Rockefeller Family Fund
OVERVIEW: The Rockefeller Family Fund supports climate and clean energy initiatives, democracy, and women’s economic equity. This funder places a heavy emphasis on advocacy and policy development.
IP TAKE: The Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF) prioritizes “advocacy efforts that are action-oriented and likely to lead to policies that advance RFF’s programs, or to create tangible change in the public or private sector.” While this funder has supported the same issues for several years, mobilizing voters toward climate change action appears to be of increasing importance. RFF does not accept unsolicited proposals for funding, but organizations working in the fund’s areas of interest may send a brief email describing their work.
PROFILE: The Rockefeller Family Fund was established in 1967 by Martha, John, Laurance [sic], Nelson, and David Rockefeller, the children of John D. Rockefeller Jr. According to the fund’s mission statement, it is a “family-led public charity that initiates, cultivates, and funds strategic efforts to promote a sustainable, just, free, and participatory society.” Its two-pronged strategy involves both traditional grantmaking and a “nimble advocacy” approach, through which it “develops and runs initiatives and projects to help address key societal issues.” The foundation’s three main programs are Environment, Democracy and Economic Justice for Women.
Grants for Climate Change and Clean Energy
Since 2006, the RFF’s Environment program has prioritized climate change action with two key initiatives: Climate Education and the Funder Collaborative on Oil and Gas.
The Climate Education initiative supports programs designed to “engage and motivate citizens demanding change; deepen public recognition of the climate disruption now unfolding; unmask forces working to prevent climate progress, and policies, and require polluters to pay their fair share of the climate damages they caused to help the public meet enormous climate adaptation expenses we now face.” As well, this initiative has led to a report issued by “senior U.S. military advisors that climate change is a national security risk; an active and thriving grassroots movement demanding climate progress; reporting by investigative journalists about what fossil companies knew about climate change (and when).”
Grantees working this area include the Center for Climate Integrity, the Texas Campaign for the Environment and the Alliance for Affordable Energy.
Similarly, RFF’s Funder Collaborative on Oil and Gas was launched in December 2018 to curtail U.S. oil and gas production and prevent “development of massive new domestic infrastructure.” The program’s core purpose is to limit ongoing oil and gas production. Specific areas of focus include preventing the lock-in of greenhouse gas emissions for new and expanded oil, gas, and petrochemical infrastructure and weakening the industry’s financial standing and political influence.
Grantees of this subprogram include Commission Shift, Air Alliance Houston and the Western Environmental Law Center.
Grants for Civic Engagement and Democracy
The Rockefeller Family Fund’s grantmaking for Democracy works to promote civic engagement, the accountability of government and corporations, and to protect the rights of individuals in the U.S. The program’s single current initiative is the Democracy and Power Innovation Fund, “a vehicle for collaborative grantmaking in support of research and innovation at the intersection of organizing, civic engagement, and power.” The fund expresses strong interest in research and analysis that aim “to understand and evaluate the impact of base-building, narrative, and structural democracy reform on voting and other forms of civic engagement, particularly in communities of color.”
Grantees include State Voice, the Take Action Minnesota Education Fund, the Alliance for Youth Organizing and America Votes Education and Action Fund.
Grants for Women and Girls
The RFF conducts grantmaking related to women through its Economic Justice For Women program, which pursues two main goals:
Support for policy that has “tangible impacts on women and their families’ lives” and
Organizing “a diverse, multiracial coalition of women” to advance narrative and action for women’s equity.
The program’s current initiative is the Women Effect Fund, a donor collaborative that works toward economic equity for women and other marginalized groups. A significant portion of this work pushes for “family friendly economic policies” including paid maternity, paternity and medical leaves and affordable child and long-term care. The fund has operated its public outreach in several states as the Campaign for a Friendly Economy.
Grantees in this giving area include the Main Street Alliance, MomsRising and PL+US – Paid Leave for the US.
Important Grant Details:
With only a few exceptions, this funder’s grants are awarded in amounts of up to $500,000.
The foundation gives to large and medium-sized organizations operating at the national or state levels.
The fund prioritizes advocacy that is “action-oriented and likely to lead to policies that advance RFF’s programs , or to create tangible change in the public or private sector.”
This funder does not accept applications or letters of inquiry; its grantees are selected “from within our larger networks of partners and allies.”
Organizations working in the fund’s areas of interest may email staff at info@rffund.org with brief descriptions of their work.
For information about past grantmaking, see the fund’s individual program pages.
General inquiries may be submitted to the Rockefeller Family Fund via its contact page.
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