A WISE Story

Jackie Bouvier Copeland founded The WISE Fund as a coalition of donors, social financiers, technologists and activists to seek, find and fund climate impact technologies in the corners of the world often overlooked by innovation funders but most affected by environmental crisis.

An African-American with Indigenous ancestry, who has worked extensively throughout Africa, Jackie has experienced the impact of environmental racism and exploitation worldwide. A long-time naturalist and environmentalist in her personal life and career as a foundation grantmaker, a transformative trip to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and Kuranda Rainforest, the world’s oldest continuous rainforest, redoubled her dedication to do her part to save the planet.  

“Walking the ocean floor and flying over the Great Barrier Reef changed my life. Just seeing the contrast between the remaining healthy coral and the dying reefs was shocking. And global warming was not the only threat. Runoff from the destruction of the rainforest to create farmland was turning the ocean brown, hastening the death of marine life and the forest so vital to a healthy ecosystem. The decline of the natural environment was reflected in the despondent spirits of Kuranda’s aboriginal youth, who, without job opportunities or constructive outlets, spent their days drinking alcohol and playing sorrowful didgeridoo dirges.

The entire journey flashed me back to my life growing up Black in urban Philadelphia, stories of my South Carolina Cherokee ancestors’ trail of tears, and the displacement of my African Gullah-Geechee forebearers. In that epiphany I not only understood that our struggles were one with those of Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Indigenous and Afrodescendant communities are canaries in the mines of the world’s climate crisis.  

Harnessing the wisdom and ingenuity of the communities most affected by environmental destruction in a way that also improves their livelihoods and health is the key to addressing climate change. After months of reflection about what I could do to make a difference, I joined the boards of some groundbreaking renewable energy organizations. But I still felt that I needed to do more.

The idea for The WISE Fund came to me as I realized that through my career I have amassed a network of wise people, who together could find and support innovators with local technology solutions that might address the causes of the climate crisis, while creating new, scalable models to renew our health, environment, and communities worldwide.

Two key lessons over the past 6 years have both broadened and honed WISE’s scope and focus.

First, the global funding system is not designed to provide all innovators with fair and equitable funding.

Second, we must improve the funding system and its resources in a time when funding for all innovators is declining with cuts to critical funding in a volatile economy and more restrictive funding environment.

Third, two untapped arenas for community innovator funding are the cultural economy as well as impact investment.

WISE has adjusted its programming to reflect these lessons.

First, WISE has spun off operation of the annual August Black Philanthropy Month celebration to BackBlack led by its founder, Floyd Jones. We’re now focused on building BPM’s vast network and experience into a new platform, AGAPE: A Global Pan-African Philanthropic Economy.

I created and tested the AGAPE idea in 2021-2024. Now we’re actually piloting it with BackBlack. My hope is that it creates new resources and better capital access for already marginalized innovators hit hard by new funding prohibitions for women and people of color. The world needs all great ideas to have a fair opportunity for funding regardless of innovator race or gender. AGAPE can help.

There is a growing, global, multi-trillion dollar impact investing industry. But marginalized innovators have little knowledge or access to these resources. We will be offering training to help them strengthen their capacity to attract impact investments.

I also realized that we have to create our own funding to share instead of relying on philanthropy or government. So, we have expanded our cultural economy earned revenue program, Soul Fusion: WISE Music for Change.

Now it includes programming to create more earned revenue while advancing our funding equity for a better world.

To date, WISE’s arts and culture productions, mostly our founder’s albums and performances, have generated $30,000 to fund WISE operations and support community innovators and service leaders in the USA, Mexico, Brazil, and Nigeria.

Future plans include new albums, cultural festivals, educational media programming in WISE’s Music Mystic: A Sound Healing experience (SHE). Net proceeds support funding to a new cohort of WISE Innovators and vital community services in the Americas and Africa.

These are exciting times for WISE as we learn, grow, and increase our impact with partners worldwide.

There are trying times with overwhelming challenges. But that also means there are many opportunities to be the change we want to see.

WISE is such an opportunity. I hope that people of all backgrounds will join The WISE Fund to support the next generation of innovators to create a better, more just world for good. You can start by joining our mailing list and funding us at https://givebutter.com/givewise. Thank you for your faith in us and support.