Quadrivium invests in evidence-based solutions to some of society’s most urgent challenges – where the decisions we make today have major repercussions for our future way of life.
We look for initiatives that address the root causes of problems and where single actions can create multiple positive outcomes. We prioritize the potential for lasting impact over safe bets. And we seek opportunities where our investment or leadership will make a real difference.
The Foundation currently has five main focus areas, with many topics being interrelated:
Democracy, Technology and Society, Scientific Understanding, Climate Change and Ocean Health
Quadrivium is working to restore the health of our US democracy at a time of increasing polarization and dysfunction within the system.
Among our areas of engagement, we focus on achieving structural reforms, increasing voter participation and aligning incentives for leadership. Here are just some the groups we are supporting through the Foundation:
Through our strategic investment in Unite America Institute, we are helping to build capacity and strengthen coordination within the democracy reform movement so that it can be more effective and achieve the required scale. We support efforts to advance Ranked Choice Voting, which allows the candidate supported by the majority to win and and Open Primaries, which increases independent voter particpation in elections.
By turning the internet into an onramp for voting, Democracy Works is on course to reach its national goal of achieving 80% voter turnout; while When We All Vote engages cultural leaders to mobilize the youngest in our electorate. We also support the work of Voting Rights Lab to expand voter participation and prevent voter suppression.
We are interested in innovations in the democratic process and a spirit of experimentation therein. As such, we are supporting work by Stanford University and others to introduce citizen assemblies and other deliberative processes that empower citizens and communities to actively participate in the decision-making that shape their lives.
We are seeking to defend against authoritarian governments’ use of technology to polarize and distort the politics of democratic societies, and simultaneously strengthen their own. With the Center for a New American Security, we initiated a project, “Countering High-Tech Illiberalism” to craft effective, practical, actionable, and ambitious policies, domestically and abroad. Read about our program here.
Like many Americans, we have become concerned that political extremism online has been allowed to morph into something worse. ADL is a pioneer in defending against cyber hate and its effects on society, while the Institute for Strategic Dialogue works to prevent the distortion of public opinion, incitement of political violence and other threats to democracy across the online ecosystem. With its commitment to fact-based deliberation, civil discourse and the principle of free expression, PEN America has strengthened its capacity to support newsrooms, communities, universities and policy-makers in upholding these values across a range of evolving challenges and issues.
In addition to preventing harms, we are focused on the development of new tools and technologies that create a healthier, more cohesive society. MIT’s Center for Constructive Communication and partner organization Cortico are advancing new communication spaces that foster listening, understanding and collective decision-making.
All too often, that understanding is left to others until a time of crisis. Seeking to address the root cause of public misunderstanding of science from climate change to vaccines, we set up an organization called SciLine in partnership with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to bring scientific expertise and context to journalists on deadline. SciLine creates fact sheets on topical news and helps journalists, especially those without scientific backgrounds, to connect with relevant experts, interpret announcements and understand the bigger picture.
To further these objectives, we helped to stand up a climate desk at the Associated Press (AP). AP’s member cooperative business model helps the largest and smallest news organizations reach populations across a wide range of geographies and cultural and economic backgrounds with climate change stories that matter in their communities.
Importantly, these stories improve public understanding of the existential threats we face as well as the many solutions available and underway.
We need urgent action on this issue — action that also drives innovation and investment. We are focused on federal policy change as the highest point of leverage. At the same time, we recognize that bringing about such change requires public demad. Our climate strategy therefore encompasses both communications and policy.
On the communications front, we see that the climate threat has been politicized and we are working with organizations that are capable of reaching a majority of the public, regardless of political tribe.
Through our support of Climate Central, we are helping to expand the successful Climate Matters program, which uses meteorologists as trusted messengers of the links between extreme weather and climate change. We were early investors in Potential Energy Coalition, launching a sophisticated marketing and communications capabillity that regularly shares campaigns, research and learnings to thousands of leaders and organizations seeking to accelerate the global energy transition.
NRDC’s Rewrite the Future program, The Good Energy Project and A Day of Unreasonable Conversation all work with Hollywood storytellers to transform how the industry portrays climate on screen and inspire audiences to envision better futures.
On the policy front, Quadrivium supports the bipartisan passage of a US climate strategy that doubles as an economic growth strategy. We were heartened by the passage of a set of landmark climate legislation in 2021 and 2022 and are now focused on implementation. EDF and Niskanen are addressing policy and legal barriers to the buildout of clean infrastructure — with particular focus on the permitting and siting of electricity transmission — in alignment with equity and justice principles.
We believe it is long past time for Republicans to have a plan to combat climate change. The Carbon Diviedends and carbon border adjustment plans from the Climate Leadership Coucil is poised to be just that. With Republican leaders and Nobel Prize winning economists signed on, now they need to build overwhelming support in Congress.
We also support EDF’s work on carbon markets in India and China as well as the methan capture program globally — programs that measurably bend the curve on carbon emissions today.
Over three billion people depend on fish as their main source of protein. Warming and acidifying seas, overfishing and pollution all threaten biodiversity and food security around the world. EDF has shown how solving the overfishing problem through catch shares can make communities and oceans more resilient to climate change and pollution.
