About Tellus Mater
The Tellus Mater Foundation is a grant-making trust that supports leaders to put in place solutions for a low carbon future. We do this by providing grant funding to forward-thinking individuals and organisations with cutting-edge ideas that will change the rules of the game. We seek innovative solutions to shift political, economic, and financial institutions to a sustainable path.
Recent Grant Awards
Carbon Leapfrog
Carbon Leapfrog, an innovative new charity that mobilises free professional advice to help low carbon projects overcome the challenges faced by early-stage enterprises, has received an initial seed funding grant from the Tellus Mater Foundation. The grant will enable Carbon Leapfrog to set up a small executive team and expand its operations to support an increasing number of UK-based low carbon initiatives with legal, financial, accounting and engineering expertise. Tellus Mater believes the organisation has the potential to make a difference in the fight against climate change by building an extensive pro bono professional network from across 20+ disciplines to help low carbon enterprises achieve greater scale.
WWF-UK
The Finance Innovation Lab
The Finance Innovation Lab is a network of professionals hosted by WWF-UK and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) to advance cutting-edge ideas for a financial system that creates economic, social and environmental value. This partnership for change brings together a diverse range of institutions and individuals from business, finance, government and civil society to incubate new projects and initiatives to shift finance to a more sustainable, long-term path. Tellus Mater has provided seed grant funding to allow this innovative early-stage project to continue to develop and scale its operations. The foundation is pleased to support a ground-breaking initiative that has the potential to bring together innovators from across multiple sectors to re-think the function of financial institutions.
Volans
Pathways to Scale
Tellus Mater has agreed to provide seed funding to the Pathways to Scale programme, a major new initiative of Volans designed to support scaling up of enterprise-driven solutions to environmental problems. Part think tank, consultancy and ideas incubator, Volans will identify, map and build partnerships with leading pioneers working on new ways to value and protect carbon, water and biodiversity resources. This emerging field of eco-system services consists of many innovative local or regional initiatives that have not yet reached a scale to address the challenges facing habitats and eco-systems. Volans is part of a growing international network of cutting-edge organisations working on scaling environmental enterprise and social innovation.
Green Alliance
Climate Leadership Programme
Climate change must command the attention of the leadership of all political parties in the next parliament. While there is cross-party consensus on ambitious carbon targets, there is far too little awareness and understanding of the political and policy changes necessary to achieve them. This initiative aims to equip rising political leaders with the knowledge, understanding and motivation to take action on climate change. With the backing of the main parties, it will train a cadre of climate leaders, who will be able to provide strong political leadership.
More >>
Latest News
The Biosphere Economy
Volans Ventures launched a cutting-edge report on the Biosphere Economy, to examine innovations and new business models responding to global ecological overshoot and changing the way business, investors, and governments value and manage natural capital. Launched on the 22-23 April to an audience of business leaders at the Business 4 Environment conference in Seoul, the report maps a future in which business, finance and politics increasingly take account of natural capital and related forms of value. Around the world, a growing array of innovators is experimenting with possible solutions to resource depletion and eco-system destruction.
Finance Innovation Lab Inaugural Workshop
The Finance Innovation Lab is a network of professionals hosted by WWF-UK and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) to advance cutting-edge ideas for a financial system that creates economic, social and environmental value. This partnership for change brings together a diverse range of institutions and individuals from business, finance, government and civil society to incubate new projects and initiatives to shift finance to a more sustainable, long-term path. At the launch workshop on 26 March in London, over 110 representatives took part, resulting in a series of innovation groups focused on designing and resourcing new initiatives to take action on specific finance themes.
Launch of Last Parliament Report
Green Alliance launched its report The Last Parliament outlining priorities for urgent action on climate change. Funded by Tellus Mater, the report identifies the new Parliament in 2010 as the last window of opportunity to prevent serious, irreversible climate change. Over the past three months, a distinguished cross-sector panel of experts, convened by Green Alliance and chaired by Jonathon Porritt, has been drawing up an agenda for action on climate change in the new Parliament. Representatives of all parties in the next Parliament will need to lead the UK toward this low carbon future. A short film of the Panel’s deliberations, presented by Sir Trevor McDonald, accompanies the report and is available to view.
Next page: About Tellus Mater