Biggest Green Groups Get the Most "Greenbacks"

An example Dorfman uses is the Port of Los Angeles, where trucks were polluting surrounding neighborhoods. He says lead poisoning was out of control until the community got involved. 

"By working together on a campaign to clean up the port and reform how the trucking was done from the port, we've seen huge reductions now in asthma rates and lead-poisoning rates in the areas surrounding the port."

In San Francisco, Mark Randazzo, executive director of Funders Network on Transforming the Global Economy, says support of organized grass-roots movements helped defeat Proposition 23, which would have blocked California's landmark global-warming legislation, Assembly Bill 32.

"Community-based organizations and communities of color and immigrant communities and poor communities up and down the coast did get some support and were able to mobilize and bring out voters who helped to soundly defeat Proposition 23."

Randazzo's group produced a short film at where-we-live-film.org that documents the work of these groups, calling the grassroots movements one of the fastest-growing and most effective forces combating climate change.

The report, "Cultivating the Grassroots: A Winning Approach for Environment and Climate Funders," is online at ncrp.org.