04-20-2026IMPACT COUNCIL

A different kind of “trust” fund

On World Creativity and Innovation Day, there’s a case for the most underrated climate tool.

[Photo: Getty Images]

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of top leaders and experts who pay dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership, and more.

When people discuss climate innovation, they often picture technology. Better batteries. Smarter grids. Carbon capture at scale. Those breakthroughs matter and are happening every day. But on this World Creativity and Innovation Day, I want to make a case for a different kind of innovation. One that is structural rather than technical, already underway, and quietly accelerating climate progress.

It is, in a word, trust.

A SYSTEM BUILT FOR FRAGMENTATION

The social impact sector is filled with brilliant, committed people working on the climate crisis. It is also organized in a way almost perfectly designed to prevent the scale of impact the crisis demands. Many organizations undertaking critical work compete for the same funding. They guard their methodologies, protect their data, and duplicate efforts. They differentiate their missions so precisely that a funder reading a dozen can be forgiven for wondering whether any of them are solving the same problem.

None of this is driven by bad faith. It is driven by survival.

For decades, philanthropic funding has rewarded differentiation over collaboration and proprietary impact over shared learning. The result is a fragmented ecosystem applying fragmented resources to a problem that is anything but fragmented.

The climate crisis does not respect organizational boundaries, and those of us working to solve it must stop acting as if it........

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