FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 2026
Helping donors understand how their philanthropic capital, including the more than $400 billion sitting in donor-advised funds across North America, can catalyze real climate solutions around the world.
The impacts of climate change threaten everything we care about: public health, food security, our favourite places, and the futures of our children. While donors and investors are deeply concerned, many find it challenging to connect their capital to credible climate solutions due to a critical knowledge gap; it is often difficult to know precisely where and how to begin directing philanthropic dollars for real-world impact.
Terraset and Forum for Impact (FFI) are teaming up to create content and programming across a series of industry-leading events that will showcase to donors, advisors, and investors the catalytic ways philanthropic capital can scale climate solutions and provide routes to deliver that impact.
The Power of Philanthropic Capital
Most climate finance conversations focus on institutional capital: pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, development banks, and private funds. That capital is key, but there are parallel opportunities not suited to it, but which are crucial to solving the climate crisis.
Philanthropic capital is uniquely positioned to take risks that institutional investors cannot, fund projects that are too early for conventional markets, and provide first-loss capital that attracts private and public funding, often faster than government programs allow.
About Terraset
Terraset deploys philanthropic capital to high-impact, underfunded climate solutions. It backs early-stage projects in greenhouse gas removal, superpollutant elimination, and emerging climate technologies that are too early for conventional markets but too important to wait.
Terraset uses pre-purchase commitments, unique revolving funds, and recoverable grants to maximize every philanthropic dollar. Funding projects upfront allows them to build, hire, and pilot before market investment arrives. Because Terraset is a nonprofit, donations are fully tax-deductible, and donors have a credible route to catalyze large-scale climate impact.
Less than 2% of global philanthropy goes to climate. Terraset was built to change that.
“We’re in a climate crisis that touches every cause donors could care about, and yet we have a huge problem with urgency, as evidenced by the hundreds of billions of dollars sitting in DAFs. Helping donors understand how to responsibly and effectively move that capital sooner is one of the most impactful things we can do.”
— Adam Fraser, CEO, Terraset
About Forum for Impact
Forum for Impact is a global platform where leaders and institutions converge to shape the future of impact. The organization brings together investors, philanthropists, sovereign wealth funds, and other innovators across nine countries around the world. Led by Michael Meehan, FFI sits at the intersection of some of the largest capital flows shaping climate finance today.
FFI operates across global investment corridors to mobilize philanthropic, public, and private capital, creating innovative pathways for financial flow. By partnering with donor-advised funds in the US and Canada — and leveraging the $70 billion UAE-Canada investment corridor — the organization structures high-impact, climate-focused projects designed to effectively deploy this capital.
“We have a unique opportunity to rethink how philanthropy engages with climate finance. The intent is certainly there, but we need to build new pipelines that turn passive capital into active impact. By connecting donors to global programs and structures, we create practical new pathways that plug donor-advised funds directly into larger, high-impact initiatives and opportunities around the world.”
— Michael Meehan, Founding Partner, Forum for Impact
What We’re Building Together
The foundation of this collaboration is education. Part of what makes climate giving hard is that donors — even well-resourced ones — often don’t know what options exist or what the quality bar should be. FFI’s programs and convenings are where we’ll discuss the ins and outs of climate philanthropy and concrete ways to deploy capital.
One significant opportunity we’ll explore is donor-advised funds (DAFs), particularly in North America. Canada holds roughly $30 billion in DAF assets; the United States holds closer to $400 billion. Most of it sits in default investment options, waiting to be directed. Most DAF holders don’t know climate is an option, don’t realize the negative climate impact their funds are often having, and have never been connected to specific, investment-ready climate projects that meet their advisors’ bar.
That’s one of the gaps we’re working to close together — with an educational and giving program that channels FFI donor contributions into high-impact climate solutions. We’re combining FFI’s convening reach and relationships with Terraset’s project pipeline and climate expertise to give philanthropic capital a clearer path to real impact.
More to come as the year unfolds. If you’re a donor, a philanthropic advisor, or working in climate finance and curious about what we’re building, get in touch.
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Media Contacts
Forum for Impact
Shauna Arnott
press@forumforimpact.com
Terraset
Taylor Insley
taylor@terrasetclimate.org