It is a joy and an honor to able to contribute something towards the wonderful work being carried out by so many talented and creative people in the world today. It is very important to give and to feel gratitude in the act of giving.
With the Damien Foundation, my wife Tara Lamont (Damien Foundation's president) and I have always wanted to feel our work and our contribution made a difference, even if a small one. Since we began funding the environmental movement in Brazil, we have been able to see the positive results of small grants and the difference they can make.
How did Damien get into environmental grantmaking? The foundation had been funding arts and education programs in the U.S. and the U.K. Why did you decide to change, or add to, the foundation's programmatic agenda?
During the late 80's, my wife and I lived in London . Tara, with a few other grantmakers, created a small network of donors in the UK -- The Network for Social Change -- inspired by the people who had created the Threshold Foundation in America. I can't emphasize enough the importance of these two networks of friends and committed grantmakers in our work and in our personal lives. Our involvement with the Network for Social Change and Threshold revolutionized our approach to philanthropy, making it much more proactive and relevant to the needs of the world, as we perceived them.
Your grantmaking also turned south. Why did Damien get involved in Brazil?
In the late 80's the world woke up to the accelerated devastation of the Amazon rain forest. Through the Network for Social Change, we began getting invitations to participate in events and meetings about the situation in the Amazon. We also began to meet a lot of environmentalists and other NGO leaders -- and, not surprisingly, they always had projects and proposals for Damien to consider.
Although we were clearly moved by the spirit of the times, and my own Brazilian background, our reasons for beginning to direct Damien's resources toward Brazil were pretty rational.
From an ecological standpoint, Brazil is considered to be of strategic importance. It has one third of all biological diversity in the world; one third of all rain forests and twenty per cent of all fresh waters. It is home to very important and highly productive ecosystems such as the Amazon, the Atlantic rain forest, the Pantanal and the Cerrados (Brazilian savannahs).
Brazil is also a place where economic development and protection of the environment are sharply at odds. The symptoms of development such as the uncontrolled growth of cities, the introduction of big agribusiness, the construction of roads and hydroelectric dams are all causing irreversible damage to the environment. The dominant image of development in Brazil is a big bulldozer, ripping up the country to serve the needs of local and international markets.
After you decided to fund environmental projects in Brazil, how did you know where to begin?
At first Damien supported American and British NGOs working in Brazil on rain forest protection, preservation of indigenous land and culture, rubbertappers' rights and empowerment of women. We made a lot of grants to Friends of the Earth/US and UK, Rainforest Action Network, Environmental Policy Institute, National Wildlife Federation, Gaia Foundation/UK, Environmental Defense Fund, Ashoka, Cultural Survival and Ecological Foundation/UK. Most of those grants went to projects in Brazil. Some of them we directed toward public education campaigns in the U.S. and the UK.
NGOs play an increasingly important role in international philanthropy. They can be useful in a variety of ways. They're particularly helpful at the outset, while you're getting to know in a place.
International philanthropy is all about collaboration and partnership. We still work with European and American NGOs as well as other funders. But we reached a point when we decided we could elaborate our own program.
How did you get to that point.
Our experience was instructive. We came to see the present model of development as the main cause of deforestation and environmental degradation. This model, obviously, is the local expression of powerful trends in the global economy and culture.
For us that meant the conservationist strategy based primarily on international support for indigenous people and rubbertappers -- very popular among funders at that time -- was a very, very shaky strategy to prevent wholesale destruction of the forest. We thought something different was needed.
I think we also learned that major environmental issues can never be addressed exclusively in an "incrementalist" way or by reducing them to a discussion of human rights, social justice or scientific and technological fixes. Ultimately, the whole issue is tied up with development and the choice of a development model for a nation is a political choice.
By political you don't mean candidates running for office, right? On the other hand you aren't talking only about environmental education either are you?
Environmental education is important but not enough. Environmental concerns need to be translated into public policy proposals and alternatives. The issue has to permeate Brazil's debate about its future and the agendas of ALL parties. This cannot be accomplished in the absence of citizen awareness and activism. Every country in the world with an advanced legal framework for environmental protection and real law enforcement also has a strong environmental movement. Brazil can be no different.
Without healthy grassroots environmental organizations, and a high degree of cooperation and partnership among them, there will never be such thing as an environmentally sustainable society.
So we decided the most strategic use of Damien's limited resources would be to invest in Brazil's environmental movement. The Damien Foundation began a Small Grants Program for grassroots environmental groups. It was the first of its kind in Brazil.
How would you describe the purpose of Damien's Small Grants Program?
Our purpose was, and continues to be, to provide capacity building support, organizational support, to small environmental organizations. We want activists to concentrate on the bigger picture, instead of spending most of their time and energy fretting about personal and organizational survival.
Unlike large funders who feel compelled to prioritize "results" and "product", over long term "processes", small grantmaking organizations like Damien can afford to fund those parts of the work that don't have obvious appeal but nevertheless form the foundation for everything else. We can help small organizations upgrade their capacity to provide environmental services to the community, and in that way acquire the experience necessary to tackle big problems and receive grants from big donors.
Damien called its program a "Small Grants Program." Why?
Because we made small grants, and that's really all it took, to cover basic infrastructure needs: rent, salaries, office supplies, communications equipment. Sometimes we made grants to help produce educational material, obtain professional services, run educational campaigns, etc. We are talking in the range of $5,000 to $10,000 which is small in the eyes of big funders, really too small for them to make. I don't think we spent much more than $100,000 a year on average.
How did you decide which groups to fund?
By getting involved with the community we were funding. We wanted to be guided by their collective wisdom. The more we got to know the movement, the more feedback we received and the more we kept fine-tuning our approach. After a while, we got to know what groups were doing what.
What's become of the Small Grants Program?
The program led to the creation of Francisco Foundation in 1994, a support organization for environmental groups in Brazil. In part Francisco acts as an intermediary organization, receiving grants from foreign funding sources and re-granting the funds to Brazilian activist groups. It is also able to take a large grant from a big funder and divide it into several small grants for a number of organizations. Damien continues to support Francisco's administrative expenses.
You decided that investment in Brazil's environmental movement would be the most "strategic" use of Damien's resources. How important do you think it is for international grantmakers to be strategic in their giving?
It is very important for international funders to have a strategy. No matter how large the amount of money available to funders, it's a drop in the bucket in the ocean of needs that we have out there. So, we need to define our goals and priorities and strive to achieve as much as we possibly can in the way of improving whatever it is that we are trying to improve. One of the rewarding aspects of international philanthropy is to be able to look at your work and see that you are actually making a contribution. And this is more likely to happen if grantmaking is approached creatively and strategically.
Do you have any advice for funders interested in the Brazilian environmental movement?
In 1995, Francisco Foundation funded a meeting of 40 leading activists specifically to discuss the challenges and opportunities of the Brazilian environmental movement. The edited proceedings of this meeting make up an important reference for those interested in the struggle to protect the environment in Brazil.
One of these discussions resulted in specific recommendations to funding organizations. It is a document that deserves careful consideration from donors who want to provide strategic support to environmental organizations in Brazil. I think it has a general relevance as well.
Readers can see a summary of those recommendations.
And I will be very happy to talk to anyone who would like to know more about the environmental movement in Brazil.
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