About Canopy Funders
The world needs more than $4 trillion a year to address the climate crisis. Canopy Funders was built because corporations are one of the most powerful, and most underused, levers we have to close that gap.
We believe the people best positioned to influence corporations are corporate funders themselves. Corporate grantmakers and sustainability leads are extraordinary at leading through influence; making the internal case, winning the budget, and moving an organization without formal authority. Canopy Funders’ work is to back them with the strategy, the peers, and the field intelligence to lead well at the moment it matters most.
Amy Sandoz, Founder & CEO
ABOUT THE CEO
Canopy Funders’ Founder and CEO Amy Sandoz has spent two decades helping ambitious ideas move from vision to real-world impact. She scaled Summit Public Schools' learning program from 100 to 300 schools across 40 states, backed by the the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. She designed postsecondary education programs now reaching more than 4,000 students a year, and raised over $1M from the Gates and Walton Family foundations to launch them. She built and facilitated a global climate workforce coalition of 20+ cross-sector partners — government, corporations, nonprofits, and funders — which launched 8 pilots and secured more than $1M in funds to accelerate pathways for women, gender-expansive, and people of color to enter cleantech careers.
The work of coalitions, the slow craft of getting very different people to act together, is exactly what corporate climate giving needs now. Amy started Canopy Funders because the funders doing this work deserve a room of their own, and because the climate transition can't wait.
Amy is known for combining rigor with warmth: for helping leaders cut through complexity, connect the dots, and move. She hold an M.P.A. in Social Entrepreneurship from Portland State University, a B.A. in Political Science and Business Administration from Oregon State University, and an abiding belief that addressing climate change is not only possible but can be joyful, meaningful work done from abundance.
If you're a corporate funder who wants your climate giving to be defensible, durable, and genuinely good, we'd love to know you. Canopy Funders might be your room.