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Though they work in different areas, the Honnold Foundation and Blue Ventures share the same conviction: Local communities should be empowered to envision, design and own investments in a more sustainable future. Both nonprofits have scaled their efforts to reach more communities with support from the Everpure Foundation.
Back in 2014, four Indigenous nationalities in the Upper Amazon — the Kofán, Siekopai, Waorani and Siona — banded together to save their common future from environmental degradation and oil dependency. Called the Ceibo Alliance, the initiative installs new solar energy and rainwater harvesting systems while supporting traditional practices and defending the local environment.
The effort soon caught the attention of professional rock climber Alex Honnold, regarded as the greatest free solo climber in history. The Honnold Foundation, to which Alex donates a third of his income, supports projects just like this to help bring renewable energy to marginalized communities around the world.
Today, these remote communities in the northeastern rainforests of Ecuador have access to solar energy, supporting the Ceibo Alliance’s ongoing work to improve livelihoods and preserve local ecosystems. 
Across the globe in Madagascar, dozens of coastal communities were struggling to preserve the overfished and depleted octopus fisheries they depend on for food and income. Then, a grant from the ocean sustainability nonprofit Blue Ventures allowed them to introduce community-based fishery management practices. Temporary fishing closures enabled octopus stocks to recover, boosting the fisheries’ productivity and increasing future catches. 
“I am astonished by the change to over-exploited fisheries since our founding in 2003,” said Gildas Andriamalala, a Madagascar native and Blue Ventures’ regional director for Southern Africa. “Now, at least half of the coast of Madagascar has community-based fisheries management.” 
Although they tackle different environmental challenges, the Honnold Foundation and Blue Ventures share the same conviction: Local communities should be empowered to envision, design and own investments in a more sustainable future.
“Those who are working and living from fisheries need to be the ones looking after it,” Andriamalala said. “We strongly believe in local stewardship. The community is in the best position to tackle their own problems.”
The Everpure Foundation, the corporate foundation of the data management company Everpure, shares the same aim. It provides grants to nonprofit organizations advancing locally-led solutions in environmental sustainability, workforce development and basic human needs, like Blue Ventures and the Honnold Foundation. Both nonprofits have scaled their efforts to reach more communities with support from the Everpure Foundation.
When one individual has the power and agency to make a positive difference, the results can cascade across thousands of lives and communities. That’s what drives Alex Honnold, whose 3,000-foot, rope-free ascent of Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan was the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary “Free Solo.” 
While traveling the world to climb, Honnold’s eyes were opened to the inequities that exist around energy access in communities facing the dual challenges of poverty and climate change. He wanted to do something about it, and soon the Honnold Foundation was born.
”He saw that one way he could personally make a difference would be contributing toward solar energy projects,” said Peter Walle, director of partnerships for the Honnold Foundation. “They’re small, easily deployable and scalable, but can make a profound difference for communities in a variety of different contexts.”
Today, the foundation supports community-scale solar projects that increase climate resilience, bolster social and economic equity, reduce pollution, and improve peoples’ lives in more than 30 countries. Solar projects funded by the foundation directly impact an estimated 650,000 people. It distributed 37 grants worth nearly $5 million last year and has supported 135 projects to date. 
But installing solar in communities is about more than switching on a lightbulb, Walle said. “We see how solar energy creates resilience and the opportunity to build economic mobility in ways that are culturally relevant and based fundamentally within those communities,” he explained. “We support our partners in many ways, but they fully own their solar installation and how it is used.” 
That community leadership approach differs from traditional philanthropic initiatives, Walle added. 
“We fundamentally believe that communities are the best experts,” he said. “They don’t need someone to come in there to tell them what is needed. When properly supported, they are the best ones to implement the solutions. We come in with the funding and wraparound support, so they can become stronger and more sustainable in the long term.”
The Ceibo Alliance in the Upper Amazon, for example, trains Indigenous locals as solar technicians who build and maintain the new solar arrays in their own communities, empowering them with the knowledge they need to keep the systems working for years to come. 
In other cases, a community might opt for solar-powered boats or an agrivoltaics project on local farmland. Communities often develop projects with the Honnold Foundation that combine solar with workforce development, education and healthcare opportunities.
The grants are designed to be unrestricted but project specific — and the Honnold Foundation has an open call for projects, so anyone can apply. “We’re able to cast a wide net and therefore fund projects that might slip through the cracks,” Walle said.
The foundation is also open to a greater degree of risk tolerance. “Philanthropy in general can be a little bit risk averse when it should really be the first form of capital deployed in a really risk-tolerant way to fund proof-of-concept projects,” Walle said. 
It’s important for philanthropists to reframe risk in these contexts, he argued. “It is not a line on a spreadsheet. The risk in the communities we serve is oftentimes life or death. We feel we should be the ones to take on the risk to serve as many community partners as possible.”
Small-scale fisheries directly or indirectly support the livelihoods of more than 500 million people worldwide. Residents of Madagascar depend heavily on small-scale fisheries for food security and income. Facing severely over-exploited fisheries, the communities on the country’s coast had to find a better way to maintain their traditional livelihood and way of life. Yet, in new export markets, non-local actors had disproportionate negotiating power.
This is the situation Blue Ventures wanted to address when it launched a project focused on creating community-based partnerships, called Locally Managed Marine Areas, to take charge of nearby fisheries. It hoped these partnerships would improve community-based data collection to boost local negotiating power in the market, as well as communities’ power in responding to relevant legislation.
Word of the pilot’s success quickly spread among neighboring villages who wished to replicate this new approach, and today, around 280 villages have adopted Locally Managed Marine Areas. These fragile but vital sections of the ocean are managed by the community with support from local NGOs. Blue Ventures’ funding goes toward helping to establish the Locally Managed Marine Areas as well as supporting NGOs.
“We didn’t just stay in Madagascar,” said Andriamalala of Blue Ventures. “It is now a global approach.”
The nonprofit now supports community-managed fisheries across 11 countries in the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. To date, it has dispersed around $5.2 million.
But there is still much to be done. An estimated 225 million people across 85,000 coastal communities in low-income tropical countries depend on fisheries for their food and livelihoods, but they face mounting climate, ecological and industrial barriers. The greatest challenges to supporting these communities are limited funding and lack of knowledge, technical training and data, said Andriamalala.
Blue Ventures aims its support at all of these areas to help communities build capacity. 
“We help raise their voices and bring attention to the marginalization of small-scale fisheries,” he added. 
It’s another similarity with the Honnold Foundation, which also includes storytelling and amplification as part of its work. Partners are invited to join the Honnold Foundation at different environmental conferences to publicize their efforts and attract more funding.  “This is also part of capacity building — giving these community members a seat at the table,” Walle said.
Like Blue Ventures, the Honnold Foundation also sees more demand than it can meet. “We’re funneling in projects from a tremendous pipeline of need,” Walle said. “In 2025, we received 1,200 applications from over 100 countries, with capacity to fund a little less than $5 million worth of projects.”
The challenges fuel both nonprofits’ determination to do more. 
“You need to be resilient and adaptable enough to face whatever changes and challenges arise, nationally, globally, environmentally and geopolitically,” Andriamalala said. “We see the climate breakdown, the biodiversity loss, the over-exploitation of fisheries, all of which is driving a humanitarian and ecological crisis and economic emergency. We have to keep going, helping communities at the frontline of these crises with the resources they need to not only survive but thrive.”

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