About Tellus Mater
The Tellus Mater Foundation is a grant-making trust that supports leaders to put in place a low impact future. We do this by providing grant funding to forward-thinking 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.
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Recent Grant Awards
Sheila McKechnie Foundation
Environmental Campaigner Award
The Sheila McKechnie Awards support leading campaigners to make major impacts on policies, legislation and public attitudes across a range of social and environmental issues. The Environmental Campaigner Award is aimed at individuals campaigning on progressive environmental issues, from promoting local recycling to fighting global deforestation. It allows new and emerging grassroots campaigners to receive intensive training and coaching to be more effective to address sustainability challenges.
European Climate Foundation
Energy Efficiency Campaign
Energy efficiency is the most cost-effective means for reducing the UK€™s domestic CO2 emissions. The ECF Energy Efficiency Programme promotes this approach by supporting policies that shrink the amount of energy consumed in the built environment. The campaign promotes regulatory measures and financial incentives that lead to the construction and retrofit of net-zero or low-energy buildings.
Forum for the Future
Gatecrashing the Energy Sector
A pilot project to identify and support disruptive innovation in the energy sector. The aim is to help accelerate the creation of a sustainable energy system by finding and encouraging new ideas. We need ideas that challenge us to completely rethink the energy system and drive behavioural change. We cannot rely on existing technology to deliver change at the scale and speed that is required.
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.
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Latest News
Tellus Mater sponsors Breakthrough Capitalism
Tellus Mater is co-funding a new initiative designed to spotlight the need for breakthrough capitalism, based on new forms of wealth creation that value and manage multiple capitals—physical, financial, human, social and natural, among others. Other funders include the Generation Foundation, and HP. Led by John Elkington of Volans, the program is being developed by a group of organisations, including The Value Web.
The program kicked off with a 50-person workshop co-hosted with The Spring Project on 17 April — and the results are available on the dedicated Breakthrough Capitalism website.
The next step focuses on a major Breakthrough Capitalism Forum to be held at the King's Place Conference Centre on 29 May. Beyond that, work is already under way on organising a Breakthrough learning journey of London and, separately, an eBook on Breakthrough Capitalism, to be published later in 2012.
Based in London and Singapore, Volans was founded in 2008 by people who had previously worked with the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, SustainAbility and the World Economic Forum. Volans is a future-focused business working at the intersection of the sustainability, innovation and entrepreneurship movements. Its publications include The Phoenix Economy: 50 Pioneers in the Business of Social Innovation (2009), The Future Quotient: 50 Stars in Seriously Long-Term Innovation (2011) and, due out in May, The Zeronauts: Breaking the Sustainability Barrier (Earthscan/Taylor & Francis).
Results of the TM strategic review
Dear Friends of Tellus Mater:
We are pleased to update you on the progress of the Tellus Mater strategic review and our focus areas for 2012 and beyond. Tellus Mater is currently carrying out a strategic review and determining our focus areas for 2012 and beyond. Thank you to all of you who have contributed to our process!
As a result of the many conversations that we have had, we have decided that we can add the most value and make the greatest impact through market based interventions that support the long-term preservation of natural capital. Within this area we will support initiatives that promote integrated reporting, sustainable capitalism, long-term thinking, resilience, cross sectoral dialogue and leadership. Initially, we will do this through a few key partnerships that bring together thought leaders in new and innovative ways.
2012 will be a transition year for us as we look to ramp up our efforts in this new focus area. Going forward all of our work will be aimed at supporting collaborative partnerships, leadership and systemic solutions. We will be concentrating on a small number of grants, getting highly involved with those we do support and looking to ensure that we leverage all of our resources to make our programs and partners a success.
As part of our new focus area, we are proud to be supporting Volans in the Breakthrough Capitalism TEDx Conference in May and Investor Watch in its Carbon Tracker research on coal.
Over the coming months, we will consider adding a small number of additional targeted interventions to this ecosystem, hoping to learn as we go and form partnerships that accelerate the adoption of market based solutions for ensuring that the planet's nature capital is not irrevocably damaged.
Thank you again for your support and patience in this process, and we look forward to working with you in this exciting new area!
Kind regards,
Jamie Arbib and Kelly Clark
Recent Technical Problems
Tellus Mater has recently been experiencing some technical difficulties. We apologize if you have had emails bounced back or had any difficulty accessing this website. The issue has now been resolved. Please feel free to email kelly@tellusmater.org.uk with any questions or queries. Many thanks!
Creating Low Carbon Communities
Carbon Leapfrog hosted the first Creating Low Carbon Communities conference at the Guildhall in London on 21 March 2011 to provide the key steps and know-how for community-based projects to raise capital for local renewable power projects. Combining keynote speeches and case-study presentations with practical seminars and training sessions, workshops will highlight the array of professional support available to help community-based projects overcome any obstacles they may face.
Economics of Nature
A joint IUCN and Carbon Leapfrog conference: 'The Economics of Nature: taking stock, sharing action' was held on Thursday 16th November 2010 at City Point, London to engage actors from across the banking, legal, and insurance industries. The conference looked at the financial, legal, and environmental issues related to meeting the global challenges of the recent TEEB report on the economics of ecosystems and biodiversity. A link to the conference programme is available, along with a very interesting short film of the key outcomes of the day produced by Footprint TV.
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 2011 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.
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