A blog post by Sopie and Nick Marple, co-founders of Gower Street.
Gower Street is a UK-based family foundation which has supported education work, primarily in Ghana, since 2007. After a decade of giving to girls’ education, we couldn’t ignore the feeling that the worsening threat of climate change was undermining the often-transformative impact of education, and after reflection on our personal priorities and the upcoming decade of political action on climate change, we decided to refocus the trust on climate action. To maximise the difference this could make, we committed the trust to spending down all of its resources, then valued at approximately £8 million, by 2030.
After a decade of giving to girls’ education, we couldn’t ignore the feeling that the worsening threat of climate change was undermining the often-transformative impact of education.
It became increasingly obvious that continuing to support education while also funding climate as a separate portfolio was an artificially imposed divide: on the ground the deeply committed grassroots groups did what they always had and tackled the reality of the challenges that faced them, whether they fit in one particular box or not. Education partners were working with communities to plant trees and cool school yards, whilst climate partners were working with schools to teach children about climate change and how their parents might adapt farming practices.
Sophie is a funder, impact investor and campaigner. She is the co-founder of Gower St and, in 2020, helped set up Impatience Earth, a philanthropy consultancy offering pro-bono advice to people looking to give in the climate sector and the grassroots organisation Mothers CAN (Climate Action Network). In 2022, Sophie became the Chair of The Climate Coalition.
Nick is the co-founder of Gower St and has been funding education projects and climate change work in the UK and Ghana for 15 years. He has been visiting Ghana regularly for 20 years and has a strong connection to the people and the country. Nick is a long-standing Impact Investor looking to invest in start-ups that can reduce our global carbon footprint and have a positive social impact.
Soon enough, Gower Street caught up and has spent the last 18 months dissolving the siloes we’d created. In 2025, we will be launching our first (and last – we’re a spend down!) funding programme focused explicitly on the intersection of education and climate. We’ve been inspired by some of the brilliant initiatives already happening at our partner organisations, and we are getting these partners actively involved in shaping the programme, through a community of practice facilitated by one partner organisation and bringing local advisors into our funding process. Perhaps most unusually, we’re bringing nature onto our board, literally, with a trustee to represent the views of nature in our funding programme design and decision-making. It’s invigorating to break these silos and look at what we do with fresh eyes.
However, when we look at our peers in climate and education philanthropy, we often still see evidence of these artificial divides, coupled with increased frustration from within foundations from individuals who know that they cannot be good education funders if they don’t take a climate lens, and cannot be good climate funders if they don’t acknowledge the important role education plays in mitigation and adaptation.
Having made the decision to spend down, we feel more driven to put our trust in our peers and partners and the future they will shape. As we throw out shoots of hope into the world whilst we can, it also feels important to share what we are learning and explore the questions of how to do good work with as many peers as possible, to break down barriers and support the fundamental relationship building that needs to happen across the climate and education sectors for meaningful change to happen.
We are delighted to have co-hosted the BIG Series on climate and education this year and are looking forward to the conversations ahead. These are an opportunity to surface what is already happening in the world of education philanthropy, integrating climate change with a view to more of us working together in collaborative efforts.
The hoped-for outcomes include stronger, trust-based relationships between the education and climate philanthropy sectors, alongside a deeper mutual understanding of each other’s priorities and challenges. There is an ambition to build a shared sense of the value of collaboration and clear pathways for ongoing cross-sector engagement. This includes continuous joint learning, coordinated action through shared commitments, and the production of joint outputs at key moments. Ultimately, the goal is to enable more effective collaborative financing, influence the direction of major funding flows, and ensure both education and climate are meaningfully integrated into global strategies and policies.
Our experience of collaborating on other issues tells us that the power and impact of philanthropy can be amplified when we take aligned and co-ordinated action. We aim to reach a point where we can see our own efforts, however big or small, contributing to global efforts to equip education to both cope with and mitigate climate change. In order to do that we need to start taking our first steps towards working together. Our goal is to stimulate ways to do that, to start the journey together this year.