The Beldon Fund is at an important juncture in its ten year journey.  Past the halfway mark, but well short of the end, we find ourselves in the paradoxical place of gearing up for a final push to protect the environment and, at the same time, helping our grantees prepare for the end of Beldon funding.  The exciting grantmaking experiment John Hunting launched in 1999 is about to enter another phase.

Over the last six years, the Beldon Fund has been investing in national and state-based organizations seeking to enhance their effectiveness and “clout” in the policy arena.  Our goal is not a quick win or one-time victory, but rather a long term, steady accumulation of power built, simply enough, on the support and activism of average citizens. 

This is painstaking, difficult work.  It begins with rethinking previous approaches to advocacy, approaches that relied – perhaps too much – on working the “inside”.  These strategies work fine if those in policymaking positions are friends and allies of environmental protection, but it has proven wholly unsuccessful when anti-environmental ideologues control the levers of power. 

Only by sharing information about environmental issues with average citizens – door-to-door, person-to-person, over a long period of time -- can one successfully and consistently offset ideologues on the other side.  This means grassroots organizing in places and among constituency groups that environmentalists have generally ignored. 

It means talking to Hispanic community activists in Racine, Wisconsin or union members in Green Bay, not just college activists in Madison.  It means building deep and lasting partnerships with nurses and other medical professionals, with breast cancer survivors, with parents of children with learning disabilities, and with others to advance the cause of environmental health. And, it means investing in the sometimes unglamorous tools to do this work, from fundraising help to voter file investments to field training programs.

The results of these careful, long-term investments are beginning to pay off.  For example, in Wisconsin, environmentalists recently persuaded the state’s policymakers to implement aggressive targets for energy efficiency despite stiff industry opposition.  This victory came only after two unsuccessful attempts to stop industry-led efforts to weaken Wisconsin’s environmental protections.  Remarkably, with each setback, the state’s environmental community gained strength and support until it finally turned the tide in its favor, relying on a suite of new advocacy tools to do so.

In Michigan, the state’s environmental community, which spent most of the last decade trying (and failing) to fend off bad policy changes, brought enough muscle to bear on the state’s policymakers to make sweeping changes in the state’s water use policies.  These changes were made after a unified environmental community contacted more than 200,000 Michiganders about the importance of Great Lakes protection.   As in Wisconsin, the environmental community’s victory was grounded on a much more sophisticated and aggressive approach to advocacy that made even its strongest adversaries stand up and take notice.

Finally, states as diverse as Maine and Washington have approved bans on a range of toxic substances in the face of fierce chemical industry opposition, thanks largely to newly forged alliances between environmentalists and organizations representing health affected groups,.  These innovative partnerships are poised to bring even larger victories in the months ahead.

Of course, much more needs to be done.  But, the important lesson for philanthropists and grantees is that long-term, steady investments in the tools of advocacy, coordination, and relationship-building will pay outsized dividends.  Short-term, opportunistic funding will always have its place in environmental philanthropy, but our grantees are showing us the value that long-term, consistent spending can have in helping them become better and more sophisticated advocates.

The Beldon Fund will continue for another few years, but we already see important lessons for our colleagues and grantees.  We are committed to documenting these lessons to ensure that the results of this ambitious “experiment” are shared as widely as possible.