We believe that every young person deserves every opportunity possible to successfully graduate from high school, pursue and complete post-secondary education if that is his or her choice, and enter the workforce with a well-paying job, ideally in his chosen career path. As we started to explore the organizations working in this space, we spent a lot of time understanding the plethora of approaches and interventions available and referring back to our guiding values to see what felt right for us.

Environmental Justice is how we think about this area of focus. For this first year of grants, we broke this down into two key sub-areas: climate change and animal protection. Given our commitment to systemic, long-term horizon change, we sought out organizations that attack issues like climate change, air pollution, and animal extinction at their root causes. 

What issue areas should we focus on? There are thousands of issues out there that need help and are important. There is no right or wrong decision when it comes to creating impact. Knowing that, like any family foundation, we have limited resources, we wanted to ensure our list was broad enough to go where our hearts called us and was limited enough that we could build our conviction over time and have a tangible impact on the causes we chose to support.

Part of the goal in sharing our journey at Greenbridge is to accelerate our learning and impact by connecting with others on a similar path. We do not claim to have all the answers but we wanted to share our current thinking and approach. Here are our guiding principles and values, as well as the key questions we asked, when determining areas of support.