can relate to: ambitious leaders who promise the next big idea. But it is “open to question” if focusing on visionary individuals is the best way to bring about real change, as David Callahan writes in his book The Givers. “Catalysts for systemic change, history shows, are social movements that unite masses of people who are unhappy with a current system and set out to transform it,” he points out. Those movements are often decentralised, involve multiple sectors, and evolve over a long period. And they often include protest that disrupts public life.

Shutting down traffic or halting sports events may well cause a negative reaction among the wider public in the short term, but researchers say this does not really matter, because protest helps to “alter the limits of political possibility”. As one academic says: “Whether we like it or not, the history of social change is also a history of political contestation and disruption.” Activism doesn’t necessarily mean disrupting everyday life – but disruption works: it gets media attention and it pushes those in power to compromise, “if only to protect their own interests”.

Those in the business of social change, presumably, know this. Yet they generally steer clear of funding activism. Just 1% of European foundation giving for climate change mitigation went to grassroots and movement building in recent years, according to ClimateWorks. Of all the funding globally for human rights in 2011-2015, just 3% went towards grassroots organising. 

There are understandable reasons for this. Established funders have “erred towards gradual change and the need to work within existing systems”, as philanthropy expert Rhodri Davies writes, rather than upsetting them. They often require their grantees to be formally constituted organisations, which excludes the grassroots movements that are by their nature decentralised and informal. And most of those making decisions within foundations don’t have personal experience of grassroots organising; it’s easier for them to support the people and approaches they’re familiar with, experts point out.” Social Change Lab, which does research on social movements, suggests a few other options open to more cautious funders, such as backing research or intermediary organisations, instead of directly financing the activists.

Ordinary individuals can also support activism: Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion, 350.org, Scientist Rebellion and so on have donation pages on their websites. And a new project, Hero, calls itself  “the first subscription platform providing a stable income for climate mobilisers working on climate policy change”. Anyone can pledge €6 per month to help vetted groups of campaigners focus more on their campaigning. It has so far been endorsed by Yunus Social Business co-founder Saskia Bruysten (Hero’s CEO and co-founder is a Yunus SB colleague); Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat previously responsible for UN climate change negotiations, has called it “truly inspirational”. 

Fans of Hero agree that climate activism is one of the most important jobs of our era, and therefore activists should be financially compensated. That is not, yet, a widely held view. Could sufficient momentum gather to change this?

Photo by Bhuwan Bansal on Unsplash