COMMUNITY
A GROWING COLLABORATIVE
The climate emergency is the most complex and dangerous challenge humanity has ever faced, and no single funder, nonprofit or community can address it alone.
At ORCA, we believe that we move further and faster when we move together. We bring funders, grantees and frontline communities together to find allies, break silos and build a movement for ocean-climate action that is greater than the sum of its parts.
By pooling resources, perspectives and experience we can scale solutions faster, reach further and achieve far more than any of us could alone.
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We’re a broad, flexible alliance spanning mitigation, sequestration, adaptation and resilience.
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We make it easier for funders and partners to work together across the whole ocean–climate space, coordinating efforts, sharing learning and strengthening collective leadership so the field can move at the pace this crisis demands.
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Together, we are building a global movement of more than 140 funders, partners and frontline organisations working across 40 countries to reimagine how we tackle the greatest threat our blue planet has ever faced.
OUR FUNDERS
Our funders are philanthropists, foundations and family offices from across the traditionally siloed worlds of climate and conservation, who share a common goal of unlocking the ocean’s extraordinary climate potential.
Pooling that funding and insight means we can support more ambitious and catalytic initiatives, flexibly and for the long term.
It means we can stop wasting time duplicating efforts, when there’s no time to waste. It means we can simplify grantmaking and reporting, and maximize the money we drive to the frontlines.
And it means our grantees can spend time delivering impact rather than navigating fragmented systems.
This is the power of working together.
OUR GRANTEES
Our grantees are globally respected nonprofits, regranters, frontline organisations and visionary leaders advancing some of the most promising and transformative ocean-climate priorities — from scaling offshore wind and decarbonizing shipping, to restoring blue carbon ecosystems, safeguarding the Arctic, strengthening community tenure and developing responsible marine carbon removal.
We focus our funding where it can unlock the greatest progress
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Interventions capable of shifting the needle on emissions & resilience
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Areas where philanthropy can meaningfully accelerate action
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Opportunities that are overlooked or underfunded
This often means supporting under-resourced groups, seeding breakthrough technologies, and championing initiatives rooted in frontline and Indigenous leadership.
Across our seven “big bets”, we center the people and places where climate change isn’t an abstract threat, but a real, present and intensifying threat to survival. We ensure that funding flows to the frontlines, so that those most affected by the climate emergency have the power and resources to shape the solutions and drive lasting change.
CENTERING EQUITY
WHY EQUITY?
Climate change is profoundly unequal
Coastal communities in the Majority World and the Arctic are the least responsible for the crisis, but the first to feel its devastating impacts and the last to receive the resources they need to respond.
Lives & livelihoods threatened like never before
Communities face not only catastrophic cyclones, flooding seas, dying reefs and collapsing fish stocks, but systematic exclusion from the rooms where decisions about their lives are being made.
Ocean philanthropy is unequal
For too long, too much funding has flowed to institutions far from the frontlines, and too little to those rooted in places where climate breakdown is already reshaping lives, livelihoods and coastlines.
The solution is in plain sight
Many of the world’s most powerful ocean-climate solutions depend on the leadership, knowledge and lived experience of coastal communities. This is why ORCA centers equity in everything we do.
Funds to where they’re needed most
We prioritize funding regranting partners and organisations working in the Majority World, ensuring that frontline communities have the power and resources to drive the change they want to see.
Equity is the foundation
Equity is not a separate pillar of our work, but the foundation on which large-scale ocean–climate action is built. This is how we secure a thriving ocean and a stable climate for everyone.
Faster and fairer solutions
By shifting resources to those most affected, and by elevating their leadership and amplifying their collective voice, we help build solutions that are fairer, faster and far more durable.