How one foundation is spending down on climate adaptation

When the Shockwave Foundation opened its doors in 2020, it did so with an unusual combination of urgency and patience. Its founder launched it as a 20-year spend-down foundation with a $50 million endowment to invest exclusively in climate adaptation. “Adaptation and resilience are dramatically underfunded,” Shockwave CEO Jeny Wegbreit told the audience at a Devex Pro Funding briefing. “When we began, almost no climate philanthropy was focused on adaptation, and even today, less than 7% of global climate financing supports it.” From the start, the foundation’s strategy was to direct funding toward communities already living the consequences of climate change — not those still preparing for it. “Floods, droughts, typhoons, extreme heat, crop failure — those aren’t future scenarios,” said Wegbreit, who joined Shockwave soon after its launch. “They’re current realities.” Shockwave’s mission centers on a deceptively simple proposition: that food and water security form the twin foundations of human resilience. Its funding supports regenerative agriculture, agroecology, and nature-based water-management systems in Africa and central and South America — regions where smallholder farmers and local governments are already experimenting with adaptive models. The foundation sees itself as a catalytic investor rather than a conventional grantmaker. “We make bold bets on what we see as scalable adaptation, resilience solutions,” Wegbreit said. That means identifying early-stage initiatives that show promise for replication, taking risks that larger donors often avoid, and pairing philanthropy with impact investment when it can unlock greater impact. Internally, she said, flexibility is paired with a high degree of trust. “Our capital is flexible and trust-based,” she said. “We move quickly and let partners use funds where they think it’s most needed, not where we think it’s most needed.” Transparency is another hallmark. Shockwave publicly shares its portfolio, grant amounts, and due-diligence criteria — a level of openness still rare in the philanthropic world. “We don’t want this to be a black box,” Wegbreit said. Trust as the cornerstone For Wegbreit, trust-based philanthropy is not a slogan but a practice. Relationships take time, and grants are structured accordingly. The foundation begins with a one-year “get-to-know-you” grant, then typically extends a three-year partnership if alignment remains strong. “Trust is a two-way street,” she said, “It’s about letting go — allowing partners to set their own priorities and decide how to achieve impact.” Wegbreit is clear that the foundation’s aim is not to design solutions but to back local leaders already delivering them. “We don’t just fund projects,” she said. “We invest in agency and leadership.” That philosophy, she added, aligns closely with her own beliefs about global development. “Sustainability only happens when communities have ownership, when they have decision-making power, and when they also have patient, flexible capital.” Lightening the due-diligence burden Recognizing how burdensome donor reporting can be, Shockwave does much of the heavy lifting itself, she said. It also emphasizes transparency in its due diligence approach. “Our entire due diligence process is on our website,” she said, “So anyone who wants to know what our process is can take a look and see precisely what we're looking for.” Shockwave’s transparent approach extends to other partners. “Whenever possible, we share our due diligence with other funders,” Wegbreit said. She also believes that the foundation’s willingness to take early risks and to collaborate has helped draw others in. She cited a small groundwater nonprofit in Malawi that received its first major international investment after Shockwave backed it. “We came in and a whole crux of funders came in just after us,” Wegbreit said. As a modest-sized funder, Shockwave sees collaboration as the most powerful lever for influence. Wegbreit described how joining a U.S.-European water, sanitation and hygiene, or WASH, funders group allowed the foundation to include climate resilience into its collective agenda. “When we joined, climate resilience was not central to their thinking,” she said. “But since we joined, we developed a guidance brief for both funders and for implementers to show how organizations can really implement climate resilience funding.” Shockwave has also developed its role to help other funders accelerate their own learning curves. “We’ve spent five years making what we think are good mistakes — mistakes that have improved our knowledge and really sharpened how we do our work,” she said. “We share our strategy, our process, and our portfolio so others can make more strategic investments — and so that communities on the front lines can invest in their own resilience.” By sharing its approach, Shockwave aims to influence how other philanthropies approach climate adaptation — turning its own lessons into a road map for more effective climate funding. A small funder with strategic reach Though its annual disbursements average around $2 million, Shockwave aims to punch above its weight. Grants typically range from $50,000 to $150,000 per year, with smaller, unrestricted grants for community organizations and larger, project-specific awards for major NGOs. The foundation does not currently seek outside contributions but cofunds extensively with aligned donors. “We’ve opened our portfolio to others,” Wegbreit said. “That’s been our primary mechanism for leveraging more impact.” As bilateral aid budgets contract, Wegbreit sees both risk and opportunity. “The drawdown of USAID and other traditional development funding is creating a noticeable gap — particularly for climate resilience work,” she said. “There’s no slowdown in need. Climate shocks are intensifying.” She believes this period calls for a redefinition of success. “Resilience is built over time,” she said. “It needs patient capital, flexible funding, trust and local leadership.” Under Wegbreit’s leadership, the next phase for Shockwave is about deepening its impact and spreading its philosophy. “It’s time to push more capital — not just our capital, but lots of other capital — into this space,” she said. “We’re investing in shared metrics and data systems to help funders and implementers measure what works.” Choosing optimism For all the sobering realities of climate change, Wegbreit ends on a hopeful note. “You don't have to give restrictive grants; you don't have to do it year by year,” she said. “There are many ways to give, and there are many ways to think about your relationship with your implementing partner.” She sees optimism in the persistence of local players: “I'm seeing the innovations that people are doing on the ground, the amazing vision and leadership in groundwater, in nature-based solutions, in regenerative agriculture, in hybridized climate, in all of those things,” she said. “We know that solutions are out there, the people that are doing the work. We just have to identify those people, fund them, and bring others in for the ride.” Want more briefings like this? Let us know — and stay tuned for upcoming live conversations here.