Oak Foundation

OVERVIEW: The Oak Foundation makes grants for the environment and climate, sustainable agriculture, clean energy, housing and homelessness, human rights, women’s causes, learning differences, violence prevention and child sexual abuse prevention. Grantmaking is global, but a significant proportion of giving goes to organizations in Denmark, the U.S., the U.K. and Zimbabwe.

IP TAKE: The Oak Foundation is a large global funder that makes hundreds of grants each year. It named itself after the tree that “embodies strength, resilience, longevity, and protection,” the Oak Foundation is a progressive funder that works primarily through long-standing partnerships with organizations that have demonstrated success in the foundation’s areas of interest. The Oak Foundation historically tended to support specific programs and initiatives, but now directs more of its grantmaking to general operating support. A recent IP article noted Oak’s prominence as an environmental grantmaker, and its propensity for giving large grants to rigorously vetted organizations. “Anyone can try for a grant from Oak, but the odds are steep,” writes IP. The Oak Foundation does not accept unsolicited grant applications, but does accept online letters of enquiry from organizations that have “strong alignment” with the foundation’s priorities. Oak is a transparent funder, with a detailed grants database available online.

PROFILE: Duty-Free billionaire Alan Parker established the Oak Foundation in 1983 “to address issues of global, social, and environmental concern, particularly those that have a major impact on the lives of the disadvantaged.” The Oak Foundation is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, but it also maintains a presence in Denmark, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Zimbabwe. Its current funding initiatives include international human rights, issues affecting women, the prevention of child sexual abuse, the environment, global climate initiatives, housing and homelessness and learning differences.

The Oak Foundation also maintains a special interest initiative that responds to timely opportunities outside of its main areas of interest and runs funding programs for its geographic areas of interest: Denmark and Zimbabwe.

Grants for Global Security, Human Rights and LGBTQ

The Oak Foundation’s international human rights funding program aims to “close the gap between human rights rhetoric and the lived experience of so many people.” Its main priorities are closing the “impunity gap” for those who violate international human rights law, preventing instances of arbitrary detention and torture, protecting LGBTQI populations from discrimination and persecution and protecting and building the capacity of human rights defenders.

The program currently focuses its grantmaking on the European Union, the U.S., Brazil, India and Myanmar, but occasionally responds to timely opportunities for human rights advancements in other areas of the world.
One recent grantee is the U.S.-based organization, WITNESS, Inc., which teaches people how to use video safely and effectively to record human rights abuses. Another recent grantee, Detention Action, based in the U.K., works to prevent indefinite detentions for immigrants through individual case resolutions and community care programs.
And in Brazil, the Oak Foundation has supported the Instituto Vladimir Herzog, which collaborates with the Brazilian Truth Commission to organize rights-related learning opportunities and debates at community centers and schools.
Other recent human rights grantees include the Global Detention Project, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, Earth Rights International, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Protecting the rights of LGBTQI populations is one of the main areas of focus of the foundation’s human rights funding program. The goals of this subprogram include supporting legislation, building public support and providing services and advocacy for LGBTQI individuals and communities.

Past grantees include OutRight Action International, which has advocated for LGBTQI rights at the United Nations and worked to minimize violence against LGBTQI groups in Caribbean nations.
In Switzerland, the Foundation has supported Dialogai, which provides social support, counseling and health education to LGBTQI youth. Other recent grantees include Parliamentarians for Global Action, the Human Dignity Trust and All Out, a U.S. organization that organizes on-line movements against LGBTQI discrimination.

Grants for Women and Gender-Based Violence Prevention

The Oak Foundation’s program dedicated to women’s issues supports women-led movements to achieve equality and justice around the world. The program’s specific goals include strengthening the capacity and leadership of women’s organizations, supporting “safe spaces” for women’s organizations and activism, creating and disseminating knowledge in support of social justice and encouraging collaboration between and among women’s movements and organizations.

Geographic areas of priority for this program include the Balkans, Brazil, Central America, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mexico, Switzerland, the U.K., the U.S., Moldova, Bulgaria, India and the North Caucasian area of the Russian Federation.
The Foundation recently supported World Pulse, a technology resource that enables collaboration between women’s organizations in 190 countries around the world, and Terre des Femmes Switzerland, which provides culturally sensitive support to immigrant women and girls who are victims of sexual and domestic violence.
Another grantee, the U.K.’s Surviving Economic Abuse, used funding to raise awareness of economic abuse and empower women to strive for stability and equality. Other grantees of this program include Boston’s Women’s Lunch Place, the Urgent Action Fund of Latin America, Brazil’s Casa da Mulher do Nordeste and Solidarité Féminine pour la Paix et le Développement Intégral, which is located in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Oak also conducts grantmaking for violence prevention through its women’s and child sexual abuse prevention initiatives.

Oak’s women’s program has given to several organizations involved in the prevention of domestic and sexual abuse and services for victims and survivors. Grantees include the Women against Rape, a program run by the U.K.-based organization Women in Dialogue, and the Ashaina Network, which provides housing and culturally sensitive counseling to victims of domestic violence in the U.K.
Oak’s sexual abuse program, which focuses on preventing abuse through awareness and accountability, is one of the Foundation’s larger areas of giving. One recent grantee, No Means No Worldwide, used funding to run its signature rape prevention program, IM Power.
Oak has also provided multi-year support to the Tides Foundation’s Children First and Prevent Child Sexual Abuse Funds, both of which have been involved in global policy development and interventions to improve outcomes for the world’s most vulnerable children. Other grantees of this program include CHILD USA, the Child Rights and Violence Prevention Fund of East Africa, Moldova’s National Center for Child Abuse Prevention and SOS Children’s Villages of Latvia.

Grants for Climate Change, Sustainable Agriculture and Wildlife Conservation

Oak Foundation’s Global Climate Initiatives program is subdivided into three main focus areas: Energy, Food, and Plastics and Petrochemicals.

Energy grants work to “support efforts that make clean energy more accessible, affordable, and fair. This includes improving power, transport, and buildings in ways that protect health, lower bills, and create jobs — especially in places where the need is greatest.”
The program’s specific focus areas address the development of clean energy systems, the development of sustainable practices in cities, the improvement of vehicle efficiency and support for the environmental equity of disadvantaged people.
Grantees in this area tend to be large, multi-national efforts to reduce emissions and transition toward clean energy, including the Meridian Institute, the European Climate Foundation, the U.S.’s Climate Policy Initiative, the U.K.’s Climate Bond Initiative and the Clean Air Fund.

Food is another subprogram of Oak’s global climate funding initiative. It works to promote “nutritious diets, fair livelihoods, and farming practices that care for nature and reduce waste.”

The subprogram also aims to address and reverse the effects of overfishing, pollution and climate change on the earth’s oceans, focusing specifically on industrial fishing, small fisheries and plastics pollution.
Areas of geographic interest include Europe and Asia.
Grantees include Fondation Ensemble, which works with fisheries in Mozambique to promote sustainable fishing and preserve marine biodiversity, and the Mesoamerican Reef Fund, which supports natural resource management and conservation organizations in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.
Other recent grantees include the International Pole and Line Foundation, Global Fishing Watch, the Native American Rights Fund, the Environmental Law Fund and a large-scale study of trends of the world’s largest fisheries at the University of British Columbia.

The Plastics and Petrochemicals subprogram supports efforts to “reduce plastic waste and pollution by promoting safer, cleaner, and healthier alternatives.”

It seeks to reduce reliance on unnecessary single-use items and to protect communities from the “harmful effects of excessive plastic and petrochemical use” to “keep […] rivers and oceans clean” and make food safer and healthier.
Grantees include Sustainable Markets Foundation, Global Alliance for the Future of Food, Oceana Inc., and Friends of Hudson River Park.

Outside of its three main climate focus areas, the foundation co-created Climate Breakthrough with the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Good Energies Foundation. The organization aims to “build a philanthropic support system that gives leaders the resources, space, and trust to take risks, break conventions, and pursue ambitious climate goals.” As IP has reported, Climate Breakthrough funding has increased in recent years.

Grants for Environment and Conservation

Like the climate program, Oak’s environmental program is made up of three main focus areas: Regenerative Landscapes, Marine Food Systems and Livelihoods, and Nature and People.

The Regenerative Landscapes subprogram adopts a “living landscapes” approach to biodiversity, which are able to support both natural ecosystems and human communities.

It also supports efforts to reduce and prevent the illegal trade of wildlife and promote sustainability.
It focuses on Southern Africa, Southeast Asia, and Europe.
Grantees include Frankfurt Zoological Society, SAVE Wildlife Conservation Fund, and Orange River Karoo Conservation Area.

Marine Food Systems and Livelihoods is another subprogram focused on oceans and waterways.

It works to preserve the “food security of coastal and Indigenous communities while ensuring the health of marine ecosystems.”
Geographic interest areas include Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Grantees include Pacific Environment and Resources Center, Atlantic Council of the United States, and Fiscalia del Medio Ambiente.

Another focus area of Oak’s environmental funding program concerns nature and people. This subprogram mainly focuses “on the connectivity between people and their wild places” and “supports symbiotic relationships whereby community development, employment, and livelihoods can be provided while biodiversity can also thrive.”

Past grantees include the Mara Elephant Project Trust, the Lilongwe Wildlife Trust and the Africa Parks Network. Some recent funding has also worked more broadly to protect biodiversity worldwide, with grants going to large, global organizations including the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Social Good Fund and the International Wildlife Trust.

Grants for Housing and Homelessness

The Oak Foundation names housing and homelessness as one of its main funding programs. Through its grantmaking in this area, the Foundation aims to prevent homelessness through programs that promote economic self-sufficiency of at-risk populations, increase the availability of affordable housing and advocate for people who are at-risk of losing their homes.

In the U.S., the program prioritizes the cities of Boston, New York and Philadelphia, and in the U.K., grantmaking focuses on London, Belfast, South Wales, Bristol, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent.
- In the U.S., the Oak Foundation has supported the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative which works with community land trusts to develop affordable and low-income housing, and New York City’s Community Voice Heard, a member-led organization that advocates for increasing the supply and quality of affordable housing in low-income communities.
- In the U.K., Oak has made grants to the Welsh Refugee Council, which helps refugees and asylum seekers to secure affordable housing, and the Social and Sustainable Charitable Trust, which supports nonprofits that purchase residential properties for development as affordable housing.

Grants for K-12 Education

The Oak Foundation supports K-12 education via its learning differences funding program, which promotes educational equity for students with learning differences and who may “experience further marginalization due to racism and poverty.”

Working mainly in the U.S., the Foundation supports programs for students, families, teachers and educational leadership, as well as educational research on learning differences and the translation of said research into.
One funded study investigated the characteristics of dyslexic students who were resistant to evidence-based interventions. A research team at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence used funding to study the role of emotional intelligence in teaching and. Other learning differences grantees include the Seattle Foundation, which used funding to develop resources to help school districts adopt equitable practices, and the Center for Curriculum Redesign, which offers professional development for teachers aimed at unlocking the potential of all learners.

Grants for Global Health and Global Development

The Oak Foundation runs funding programs that support mostly local organizations focused on specific geographic areas of interest: Denmark and Zimbabwe.

The Zimbabwe program makes grants to help create thriving communities, promote entrepreneurship, support children with special needs, and work to empower communities to better improve their lives. Previously funded groups have worked on landmine removal, erasing the stigma of HIV, and children’s cancer treatment.
The Denmark program funds organizations that are focused on ending family violence, promote women’s financial independence, combat sex trafficking and homelessness, assist migrants with healthcare and housing, and seek to advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The program also supports nonprofits in Greenland and the Faroe Islands.
Finally, the foundation has a special interest initiative that responds to timely opportunities outside of its main areas of interest. Grants through this initiative support organizations ranging in size from locally-minded groups to those making a global impact, and they support “grantee partners in a wide range of fields including medical research, education, environment, humanitarian relief, mental health, the arts, and much more.”

Important Grant Details:

The Oak Foundation typically awards between $450-475 million in grants annually to around 400 organizations. Grants often range from $25,000 to $22 million, with an average grant size of about $1 million.

About half of its total grantmaking is directed toward organizations and projects in the U.S. Other countries that receive significant portions of funding include the U.K., Denmark, Switzerland, and Zimbabwe.
The Oak Foundation maintains a searchable grants database and posts its annual reports on its website.
General questions may be submitted via email or telephone to one of its five office locations around the world.

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