Operational Principles

These are the principles that we use to guide our grantmaking and our operations. They all stem from our desire to be good philanthropic citizens. We believe that good philanthropic citizenship requires reliability and accountability; that transparency enables reliability; that accountability engenders humility; and that respect and humility foster responsiveness.

Reliability:

We want for our stakeholders to have a good understanding of what to expect from us, and we want to operate so as to consistently meet those expectations. We think that this requires us to be very clear about our intentions, to be very good about communicating those intentions to our stakeholders, and to be very consistent about following through on those intentions.

Accountability:

We want to take responsibility for the quality of our performance - our practices as well as our product. We think that this requires us to have processes in place to assess the soundness of our judgments, to learn from our good judgments as well as our poor judgments, and to incorporate those learnings into our future practice.

Transparency:

We want to strive towards as much openness in our operations as possible. Some elements of our work engage legitimate confidentiality and privacy interests, and our commitments to respect and reliability will require us to honor these interests. However, much of our work - especially the processes by which we make grant decisions, the bases of those decisions, and the consequences following from those decisions - do not engage any legitimate confidentiality or privacy interests. Indeed, we believe that a broad understanding of these matters will only serve to improve our grantmaking and enhance our impact.

Humility:

We want to have an acute perspective on our own strengths and capabilities, and a generous perspective on the strengths and capabilities of others. We think that this requires us to have a good understanding of the challenges and opportunities that exist across the range of our work, a clear view of our own successes and failures, and a strong familiarity with the successes, achievements, and innovations of others.

Respect:

We want to treat all of the individuals with whom we come into contact as valuable and honorable human beings, that are deserving of honesty, kindness, and thoughtfulness from us. Among other things, this requires us to organize our work in ways that preserve the time and energy necessary for decent human interaction.

Responsiveness:

We want to be flexible and forward looking enough to be able to address - in timely and appropriate ways - things that may not fit within our existing notions of 'what we do' and 'what we care about'. We think that this requires us to organize our work in such a way as to afford us the time and energy to creatively engage with uninvited and unanticipated challenges and opportunities.

Good Philanthropic Citizenship:

We want to contribute to the effective stewardship of the philanthropic communities in which we operate, and we want to help support organizations and initiatives that produce broad value for the fields within which we are engaged. We think that this requires us to be active participants in the organizations, institutions, and conversations that seek to help guide and support the fields of environmental and peace and security philanthropy, and we think that it also requires us to provide financial support - in an appropriate and proportionate way - to organizations that build and/or strengthen the infrastructure of the environment and peace and security fields.