Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
—Sir Francis Bacon, 1603
The environmental movement, like all popular movements in American history, began as philanthropy, and is still being led by philanthropy. Its essential and characteristic message is that the physical world is a coherent whole—a universe—so that any and all attempts to deal with it in separate parts — as a multiverse — are conflict-producing, possibly dangerous, and in the long run will fail.
This is an area in which many of the problems are so massive in scale that government and philanthropy must work as partners, and where they have done so there are many successes. But governments at every level work more slowly than philanthropy, tending to be or just appear, sluggish or even adversarial. In such cases environmental philanthropy is forced into advocacy, and even confrontation.
Here in Massachusetts the record is mixed. Our environmental community has often led the nation; we have a number of charities that are over a century old, the first or among the first of their kinds; some Catalogue charities are national and even international leaders in their fields. Regrettably, our government is not in that class, and in recent years has steadily cut back on its environmental commitments.
In response, the philanthropic environmental community is getting its act together strategically. The entire field is not large — based on our 2003-04 survey, about 210 environmental charities of general philanthropic interest (8% of all Massachusetts charities that size). The Catalogue has listed 73, or 35% of these. Many have excellent leadership.
As we move into the 21st century and a new paradigm in philanthropy, fields of activity are emerging as significant subjects of interest for donors and grantmakers. The integration or coordination of environmental philanthropy anticipates the future of all fields. As collaborative agendas are developed, and promoted with shared messages and a common rhetoric, fields and the charities within them will become more influential and more attractive to donors. If they add the promotion of philanthropy for the field to their agendas, messages and rhetoric, charitable giving will increase. We urge them to do so.
