Carl Robichaud

But this is a contracting field.

You have the largest funder in the space, which is the MacArthur Foundation, chosen 2020 to exit the field.

And so there are a lot of these non-governmental organizations that are essentially starved for cash

They were reorganizing their portfolio and they had placed a big bet on nuclear weapons.

And they did an assessment of that and determined that while the grantees were making great contributions and informing official policy and informing the public, they didn't see a line of sight to achieving their big bet goal.

and so the board ultimately decided that they didn't want to do this anymore.

I don't think that's the right choice, but at the same time, I think the MacArthur Foundation should be applauded for their many years of investment in this because there are lots of other foundations who haven't done anything in this space.

When I look at that, I just think about

how large and consequential an issue this is and how important it is to have non-governmental voices.

And the amount of money that is going into the sector is tiny in comparison.

Yeah, so the Peace and Security Funders Group seeks to estimate the total non-governmental spending in this space.

And I think that we don't have the numbers for this year, but it'll be somewhere around $30 million.

We're including the grants that Plowshares makes, yeah, in that total.

So we see this as a really neglected problem that just affects all of us alive today.

And we need non-governmental voices, the voices of scholars and scientists and activists, in order to help shape these policies.

And I think from the start of the nuclear age, these voices have been essential.

So we're putting together this fund to try to raise money.

None of it goes to Longview Philanthropy.

100% goes directly to the beneficiaries.

And so what types of groups are we likely to fund?