Honnold Foundation

As the Honnold Foundation celebrates our growing impact, our team is excited to announce two precedent-setting gifts propelling our work forward. In late 2025, Clean Break Fund, helmed by business leader and philanthropist Chris Larsen, made a transformative $5 million commitment to help the Honnold Foundation expand our Core Fund grantmaking program. In response, the Honnold Foundation immediately expanded our grantmaking, deploying $4.2 million in 2025, budgeting for $5 million in grants in 2026, and planning for continued growth in 2027 and beyond. We’re also thrilled to share that this month, Ripple, the leading provider of blockchain-based enterprise solutions across traditional and digital finance, has joined Clean Break Fund's commitment with a three-year, $6 million gift to support community solar, worldwide. Ripple's support reflects its broader mission as a catalytic investor in innovative organizations developing solutions that expand economic opportunity. What now? Well, we're not building an endowment. Instead, we're fueling this work with urgency and intention. Ultimately, we know that solar energy is more than just a solution to energy poverty—it’s a catalyst for economic opportunity, education, and resilience. These transformative gifts will power our impact and the growth of our grantee partner network at a new scale.  In 2026, we've already been reminded of the growing volume of need that inspires our work. In just six weeks, we received 1,200+ grant applications from 100+ countries around the world, with $100M+ in funding requests for community-based solar energy projects. As this need continues to grow, massive swaths of philanthropy are currently funnelled towards big bet climate tech solutions and environmental policy. While these long-term investments are inarguably crucial to solving the climate crisis, at HF, we're calling on philanthropists to join us in a dual approach: invest in tomorrow, and deploy capital to build immediate solutions like solar. We're grateful to Chris Larsen, Ripple’s co-founder and Executive Chairman, the Ripple team, and the Clean Break Fund for leaning in to the urgency of the moment and recognizing the immediate tangible impact of community solar. The climate crisis can often feel existential, solvable only through large-scale, long-term goals, but commitments to the community solar movement show how small steps can and will propel a brighter world for all—one life, solar panel, and community project at a time. Learn more about the Honnold Foundation's growing work in our latest impact report: https://lnkd.in/gU47MW6c

What’s the best way to measure impact? When we reflect on the Honnold Foundation’s work since 2019, we’re proud of the undeniable way our work has empowered people and protected the planet: 650,000 people with access to solar energy, 1,200+ jobs created, 13,000 tons of CO2 avoided, 400M tons of water conserved, 500 tons of waste avoided, and dozens of partnerships with Indigenous communities, funders, and activists that have helped protect 15M acres of biodiverse forests. But how do you project the economic impact of a career in the solar industry for a former coal miner, or the climate impact of an Indigenous Mayan community embracing a community solar installation from the ground up? As Emily Teitsworth, HF’s Executive Director, puts it, “No one understands the challenge of affordable electricity more than the Navajo woman whose family grew up spending money they couldn’t spare on diesel to power a generator. No one knows the impact of climate disaster better than the rural Mexican farmer whose town was swept away in the aftermath of unprecedented storms. No one demonstrates ingenuity like the Achuar of Ecuador, whose people have designed elegant, handcrafted boats to traverse the Amazon river for centuries. And no one shows more grit than a fourth-generation coal miner in Appalachia who establishes a career in solar when the coal dries up.” At the Honnold Foundation, we’re proud of our impact by the numbers, but we’re just as proud of each and every story these numbers represent. Learn more about both in our annual report, today. https://lnkd.in/gU47MW6c

Last Friday, at SF Climate Week, I sat down with Alex Honnold one of the world’s greatest rock climbers and the founder of the Honnold Foundation. The episode is now live and I’m thrilled to share it with you! In our conversation, Alex talks about his path from growing up as a shy kid in Sacramento to becoming one of the most accomplished rock climbers in the world, and how that journey led him to start the Honnold Foundation. Alex talks about living out of a van for many years, traveling the world and seeing energy poverty firsthand, and the moment he decided to give away a third of his income each year to provide energy access to those who need it most. He walks through how the foundation has grown to support more than 100 organizations across 30 countries, with nearly $20M in grants. We get into how he’s navigated becoming a public figure, and how his life has shifted since becoming a husband and a father. Alex was hilarious, completely unfiltered, and lit up the room. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. 🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts ▶️ Watch the full conversation on YouTube #WattItTakes #Climate #EnergyAccess #CleanEnergy #AlexHonnold #ClimbOn #FreeSolo https://lnkd.in/g-nHBq8J

At the Honnold Foundation, our supporters empower community-led renewable energy projects through donations that expand access to solar around the world. We’ve always said that every dollar counts — whether it’s $5 or $500. When you make a gift to the Honnold Foundation, it powers a brighter, more equitable world for everyone. We also know that charitable giving is just one piece to the puzzle. Investments can be used as another tool to align our money with our values. One of our newest supporters is Climatize, a climate-focused financial platform that enables individuals and entities to invest in renewable energy projects across the United States, including solar, battery storage, energy efficiency, and EV charging. Climatize enables individuals and entities to invest in projects across the U.S., including solar, battery storage, energy efficiency, and EV charging. To date, Climatize has helped channel over $16 million into renewable energy projects, supporting communities often overlooked by traditional financing. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gbUT8erT - Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Investment credit earned at account setup completion. A minimum $5 investment is required to use the credit. Climatize is a donor to the Honnold Foundation.

In the Yucatán Peninsula, U Yich Lu'um is doing essential work to preserve Indigenous culture, ancestral farming knowledge, and the Maya language, while building the infrastructure that lets communities thrive on their own terms. Through its bilingual Escuela Agroecológica Decolonizante, UYL brings together women beekeepers, farmers, and youth to share and protect the knowledge that has sustained these communities for generations. Tradition is being taught, practiced, and passed down daily, not only on special occasions. Since 2023, the Honnold Foundation has partnered with UYL to amplify their labor. Twelve kilowatts of solar now power five water pumps and a training center across eight municipalities, bringing reliable water and strengthening local food production for about 275 people. Energy access and cultural preservation, it turns out, are part of the same story. This is one of the partnerships we're proud to document on our new case studies page because it shows the change we want to see in the world: community-led, deeply rooted, and built to last. 🌱 Explore more stories at our case studies page: https://lnkd.in/dfQ_Kjjk

Stories from Appalachia, coming soon! Jacob Hannah and Coalfield Development Corporation are building a future beyond coal across Appalachia. At the Honnold Foundation, we're proud to support their work, including proof-of-concept solar installations, solar workforce development training programs, and so much more. #solar #workforcedevelopment #justtransition

We give away part of our carry to nonprofits. I want every asset manager in the country to do the same. Starting with our 2 latest funds we launched at Aligned Climate Capital, we donate 3% of our carry to nonprofits working in clean energy access. Companies like GRID Alternatives, Let's Share The Sun Foundation, or the Honnold Foundation - organizations doing work that markets simply can't reach. Here's why that matters. Markets are good at deploying capital where returns exist, but not so much at serving communities with no purchasing power: renters, low-income households, communities that have absorbed decades of fossil fuel pollution and will never be positioned to participate in a rooftop solar program. Nonprofits fill that gap. They always have. What's changed is that the asset managers benefiting most from the energy transition now have the resources to fund them meaningfully. A 3% carry allocation costs relatively little at the fund level. Across the industry, it would add up to something significant. We started this with our second venture fund and carried it into our latest infrastructure fund. We recognize that the transition we're profiting from has to work for everyone - or it's not really a transition at all. My ask to other GPs and fund managers is to make this a norm, not a differentiator. The firms that helped build the clean energy economy should be the ones helping make sure its benefits reach the people who need them most.

We're proud to share our new case studies page — a place where we'll document just a few of the ways solar energy is shifting trajectories for communities around the world. At the Honnold Foundation, we invest in long-term, trust-based partnerships because we know that real impact doesn't happen overnight. It builds through sustained relationships, deep community knowledge, and steadfast support for the people who call these places home. Read the stories of what becomes possible when you stay the course: https://lnkd.in/dfQ_Kjjk

History has been made from the Ecuadorian Amazon. 🎥 🌿 We are proud to share that El Río de los Espíritus, directed by Tawna Cine and co-produced by Kara Solar, will have its world premiere at the 57th edition of Visions du Réel, one of the most recognized documentary festivals in the world, in Nyon, Switzerland. Selected from more than 3,700 submitted films, this documentary is the first Ecuadorian Amazonian film ever to compete in the festival’s International Medium and Short Film Selection. It will screen on April 23 and 25 as part of the thematic section Poussières d’empires—The Dust of Empires. The film tells the Kara Solar story through a dreamy journey that weaves fact with fiction. Aboard a solar canoe, young technician Luciano Peas travels through Achuar territory in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Burdened by the threat of a phantom road and the division it brings, Luciano dreams and navigates, calling upon river spirits while gathering with his people to propose new forms of resistance. Amid climate collapse and a growing sense of no return, El Río de los Espíritus reveals a new way of living well with the planet emerging from the Amazon: the union of technology and the ancestral wisdom of the Achuar people may hold the key to saving the rainforest and reimagining our connection with the Earth. Thank you to Honnold Foundation and World Within for making this possible alongside us. Congratulations to our friends at Tawna Cine Desde Territorio for this historic achievement. Watch the trailer: https://lnkd.in/e3kad9Rq Stay tuned. ✨

The HF Team extends a special thanks to Kate T., outgoing Deputy Director, for her six and a half years of leadership at the Honnold Foundation. Under Kate’s leadership, we launched and expanded the Core Fund, built deep partnerships with community leaders around the world, and developed an organizational ethos rooted in trust. Thank you, Kate!