Four years in: Lessons from Cisco Foundation’s climate resilience grants

In 2021, the Cisco Foundation made a commitment to deploy $100 million in grants and impact investments over ten years to boost climate resilience and sustainability. Building on the Foundation’s legacy of innovation and community impact, our leaders recognized both the need to strengthen our communities against severe weather and the opportunity to help build a more stable, resilient, and prosperous future.

Four years later, having deployed nearly half of our funding, we’ve learned that meaningful work requires not only commitment but also flexibility and continual learning. We recently refreshed our impact investment arm, and we have also been aggregating important reflections and lessons from our role as grant funders. In a rapidly changing landscape shaped by AI innovations and evolving challenges, we remain focused on the original intention of the portfolio while adapting to new realities.

Lesson 1: Financing tools should fill gaps intentionally

Philanthropy can do what…