Pebbles, Rocks, and Boulders
When we started out on our philanthropic journey, we realized we had a lot to learn. As a result, we followed the old adage of learn to walk before you learn to run. Our approach was to make a larger number of smaller, initial commitments ($5k to $50k) to build our knowledge, confidence and trust in our areas of focus. Over time, our intention is to continue to experiment with smaller grants and also consolidate our giving around a smaller number of organizations where we feel we can have more meaningful impact. In reviewing our activity for 2021, we made about 35 initial commitments we have termed “Pebbles”. These were organizations that met all or most of our criteria in our areas of focus and whose leadership and potential for the impact we felt were significant. In addition, we looked for those organizations where we might have an opportunity to unlock more significant impact.
In 2022, our intention is to continue to fund “Pebbles” while we identify a small number of larger, multi-year projects in the $50k-$250k range we term “Rocks”. Our goal is to both elevate some prior Pebbles to Rocks where we have developed a high level of confidence and trust. We hope these larger commitments have an opportunity to help catalyze and support existing efforts but more importantly catalyze and unlock potential that may not have happened were it not for our support. We believe it’s important to provide unrestricted funds for our gifts and to keep our reporting requirements lightweight to support those organizations that have earned our trust. At the same time, for those more meaningful gifts it’s important for us to feel we are helping catalyze something important and we are making a difference.
In a few cases, such as Freeworld, where we are more actively involved, we have made larger, multi-year commitments we call “Boulders” in the $250-500k range which we hope will help enable the organization to make the necessary capacity-building investments to scale in future years. While we get the most joy and fulfillment from these “venture philanthropy” investments, they are the most time intensive and we will choose to take on very few to enable us to be actively engaged and supportive.
One other approach we are testing is with supporting other philanthropic organizations we have developed respect and trust in to leverage their own grant making. The equivalent of a “fund of funds” in the venture investment world. For instance, in addition to GiveWell’s Maximum Impact Fund in our area of Effective Altruism, we have decided to back a climate-focused fund run by Founders Pledge which identifies compelling non-profits in the climate space (some of whom are or may become direct investments by Greenbridge). There are clearly organizations that are doing a great job with more specialized and focused resources than Greenbridge that can create high impact with our support. We will continue to look for those opportunities as our goal is to maximize impact with high efficiency on our end.
By the end of 2022, we hope our portfolio looks different than it did at the end of 2021 with a smaller group of pebbles and a handful of rocks and boulders that we feel increasingly confident will maximize both impact and meaning for us at Greenbridge. If we have gone from a “walk to a jog” we’ll consider that great progress for 2022…
Photo courtesy of Braven