350 Org

350.org’s mission is to inspire, train and mobilize people to join a broad and diverse climate movement that challenges the systems that lead to catastrophic climate change and brings the world closer to a just and sustainable future. Our name references the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, 350 parts per million. Our aim is to keep global warming below 1.5°C and ensure a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels into a clean energy economy. We are building a grassroots movement of millions of people to match the scale and needs required to mitigate climate change and end the era of fossil fuels.

Policy solutions and messaging cannot affect change alone: there needs to be a sustained effort to bring real people and their voices into public debate. For more than a decade, 350.org has mobilized people to demand necessary climate action and shift how the broader public thinks about the climate crisis.

To build and create a sustained movement, we:
- Mobilize: We give people an opportunity to demonstrate their commitment and concern on climate through taking action
- Campaign: We run innovative campaigns as a way to amplify the voices of ordinary people wanting to see change, to shape the public debate and narrative;
- Support the Movement: We connect thousands of groups within a broader movement at key moments for climate action across geographies and intersectional issues, and scale this connection globally to increase the impact and reach of goals

350.org's theory of change is centered on the belief that we must create significant logistical, financial, and strategic obstacles to disincentivize the fossil fuel industry’s continued expansion. Our campaigns generate grassroots support, build community power to demand climate action, and change the prevailing narrative around fossil fuels, making it politically unviable for decision-makers to support them. We are working with millions of people, thousands of partners, and a global staff to advance our theory of change.

Our strategies and activities are aligned with our three-year strategy that focuses on four pathways:
- Inspiring individuals to take action and growing leadership
- Supporting, linking and growing groups within the climate movement
- Shifting the overarching discourse on climate action
- Dismantling the pillars of support for the fossil fuel industry

350.org was started in 2008 by a group of college kids and author Bill McKibben, with the inspiration to fight climate change. In the last decade, 350.org has grown and built a large and diverse global organization to meet the climate crisis at scale. We have 160 staff members working in 32 countries across the world, including the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Indonesia, Japan, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Our organization is led by our Executive Director, May Boeve, and anchored by an 11-member Board of Directors working in the social justice sector in Africa, Asia, and North and South America. Our Board of Directors bring high-level expertise in movement strategy, organizational development, finance, governance, and fundraising. 350.org’s niche in the climate movement is to leverage our network of connected organizations and individual activists to mobilize and create the conditions for our campaigns to succeed.

Our campaigns to stop fossil fuel projects continue to gain traction worldwide. Together with our global partners, we've recently help stop, delay, or cancel projects including: Keystone XL pipeline in the US, Lamu Coal mine in Kenya, Thabametsi coal mine in South Africa, coal projects in Turkey, Indonesia, and more.

Our divestment and fossil fuel finance campaigns are increasing in size and impact in all of the regions where we work. We recently celebrated an important victory when New York State announced that they would be divesting its $226 billion pension fund, making it the largest pension fund in the world to take comprehensive climate action, including fossil fuel divestment.  We are actively campaigning across regions, and are starting to see central banks and large financial institutions in the Europe, Japan, South Africa, and the US move toward ending fossil fuel financing.

We designed and led the 2021 Global Just Recovery Gathering online training in April. We leveraged our online strategies to create a multiple-day training to engage youth and adult leaders, community members, organizations, and networks to reconnect and build collective power within the climate movement in April with thousands of participants from 151 countries.

Created a new multilingual storytelling toolkit for the climate movement to leverage storytelling as a powerful way to shift the global narrative on climate and amplify the authentic stories and voices from people on the frontlines of the climate crisis who are most affected and often least heard. Our storytelling toolkit is currently available in English, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish.