Foundation Grants
Community Vital Signs
About Us
Voters in Berlin are being asked to decide Sunday whether they want the German capital to be "climate neutral" by 2030, meaning it won't be able to contribute to global warming any more.
The New York Times reports that the referendum, which requires the support of at least 25% of the city's 2.4 million eligible voters, calls for Berlin to slash its emissions by 80% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.
"This is a very ambitious target, we're clear about that," Jessamine Davis, a spokesperson for the group behind the referendum, tells the AP.
"And it won't be easy."
But critics warn that if the referendum passes, Berlin will be bankrupt within a few years.
The group behind the referendum has received more than $1.3 million in donations from US-based philanthropists, most of which came from German-American investors Albert Wenger and Susan Danziger, the AP reports.
If the referendum passes, Berlin would be bound to the country's national target of cutting emissions by 20% by 2045, which is also in line with the 2015 Paris climate accord.
But the group's plan to redesign the city's heating network would cost more than $3 billion.
"This is a replicable model for the rest of the world
Read the Entire Article
Selected Foundation News
A customized collection of news from foundations from around the Web.
"We are so used to being almost permanently online that we don't really appreciate what we have and do not really know what to do when we're not," Joni Mitchell wrote in her 1970s song "Big Yellow...more
The concept of "impact investing" has taken off in recent years, with more than $1 trillion in assets under management. But a new study out of Harvard Business School suggests that while impact...more
"All investments are impact investments," says Adam Spence, CEO of SVX, a non-profit financial services firm that has just launched Canada's first index designed to measure the impact of investments...more
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing has gained popularity in recent years as clients seek to align their investments with their values and promote positive change in the...more
Foundation: Silicon Valley Community Foundation, California Endowment
In 2024, Los Angeles will host the Mission Investors Exchange 2024 National Conference, an annual conference that brings together more than 750 philanthropy and impact investing leaders from across...more
Foundation: California Community Foundation, California Endowment
Ava DuVernay financed her latest film with money from the Giving Pledgean initiative of the California Endowment, the largest US foundation to commit its entire $4 billion portfolio to social and...more
In what may be a first for a major US city, Los Angeles has been chosen as the site of the 2024 Mission Investors Exchange National Conference, a conference that will focus on "investing in social...more
Foundation: Marguerite Casey Foundation, Marguerite Casey Foundation, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Skoll Foundation, Target Foundation, Ford Foundation, Philadelphia Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation
"The US creative economy was most recently valued at over $1 trillion by the National Endowment for the Arts," per a press release, "even before considering film, fashion, video games, beauty, food,...more
"No one country and no one organization can achieve this alone," says GEAPP Chief Communications Officer Kate Wills. "This is why we are committed to forming an ever widening and diverse alliance...more
The University of Utah's Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy has narrowed its list of finalists for its $500,000 Climate Launch Prize to seven. The goal of the prize, which is one of the...more
Social Entrepreneurship
Spotlight
Building a Million Dollar Company Where Everyone Counts
Ganesh Natarajan is the Founder and Chairman of 5FWorld, a new platform for funding and developing start-ups, social enterprises and the skills eco-system in India. In the past two decades, he has built two of India’s high-growth software services companies – Aptech and Zensar – almost from scratch to global success.