More Money, Better Deployed: A Conversation with Project Drawdown

Photo credit: Quang Nguyen Vinh 

Project Drawdown is the world’s leading guide to science-based climate solutions: an independent, internationally trusted organization that tests which climate actions actually work and helps decision-makers put them to use. They are one of the Russell Family Foundation’s (TRFF) partners. 

Through our Catalytic Climate Finance program, we use our grants, investment portfolio, and influence to back science-based solutions for a healthier planet and the communities that depend on it. Our investments in Project Drawdown are part of this. 

We spoke with Jonathan Foley, Project Drawdown’s executive director and a climate scientist by training, and Amanda Bielawski, director of global strategic partnerships, about what the science says, where climate capital is going wrong, and what funders of every size can do.

The Three S’s

Project Drawdown’s north star, Jonathan says, is to be “a trusted, science-based guide to the most effective climate actions we have.” The organization pursues that through what he calls the three S’s: science, stakeholder engagement, and storytelling.

The science comes first: testing every proposed solution against the data to figure out whether it actually works. The appeal, Jonathan adds, is independence: “We’re kind of like the Consumer Reports for climate change. We don’t have a financial stake in the outcome. We don’t have a political stake in the outcome. We’re just a bunch of nerds who love to figure out how things work and share that with the world.”

Figuring out what works is only the start. Project Drawdown also studies how to make proven tools more powerful. They identify faster-acting “emergency brake” solutions (climate solutions that deliver fast near-term emissions reductions), use geospatial data to site solutions where they’ll do the most good, and advance the co-benefits climate action so often carries, like jobs, cleaner air, better health, and healthier ecosystems. Jonathan sums it up as adding “a little dose of TLC — time, location, and co-benefits” to the solutions themselves.

The second “S,” stakeholder engagement, is led by Amanda’s team and focuses on those who can move quickly, such as investors, philanthropists, and companies. This also includes developing new pilot programs aimed at the community level, where cities, towns, and states can act without waiting on gridlocked politics. 

Storytelling is the critical third piece tying everything together: if no one understands the science, no one will act on it. Project Drawdown invests heavily in translating dense science and economics into clear communication accessible to everyone, turning, as Jonathan puts it, “the nouns into verbs.”

Minding the Food Gap

That instinct, to turn analysis into action, is what drew us to Project Drawdown’s food work, which helped inform our own Food for Climate Solutions program. 

Food, Jonathan argues, is the climate problem the field keeps underestimating. Food accounts for roughly a quarter to a third of global emissions, yet draws only three or four percent of climate funding and a sliver of media attention: a gap of about ten to one between the size of the problem and the resources aimed at it. These emissions are also incredibly complex, spanning farms, the forests cleared to create them, processing, and waste.

Project Drawdown’s solution is, as always, to translate this complexity into something easier to understand and act on: organizing the food system into about seven big solution areas, then pointing to the leverage points where a focused effort yields outsized returns. “Where can I get an 80/20 kind of return?” Jonathan asks. “I focus on 20% of the system, but I might solve 80% of its problems.” 

Centering Science in Capital

For Amanda, the through-line from science to impact runs through capital. Her initiative, Drawdown Capital, exists to “supercharge the impact of climate capital” by making sure science sits at the center of funding decisions.

Too often, she notes, attention flows to whichever solution is loudest rather than whichever the evidence favors. To help funders think more precisely, her team has begun mapping the distinct roles capital can play: as a deployer of solutions the science has already proven; as an incubator funding the early R&D that readies a solution to scale; as a systems-changer working through policy; and as a capacity-builder that de-risks emerging solutions so other forms of capital can carry them the rest of the way. To see where capital actually flows today, Project Drawdown is also working with Vibrant Data Labs, whose work we’ve profiled separately.

Jonathan frames the underlying problem as a trifecta. “We need more climate capital, for sure. But we also need better-deployed climate capital,” he explains, “and the right complementary types of capital that have different time horizons.” 

Amount, precision, and the right mix of the capital stack: get one wrong and the money underperforms. This is the approach Jonathan and Amanda want funders to adopt. “A lot of people talk about their theory of change,” Jonathan says. “I’m a scientist. You don’t have a theory yet unless you’ve tested it. You have a hypothesis.” 

Testing assumptions 

His ask is simple: test your assumptions against the evidence before the money moves. Amanda frames it as a “yes, and”: marry a funder’s values and local knowledge with rigorous scientific due diligence, rather than choosing between them.

Project Drawdown doesn’t just want funders to ask those questions; it wants to help answer them. Any funder weighing where to put its money can simply pick up the phone. “Talk to Project Drawdown. We’ll want to pick up the phone and talk to you.” It’s a role the organization has quietly played for years, often for free, and one it hopes to grow — aspiring, as Jonathan says, to be “every philanthropic advisor’s favorite science advisor.” No foundation, however small, has to figure out the science alone.

Jonathan argues that some of the biggest returns come not from any single grant but from collaboration. Pooled philanthropic consortia, like the Global Methane Hub, let funders do the research once rather than ten different times, share the due diligence, and then deploy capital in complementary ways. 

Historically, these have been the province of only the largest funders, but he sees an opening for smaller and mid-sized foundations to pool resources regionally. Done well, collaboration is a subtler kind of force multiplier: it inspires hesitant funders to step in once they see peers moving together.

Close to Home: The Pacific Northwest

Asked where a regional funder might look first, Jonathan offered a method rather than a shopping list: inventory the emissions where you are, sector by sector. For example, the Pacific Northwest’s grid is relatively clean, thanks to hydropower, which shifts the attention elsewhere: to industrial point sources like cement plants and landfills, to natural-gas leaks, to transportation, and to the region’s vast agricultural and forest lands. Tools that once required expensive consultants are now free and on your phone: Project Drawdown’s own Explorer for solutions, and Climate Trace for mapping local emissions. 

This is where smaller foundations’ deep, trust-based community relationships become a genuine advantage — the kind of local rootedness no outside funder can parachute in. Protecting these landscapes, Jonathan adds, can deliver a “triple win” for community, climate, and nature all at once. Tangible local outcomes, told well, inspire more action by others in the field.

Looking to the Future

When asked what foundations should do next, Jonathan’s starting point was a hopeful one: “We already have enough solutions to stop climate change. They do exist. They’re just not getting scaled.” 

Much of what’s missing, he argues, is capital in the “missing middle,” or the gap between early-stage venture funding and large infrastructure finance, where good ideas stall for want of patient backing. “We don’t need a lot more venture capital,” he says. “We need more patient, philanthropically and scientifically aligned capital to get the job done.”

That points to a frontier we’ve begun broaching already: the endowment itself. Foundations tend to focus on the roughly 5% they grant each year while leaving the other 95% on the sidelines of their mission. Deploying that far larger pool as patient, purpose-aligned capital, Jonathan suggests, could matter more than any grant program.

The most valuable thing a foundation can do, Jonathan argues, may be that third “S” — storytelling that shares what we’re learning openly to invite scrutiny and to encourage larger endowments to follow. 

This is a philosophy we try to embrace: we’re learning alongside the partners we invest in, Project Drawdown among them, and sharing the story as we do. The science is already showing the way: capital of every kind can be deployed with far more precision than it is today, and funders willing to test their assumptions and bring others along can help solutions scale.