Grantmaking Carbon Emissions – Pilot Study with Toitū Envirocare

Trust Waikato is committed to becoming a climate leader, to enable a low-emissions future. This will be done by actioning our climate change framework which starts with a clear intention to act on climate change through our sustainability commitment.

Through this commitment, we recognise that the effects of climate change will not be felt equally amongst our community and that we need to mitigate the inequality of these impacts. We need to ensure that any transition to a low carbon world is a just transition, where all communities benefit.

The commitment also puts an emphasis on the need for collaborative actions to reduce both our own and community emissions.

Following the commitment, the climate change framework breaks down the key activities for Trust Waikato and includes operations, investments and grantmaking.

The grantmaking portion of framework outlines that we aim to understand the impact that grants make to reduce climate change and to provide support to the community to understand and reduce their own climate emissions.

A pilot study was undertaken with a goal to:

We have engaged with Toitū Envirocare, using their Carbon Assess calculator to survey for-purpose organisations we grant to and calculate their CO2e emissions.

With this information, Trust Waikato will attribute the CO2e emissions equal to the grant value as a percentage of their total revenue (i.e. if an organisation receives a grant of $10,000 from Trust Waikato and has total revenue of $100,000 then 10% of that organisation’s emissions can be attributed and accounted for by Trust Waikato). Trust Waikato can then aggregate the data to understand the emissions generated by our granting programme.

All grant applicants will now have the opportunity to opt into the programme when completing an application. A collaborative approach to reducing emissions will be sought and reported back to the wider community.

You can download Trust Waikato’s pilot study report findings below.

Download the Trust Waikato Toitū Pilot Study Report