Divest-Invest Philanthropy, representing a group of 140 foundations that have a combined $12 billion in assets, was awarded the CIVICUS 2016 Nelson Mandela-Graca Machel Innovation Award for Brave Philanthropy for its initiative, embraced by asset owners, to commit to divest holdings in fossil-fuel companies and invest in alternative energy.
Among the largest foundations in the group are the $4.4 billion Children's Investment Fund Foundation, London; $1.2 billion Velux Foundations, Soborg, Denmark; $800 million Rockefeller Brothers Fund, New York; $369 million Lemelson Foundation, Portland, Ore.; $335 million Park Foundation, Ithaca, N.Y.; $303 million Schmidt Family Foundation, Palo Alto, Calif.; and $165 million Wallace Global Fund, Washington, according to Divest-Invest data provided by Natasha Leonard, a spokeswoman.
The “brave philanthropy” award is a new category in the Mandela-Machel awards, which were started in 2006. The awards are sponsored by the Johannesburg-based CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation, a global alliance of activists groups focusing on business and the public sector.
The award is named for Mr. Mandela, first elected president of South Africa under a multiracial democracy, who died in 2013, and Ms. Machel, his second wife, activist for African development and former minster of education and culture in Mozambique.
Ellen Dorsey, executive director of the Wallace fund — which “played a key role in the funding, organizing and growth of the global Divest-Invest movement,” started in 2014 to promote a transition to alternative energy — accepted the award last month in Bogota at an event hosted by CIVICUS and the National Directive Council of the Colombian Confederation, according to a Divest Invest news release.
