29 Climate Groups Share Secrets to Multiply Impact

Twenty-nine climate organizations from around the world are rewriting the rules of how nonprofits work together. They're sharing everything they used to guard: intellectual property, business models, even relationships with donors.

It started in 2023 when Pyxera Global joined an experiment called the Collaborative for Systemic Climate Action. Fifteen organizations decided to try something different after recognizing a hard truth: the traditional nonprofit model was designed for competition, not collaboration.

For decades, climate groups competed for the same funding pools. They protected their unique approaches and duplicated each other's work to maintain their competitive edge. It made sense for survival, but it fragmented resources when fighting a crisis that demands unity.

The Collaborative asked its members to take a risk. Leave organizational egos at the door. Share what's usually protected. Trust that working together would accomplish more than working alone.

Three years later, the gamble is paying off. The group now includes major players like Climate KIC, the Club of Rome, and the Green Africa Youth Organization. Together they've secured significant funding from foundations individual groups might never have reached alone, including the Oak Foundation and Quadrature Climate Foundation.

They've launched more than a dozen climate initiatives across Ghana, India, Ireland, New Mexico, and Brazil. Many of these projects would have struggled to get off the ground independently. Through the Collaborative, they're now positioned to scale.

The infrastructure they built matters as much as the projects. Partners gather twice yearly for deep strategy sessions and meet weekly online to stay aligned. They host joint events at major global gatherings like the World Economic Forum and UN Climate Change Conference, creating a unified voice that amplifies their collective knowledge.

The timing couldn't be more critical. Public climate funding is shrinking. Corporate environmental commitments are being scaled back. Political pressure on multilateral institutions is growing. The traditional nonprofit response won't close these gaps.

The Ripple Effect

What makes this model powerful is its potential to spread. The Collaborative describes their approach as "mycelium," the underground network of fungal threads that connects and strengthens entire forest ecosystems. It's not proprietary. It's replicable.

Other sectors facing complex, interconnected challenges could adopt the same framework. The bottleneck was never lack of talent or commitment. It was a system that rewarded isolation over integration.

The work isn't frictionless. Conflicts arise. Old competitive habits resurface. But the trajectory is clear: trust multiplies impact faster than any single organization working alone ever could.

Climate change doesn't respect organizational boundaries, and the people solving it are finally acting like it.