SRM Funding Tracker

Funding sector – Each funder was categorised based on its sector:  

• Governmental: Public funders, i.e., state or primarily state-supported funders;  

• Philanthropic: Charitable foundations and non-profit organisations;  

• Commercial: For-profit investors and commercial activities.  

Recipient activity – Each recipient of funding was categorised based on its main activity:  

• Research: Universities, think tanks, national labs, and other organisations with a primary focus on knowledge creation;  

• Awareness-building: Non-profit organisations (except those with a singular focus on research) engaged in knowledge dissemination, societal dialogue, and/or policy promotion; 

• Profit-seeking: Private companies seeking to generate profit.  

Non-profit organisations that regrant funding are labelled as philanthropic sources of funding, though in some cases they receive some funding from governmental sources. Regranted funds have been specifically marked and excluded from funding totals (unless otherwise specified) to avoid double counting.  

We have labelled each transaction in our underlying funding database as either “vetted”, “estimated”, or “unknown”, and labelled each organisation based on its least certain transaction. 

• Vetted: All transactions for this organisation are either confirmed by a representative of the organisation or taken directly from publicly available grants databases, press releases, comments to news outlets, or official tax documents.  

• Estimated: One or more of the transactions involving this organisation were estimated and none were unknown. Estimated transactions are based on publicly available information and are either drawn from announcements of future funding or derived by dividing a known funding total evenly across several associated funders or recipients when that distribution is not known.  

• Unknown: One or more of the transactions involving this organisation are known to have taken place, but the specific values for these transactions are unknown. If a funding total is given for this organisation, this will be an underestimate as at least one associated transaction value is unknown and so not included. 

To produce this dataset, organisations and research projects with a substantial focus on SRM were identified and their funding details sought. Organisations or projects where SRM is a small part of their work are excluded from our analysis. Where projects or organisations are not solely focused on SRM but devote a substantial fraction of their effort to SRM, we sought either to define SRM-specific funding for the effort, to identify a discrete unit devoted to the topic, or else to allow the organisations to self-declare this fraction.  

For the purposes of this dataset, we focused only on SRM approaches with the potential for global-scale climate effects. Cloud seeding and other weather control approaches are excluded from our analysis, as are sea-ice thickening and local-scale surface albedo interventions.

We identified and sought funding details for relevant projects and organisations through desk research – drawing on public records, websites and announcements, media reports, and public tax disclosures. Where possible, direct outreach to project leads and organisations was then used to vet and amend this funding data.  

All data was reviewed by SRM360 staff before being added to our final dataset. AI tools were used to support the discovery and processing of this information. AI was not used to generate analysis, interpretation, or conclusions, which remain the sole responsibility of the authors. 

In some cases, we were able to confirm a total funding figure, but not its allocation among sources or recipients. In such cases, we divided the total funding amount evenly across all sources or recipients. Given the size and complexity of this dataset, we made the simplifying assumption that research grants are awarded wholly to the lead organisation. 

All figures have been converted to US dollars from the original currencies based on the average exchange rate in the relevant years. 

Our published funding analysis aggregates data at the level of organisations but is based on underlying data that tracks individual funding transactions.  

We do not share the names of individual philanthropists unless their contributions are widely known; instead, we aggregate them under “individual donors” for each relevant organisation. 

If you have feedback on the completeness or accuracy of our funding information, or you would like details regarding how we derived estimates for specific organisations, please contact us at funderdatabase@srm360.org.  

For media enquiries, please contact media@srm360.org.