Environmental consciousness and activism are grow-ing worldwide, sometimes arising from unlikely sources — Pope Francis issuing his recent encyclical on climate change, IKEA pledging to move toward 100 percent renewables, and Norway (a major oil-producing country) and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (a philanthropy built on the success of Stan-dard Oil) deciding to divest from fossil fuels. People from across diverse sectors in society — religion, academia, business — are beginning to see both their responsibility for and their agency in address-ing climate change and environmental sustainability. Activist and author Naomi Klein has called climate change the world’s “meta issue” because it stands to impact every being and community on Earth. Whereas in previous decades, sustainability issues had been largely left to scientists and environmental-ists to solve, it is becoming clear that the complex and interconnected challenges we face today require all hands on deck.

Arts and culture have always been a part of impor-tant movements for change, and environmental sustainability is no exception. Increasing numbers of artists and arts organizations are engaging with environmental issues, and a growing number of arts funders are thinking about and seeing this kind of work as both artistically valid and socially relevant. To explore this growing area of interest in our field, GIA commissioned Helicon Collaborative to con-duct a scan of arts funders who are supporting environment-related work. By highlighting funders’ practices in this area, GIA hopes to spark a broader conversation in the arts funding sector and explore its own potential role in this realm. [p. 2]

Grantmakers in the Arts commissioned this survey of arts funders who are supporting environment-related work. Some of the funders are actively pursuing this cross-sector work, while others are just beginning to consider whether and how to do this.