In 2021, Aoife O’Leary “took a punt” on herself. At the time, O’Leary had worked in the charity and NGO sectors for a decade and felt that there were gaps in global climate action.
While working at British charities ClientEarth and Pure Leapfrog, as well as European umbrella body Transport & Environment, O’Leary realised that climate funding tended to prioritise issues such as road transport, which can easily demonstrate climate outcomes.
She sought to close the gap in funding for hard-to-decarbonise sectors such as shipping and aviation and raise their profile to make them more attractive options to funders.
In October 2021, she established Opportunity Green, a charity that uses the expertise of lawyers, economists and policy specialists to find innovative solutions to tackle climate change.
O’Leary initially hoped to have five Opportunity Green employees by 2025. Nearly four years later, the charity now employs 25 people, has recently opened an office in Brussels and is predicted to have £3m in projected income for the current financial year.
Working culture
Growing up, O’Leary wanted “to change the world” and thought that becoming a human rights lawyer would be a good way to do so.
While qualifying as a lawyer and working for a big law firm in Ireland, she got involved in wind farm deals and climate change.
She says that is when she “realised that climate change is human rights with science and that resonated with me”.
“I was like: ‘That’s what I’m going to do with my career.’”
O’Leary did an internship with ClientEarth where she was asked to look into the EU and its power to reduce emissions from international shipping.
“I spent a lot of time lobbying in the European parliament, especially the European Council. What I consistently heard from policymakers was: ‘Sure, the climate is great, but what about jobs and growth?’
“I went off and got an economic degree on the side so that I could answer that question. It turns out that it was pointless and not useful in answering that question because the economics profession doesn’t grapple with the reality of the modern world.”
O’Leary created Opportunity Green for two reasons. Firstly, she had several climate ideas that were not being implemented by the NGOs where she had worked. Secondly, she wanted to create “a great place to work”.
On the second point, she says: “Unfortunately, in the charity sector and environment space, the vast majority of funding is restricted. This means that you have to spend it on a particular project.
“This is great as long as the project aligns with your strategy and is impactful. But it often comes with a lot of restrictions on indirect costs.
“To me, indirect costs like management training and coaching are indirect to the project but fundamental to having a great place to work. That’s something we’ve tried to focus on at Opportunity Green.
“So, we’ve got a four-day week and make sure every manager gets management training. Equality, inclusion and diversity are at the centre of our work and hiring process. Our paternity and maternity leave are the same, so everyone is entitled to six months’ full pay.”
O’Leary feels that creating a positive culture is crucial to attracting the right staff to tackle climate issues.
“They’ll only do that if they have a great working environment. We’ll always be restricted in the amount we can pay in salaries because that’s the nature of funding. So, at the very least, they should have a great working culture and good management.”
From lawyer to charity leader
Unlike some charity leaders, O’Leary did not follow a traditional path of climbing through operational and management roles. When she set up Opportunity Green, she did not know many other founders with similar backgrounds.
“The only people I knew who had set up organisations were organisations of one or two people. It feels like a lot of people at my level are relatively senior in their organisations but not necessarily CEOs. People I know who are now CEOs have become CEOs of organisations because they’ve been in them and promoted when an opportunity arose.”
However, she says having experience as a charity trustee did help when becoming a CEO.
“Once I did my economics degree, I didn’t want to abandon this entire degree that I spent nights and weekends doing while working full time.
“So, I found a charity called Rethinking Economics, which was campaigning to change the curriculum in universities for economics. They were looking for trustees and I didn’t even know what a trustee did at that stage but was like: ‘Great, sign me up!’ I joined their board and their sister organisation’s board [People’s Economy].”
O’Leary would recommend anyone looking to improve their skills and thinking about leadership to be a trustee.
“I couldn’t possibly have become a charity leader otherwise. The other thing is, because I’ve had bad managers, been bullied and worked in toxic environments, I was always like: ‘One day, I’m going to do it better. I’m going to set up my own organisation.’”
She adds that a lot of learning as a charity CEO is on the job.
“I listen to a lot of leadership podcasts and read management books, so I feel like I’ve self-educated myself along the way. Also, I’ve been in women in leadership groups which in many ways taught me everything I know about leadership.”
Rapid growth
Opportunity Green has three main methods of trying to reduce climate emissions in difficult sectors such as aviation, steel, shipping and agriculture.
The first one, O’Leary says, “is challenging those that aren’t doing enough”. “We’ve got a legal team of lawyers looking at litigation or legal analysis to challenge big polluters or emitters.
“Then, we have a team working with climate-vulnerable countries, and that’s trying to get them the support they need, especially around climate finance, and looking at international negotiations and how we can support them there.
“The third thing is working with companies that are doing the right thing, trying to get them in front of policymakers so that policymakers can have the faith to go and do ambitious legislation. All of that is underpinned by comms and analytics teams.”
She says that when she set up the charity, some funders “didn’t know what to do with me” as “most climate NGOs do this one narrow thing”.
“I don’t mean to suggest you shouldn’t do that but there’s a bit of a gap in how funders think about what we need for the climate. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was true of the charity sector in general.”
O’Leary says her charity has managed to “build up a track record relatively quickly” since its establishment.
Accounts for the year ending 31 March 2024 show that Opportunity Green recorded a total income of £1.72m, more than double the previous year, with most of the charity’s funding coming from trusts and foundations.
“I was in a fortunate position when I founded Opportunity Green because I’d been in the charity sector for 10 years at that stage,” O’Leary says.
“I knew several funders and they knew me from a previous role, so some of them were willing to take a bet on me.
“Once I had some funding, I was able to hire brilliant staff and have this great impact. Now, we’ve got that track record and funders are much more comfortable coming to us.”
Pots of money drying up
O’Leary says some funders may have found Opportunity Green a challenge because it does not work with sectors “where there are easy wins or the emissions are already coming down”.
“It’s these tricky ones that we need to focus on that quite often are underfunded compared to the size of their emissions. This isn’t easy and I’m not going to be able to come back to you in a year and say: ‘I solved aviation.’ But I’ll be able to tell you about different strategies.”
O’Leary is aware of some well-known funders recently closing applications, changing their priorities or deciding to spend down their funds. While these have not had any impact on her charity yet, this is something on her radar.
“The complete shutdown of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is appalling and while most of my funders wouldn’t be funding the same things that USAID would, they could be adjacent to it in some ways,” she says.
“I’m concerned that a lot of them are going to come under pressure to fill that gap and then there’ll be fewer funds for charities like mine.”
She is also concerned about some wealthy international “tech bros” who have recently changed what their foundations fund away from what they consider to be “lefty groups”.
“Several pots of money are drying up and that’s worrying. Having said that, what I keep coming back to when I reassure myself whenever I get too stressed about it all is that we’re having an impact.
“I can’t control what any of those people decide. What I can do is focus on the work, have an impact, figure out the best way to tell our story that resonates with as many people as possible and hope that with time, everyone realises how important this work is and how much it needs to be funded.”
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