On a Friday morning in April, Dan Stein, the founder of Giving Green, a climate philanthropy organization, found some big news in a surprising email. An anonymous donor had given his fund $10 million. “I didn’t quite process the number of zeroes,” Stein said, adding he was “tickled, awestruck, surprised” by the gift.
“You have to make this leap of faith that, ‘Okay, we’re going to open up our most private thoughts about how this is going to work,'” Gillespie said. He credits Giving Green’s recommendation with providing a couple of million dollars in funding to them, which crucially is unrestricted.