Incubations

CEA has a long and rich history of playing central roles in the design and launch of new initiatives. In some cases, CEA staff play key roles in incubation and start-up operations. Examples include the following.
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Results for publications tagged: Incubations

Ocean Resilience and Climate Alliance (ORCA)

  • Ocean Resilience and Climate Alliance (ORCA)

    CEA played a central role in the design, incubation, and coordination of ORCA – a $350 million philanthropic initiative focused on advancing ocean-climate solutions across mitigation, sequestration, adaptation, and resilience. We conducted foundational research and analysis to inform ORCA’s impact rationale and philanthropic strategy, developed funder briefs, co-designed high-impact grants with grantees, and facilitated key decision-making convenings. CEA also assessed and recommended pooled fund infrastructure, drafted initial governance documents, conducted an internal equity review, and helped establish ORCA’s early web presence. Today, CEA continues to support coordination and engagement across ORCA’s initiatives, as well as supporting its monitoring, evaluation, and learning agenda.

Our Shared Seas (OSS)

  • Our Shared Seas (OSS)

    CEA manages and maintains Our Shared Seas, a trusted, independent source of timely data, research, and insights to support ocean conservation, policy, practice, and philanthropy. In partnership with leading ocean philanthropic funders, CEA designed and launched OSS in 2019 to provide ocean advocates, funders, and the public with access to key data on ocean threats, trends, and the funding landscape in user-friendly and searchable formats. OSS continues to feature the seminal Global Ocean Funding report, updated every two years, and has expanded its offerings to include: 1) event guides and calendars; 2) a publications library with up-to-date articles and reports; and 3) Insight posts, which are timely distillations of ocean conservation and climate publications to support global grantmaking and program priorities.

Roots of Change

  • Roots of Change

    CEA was involved from approximately 2001 to 2007 in supporting coordination and collaboration of a group of foundations and individual funders focused on sustainable food systems. This collaboration conceptualizes and established the Roots of Change (ROC) Fund, which CEA continued to support for several years. The ROC Fund was launched with a goal of accelerating California’s transition to more sustainable food systems. Roots of Change continues today, with a mission of catalyzing action, providing expertise, and delivering policies to create food system change from soil to plate.

Multiplier

  • Multiplier

    In 2001, CEA recognized a growing need for a mission-aligned, cost-effective nonprofit organization that could provide cost-effective operational, administrative, and governance functions, including quick access to 501(c)(3) status and a flexible administrative and operational platform to a portfolio of environmental conservation projects. To meet this need, CEA helped incubate a new fiscal sponsor, the Trust for Conservation Innovation (TCI). TCI allowed program teams to focus on their mission and impact, with each project receiving personal attention, including direct support to build capacity and achieve goals. In 2018, TCI changed its name to Multiplier to better reflect the intersectional work of many of its projects and the evolution and growth of the organization, including comprehensive capacity-building support for projects in critical areas such as fundraising, program and leadership development, and outreach.

Institute for Industrial Productivity (IIP)

  • Institute for Industrial Productivity (IIP)

    IIP was established in 2010 as one of the ClimateWork Foundation’s “best practice network” organizations – operating globally with a focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the energy intensive industrial sectors such as cement, iron and steel, and chemicals. CEA played a key role in helping to stand-up this organization, providing operational support for over a year.

Climate Breakthrough

  • Climate Breakthrough

    In 2015, CEA was hired by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to assess whether there were key strategic gaps in philanthropic investment in climate mitigation. The finding of this assessment was that a critical gap was in the how of philanthropy rather than the what. Philanthropy needed to take more risks, raise its ambitious, support a greater diversity of innovative approaches, and back capable, entrepreneurial individuals. A small group of funders, led by the Packard Foundation, came together to build a global award program for individual climate leaders with gigaton scale ideas. Climate Breakthrough has now issued 23 multi-million awards to individuals and small teams all over the world and is a leading funder of innovative, transformational climate solutions. From the initial analysis in 2015, through launch of the Climate Breakthrough award in 2016, through multiple institutional homes, staffing arrangements, and names, CEA played a central role in incubating and operating Climate Breakthrough until its spin-out as an independent organization in 2022.

Klamath River Renewal Corporation

  • Klamath River Renewal Corporation

    After years of conflict and tribal activism, a wide range of parties – including the Karuk and Yurok Tribes, the States of California and Oregon, local governments, irrigators, conservation and fishing groups, and the dam owner PacificCorp – came together in 2016 to forge an amendment to the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (KHSA) to guide the removal of four hydroelectric dams, the largest dam removal project ever attempted. By removing these dams, hundreds of miles of prime salmon habitat which historically had been the third most important salmon run in all of California would be restored forever. The Klamath River Renewal Corporation was established to manage the process to remove the dams and then work with all the interested parties to restore the formerly inundated lands. CEA was hired to provide interim leadership and staffing for all aspects of the effort, to recruit the permanent staff, and to establish Board management and governance activities for the first few years. The dams were completely removed in October 2024, ahead of schedule; fifteen days later, biologists observed a fall-run Chinook salmon spawning in a newly available tributary of Klamath river.

ClimateWorks Foundation

  • ClimateWorks Foundation

    In 2006, CEA was asked by a consortium of the world’s leading foundations – the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Energy Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and the Oak Foundation – to develop a rigorous roadmap for coordinated philanthropic investment in climate change. CEA conducted a comprehensive review of existing philanthropic strategies, scientific and economic literature, and sector-wide interviews with leading climate experts. CEA’s findings, analysis, and philanthropic strategy recommendations were published in the Design to Win report. This landmark report soon became basis for launching the largest climate philanthropic effort at the time – a $1 billion investment to establish ClimateWorks Foundation. CEA went on to help launch ClimateWorks Foundation, supporting organizational design and build out; recruiting founding staff members; assisting with writing, editing, and communications strategy; and developing materials for the executive team, board of directors, external partners, funders, and the public. Since launching in 2008, ClimateWorks Foundation has served as a central hub and leader in the climate philanthropy sector, working globally and across sectors to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.