Introducing partners from our £3m Carbon Innovation Fund | Co-op Foundation
By Nick Crofts, CEO of Co-op Foundation
We launched our £3m Carbon Innovation Fund last November, signalling an exciting first step for the Co-op Foundation into multi-million-pound funding for climate change support.
The fund immediately became the largest partnership of its kind between ourselves and Co-op and also one of the most innovative, as you may have guessed from the title.
The quality of responses to our fund announcement was exceptional. But, after significant input from our partners at Co-op and environmental experts from across the UK, I’m overjoyed today to announce £1.3m of funding for 14 projects worldwide.
The work they’ll do over the next three years will not only reduce carbon emissions in the food and farming sector, but demonstrate collaboration, support people and communities, and reduce inequality in the face of the climate crisis.
Welcome to the Co-op Foundation! We can’t wait to work with you.
Our brilliant new partners
Our new partners are spread across the globe and, from Santa Cruz Island to Cornwall, they’ll change the world for the better. Their work will also be exciting and innovative; going against the status quo by working with new technology or bringing back ancient and indigenous ways of looking after land.
Our Carbon Innovation Fund partners and their plans:
Partnering with Co-op
We’re a funder that lives and breathes our co-operative values and we’re passionate about using our flexible funding to build fairer and more co-operative communities. Nowhere is co-operation needed more than in the battle to tackle climate change.
Co-op has laid out its own commitment to be a Net Zero business by 2040 and has a 10-point climate plan in place to lower its own carbon emissions. At the Foundation, we’re also holding ourselves accountable by signing the Association of Charitable Foundation’s Funder Commitment on Climate Change (FCCC) and listening to young people’s views on environment and sustainability as part of our new strategy development.
Our partnership on the Carbon Innovation Fund is another step forward that will help us deliver on Co-op’s vision of ‘Co-operating for a Fairer World’.
Co-op Members have helped, too. All our grants are funded through Co-op donations from the sale of compostable carrier bags and our own funds, donated, in part, by Members. This truly is co-operation in action!
What’s next?
Good luck to all our new partners who are kicking off their work over the coming weeks and months. We can’t wait to work with you and learn from everything you do, too.
Meanwhile, applications for the second round of funding from the Carbon Innovation Fund will open early in 2023. Subscribe to this blog to hear first when applications open.