Foundation Shifts Focus to Climate With $50-Million Pledge

Massachusetts’s largest foundation plans to give $50-million over five years to projects that seek to curb global warming, reports The Boston Globe.

The Barr Foundation, created by the former cable-TV mogul Amos Hostetter Jr., will make grants of $100,000 to $1-million to efforts in the Boston metropolitan area to promote public transportation and reduce greenhouse gases. The philanthropy will phase out grants it now makes to environmental groups whose missions do not fit its new emphasis on climate.

The climate effort also marks a rare public commitment by the foundation, which has awarded $414-million for arts, education, and environmental causes in the past decade but has kept its gifts anonymous. Pat Brandes, executive director of the foundation, said the philanthropy “wanted to lend our voice” to the debate over climate change.

(Free registration is required to view this article.)