Patagonia funds only environmental work. We are most interested in
making grants to organizations that identify and work on the root causes
of problems and that approach issues with a commitment to long-term
change. Because we believe that the most direct path to real change is
through building grassroots momentum, our funding focuses on
organizations that create a strong base of citizen support.
We support small, grassroots, activist organizations with provocative
direct-action agendas, working on multi-pronged campaigns to preserve
and protect our environment. We help local groups working to protect
local habitat, and think the individual battles to protect a specific
stand of forest, stretch of river or indigenous wild species are the
most effective in raising more complicated issues—particularly those of
biodiversity and ecosystem protection—in the public mind. We look for
innovative groups that produce measurable results, and we like to
support efforts that force the government to abide by its own—our
own—laws. Your efforts should be quantifiable, with specific goals,
objectives and action plans, and should include measures for evaluating
success.
Because we're a privately held company, we have the freedom to fund
groups off the beaten track, and that's where we believe our small
grants are most effective. We support the use of creative methods to
engage communities to take action, including film, photography and
books. However, media projects will only be successful in our proposal
process if they are tightly linked to a direct-action campaign on the
issue, with specific goals that go beyond education and awareness.
We fund work that:
- is action-oriented
- builds public involvement and support
- is strategic
- focuses on root causes
- accomplishes specific goals and objectives
- is happening in these countries only: United States, Canada, Japan, Chile, Argentina, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Norway, Luxembourg, Italy, Ireland, Germany, France, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Australia and the Czech Republic.
