*New* CO2 Foundation Funding Opportunity: Reducing the Threats of Extreme Weather Events (7/31/25)
Posted: 6/26/2025 (Funding)
The CO2 Foundation is excited to announce its third funding opportunity: Reducing the Threats of Extreme Weather Events.
In addition to the gradual climate changes of the last sixty years, we have seen recent surges in extreme weather that suggest an abrupt climate shift. For example, the annual tally of big windstorms in the US went from a baseline rate of 1.2 per year before 2008 up to 19 events in 2023, an order of magnitude more. This threat has a different time scale than gradual global warming. We must now prepare for big troubles in the next decade.
Droughts and fires, heavy flooding, mega heatwaves, stalled hurricanes, windstorms, and extreme cold are already causing unprecedented losses to human lives and well-being, infrastructure, agriculture, and ecosystems. We must think big and implement quickly to intervene.
The CO2 Foundation funds innovative smaller-scale projects that can accomplish a lot in a short timeframe, which might otherwise fall through the cracks. We seek proposals to support timely interventions for extreme weather and/or prepare communities for the impacts of a rapidly changing climate system.
Examples include small workshops to explore innovative, fast-track solutions; new ways of reaching new audiences; or early research into the most promising protective interventions. Because civilization must survive until climate change and extreme weather are no longer a threat, we need to be resilient and to cooperate with each other.
The program aims to distribute $25,000-$100,000 contributions to projects that:
- Engage diverse expertise: Apply relevant scientific and/or community perspectives to extreme weather interventions.
- Share process and outcomes: Communicate broadly on successes and challenges, lessons learned from what has been attempted.
- Turn innovation into impact: Explore how ideas and practices can generate solutions, action, and change across different contexts.
And we expect to fund these types of activities:
- Conferences & Workshops: Convening diverse stakeholders to address extreme weather topics.
- Research: Focusing on promising strategies to address extreme weather.
- Communications: Broadly distributed storytelling about extreme weather impacts, reporting on community-scale and society-wide responses and future risks, or new communication methods or audiences.
- Pilot Project Implementation: Moving what has been imagined out into the world with a focus on co-benefits, project sustainability/durability, and replicating what works.
We will prioritize applications received before July 31, 2025 from 501(c)3 organizations or projects with nonprofit fiscal sponsorship. Please see our Grants page for more information about our grantmaking program.
Deadline: 07/31/2025