Climate Change and Democracy with Ning Mosberger-Tang

Cody Simms

Today on my climate journey, our guest is Ning Mossberger Tang, founder and president at 1.5 Climate Strategies group alongside a host of other climate and civic organizations. Ning was one of the first women engineers at Google and contributed to the development of Google's initial advertising platform. After leaving Google in 2006, she began to focus her attention on climate change. Today, she has founded and runs multiple organizations that seek to effect change as we discuss, her efforts range from political and electoral advocacy to civic engagement to climate tech investing. Timing wise, I was excited to get a chance to chat with Ning during the build up to the 2024 election so she could share what's at stake, where she's focused during this election cycle, and how she's approaching it.

But before we start, I'm Cody Sims. I'm Yin Liu. And I'm Jason Jacobs. And welcome to my climate journey. This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.

In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and all the ways people like you and I can help.

Ning, welcome to the show. Thank you, Cody. Thank you for having me. This is a very important year in the work that you do, and frankly, important for all of us in that it is in 2024, now an election year. And I know that a lot of the work that you do is focused on the policy framework and the policy environments, including getting the right candidates in place when it comes to climate.

We're going to talk so much about that today, but before we do, I'd like to get to know you a little bit more. Ning, can you share a little bit about your background and what brought you ultimately to the work you're doing now? Sure. Thank you, Cody. I am so excited to be here to talk to the MCJ audience because I know you guys are doing really important work here.

Ning Mosberger-Tang

I've been doing it for years. I am Ning Mossberger Tan and right now I live in Boulder, Colorado. But I was born and raised in China and I went to college there. My area of study was computer science and then I came to the US for graduate school and got a master's degree in computer science. And then after that I worked for a number of years in tech industry in Massachusetts, Arizona, and then eventually in the Bay Area.

And then I left the tech industry back in 2006 to focus on climate change. As I understand it, you were one of the first female engineers at Google, is that correct? Yes, that's right. Tell us a little bit more about your time there. So I was referred to Google by a co worker of mine in another company in the Bay Area.

And I was super excited to be working at Google at the very critical time of that company. That was when the company was just starting up and build up momentum and becoming the household name that we know today. It was a great experience for me. They have provide really good benefits for employees and it's also great to work with very smart, very dedicated group of people. And I have learned a lot.

And also I believe I have made some contributions to the success of Google. Namely, you were on the team that built Google's first advertising platform, which is still how Google makes most of its money. I know, it's shocking, right? Yes. Who knew at that time that you make money through Google Ads?

But it turned out that it was a very successful product and continue to be successful up to this day. Congratulations on that journey. And certainly it has, I would guess, propelled your career and propelled you into now being able to focus on other things that you have deemed important in your life. And it seems like a hard pivot to go from hard charging time at Google to saying, im going to focus all in on climate change. And this was what, 2006 or so.

Cody Simms

Tell us more about how that transition happened for you. Yes, that was back in 2006. One day I was looking at my three year old daughter at that time, my older daughter, and I was thinking, I was asking myself the question, what is her future going to be like when she is my age? And I was scared. And I also asked myself what I was doing at the time, is it going to help her future?

Ning Mosberger-Tang

So my answer was no. What I was doing is not going to be very helpful to create a better world for her. If climate change is not mitigated, not stopped, and we don't start to go the different direction, then we are not going to have a future for her when she's my age. And then that's when I decided that I'm going to seek a different path and go to dedicate my time and energy on climate change mitigation so that I can help create a better world for her. Was there a trigger in that time, climate change wasn't as prevalent in popular culture as it maybe is today.

Cody Simms

Was there a trigger that gave you that? Aha, that. Oh, this is something I need to think about when it came to your daughter. Absolutely right. At that time, people were not as concerned about climate change as they are today and were a lot of climate change deniers today.

Ning Mosberger-Tang

If you talk to someone, they say, hey, climate change is not real, it's not mammoth, and you're likely not going to go very far. But I think at that time was a lot of suspicion out there that something that we need to tackle with that kind of urgency that we need to. And for me, the triggering point was when I actually was reading the keeling chart, the CO2 level, and just look at the prehistorical temperature and CO2 record and look at the correlation and look at the Ketin chart going off the charts, literally. So I look at the numbers, I was like, oh my God, that's a scary stuff, and I have to do something about it. And in combination with having a young family, my daughter was three, and it just made me make the jump without any regrets.

I had to do it. And so that's when you set up Innovo foundation, which was your first foray. You have many initiatives that you work on. We'll hit on many of them on the show. But this foray, I think still is active today, which is your vehicle for donating to nonprofits focused on climate change, is that correct?

Yes. That's when I started the Innovo foundation, focusing on climate change mitigation. That's the mission of the foundation. I started that in 2004, and then it started operating in 2006, and it continued to operate until this day. And the focus is conservation work, climate change mitigation.

And I use that as a vehicle to do the work I'm doing today. And it seems like we're going to talk about 1.5 climate strategies group, which I know is a heavy focus of yours, especially right now in an election season. But it seems like you have multiple vehicles through which you direct your climate ambition, one being Innovo foundation, focused on supporting nonprofits around climate mitigation. You have Avoni Ventures, which invests in technology solutions to climate change. You have Innovo foundation focused on nonprofits around climate mitigation.

Cody Simms

You have Avoni Ventures, which focuses on investing in technology around climate change. We as MCJ are proud to be one of your investees. Thank you very much for your investment. And of course, you have other initiatives focused as well around democracy reform and the like. Maybe share a little bit about some of those other efforts.

Ning Mosberger-Tang

Thank you for learning about all that, because it was a very long journey for me to discover where I can make the most impact. And the, this is all the entities that you named? Yes, they are all part of the vehicle. They're all the vehicles. I used to make a difference.

So I started with the Innova Foundation I used Innova foundation to do conservation work. So actually this global work in Kenya, Costa Rica, to protect the natural environment, to protect the forestry, and I like to directly mitigate carbon emissions. And from there, I also started an initiative called Renew our School program is to educate school children about climate change impact and how they can make a difference by saving energy for their schools. So we set up this school district wide energy saving campaigns, competitions between schools. So the kids, they lead the effort, and they are able to win a medal for their school if they're doing a really good job to save energy for their schools.

So that effort actually was also based in Innova foundation. And the program has grown from a single school district now to nationwide. It's a nationwide program. So I'm very proud of the work I was able to accomplish through Inova Foundation. A lot of that are direct carbon emissions reduction work.

But then I realized that it's not enough. And as you have recognized, the problem of climate change is so immense and so urgent, we have to do more than just to do this conservation work on the ground through a foundation or more. So as I started the Ovoni Foundation, Ovoni, basically noble, in a reverse order, didn't put that together. That's great. I know.

So they're focused on investing in early stage climate tech that has high potential and needs to happen. So that's why I have been doing, and that's why I invest in MCJ as one of the investments made through the Ovoni ventures. And then after that, 2016 had the big election happened, where we lost our government to an anti climate denying administration. So that's why I realized that I have to get engaged with policy work, and by extension, I have to get engaged electoral work, because I realize that. So, for example, in Costa Rica, I work with organization.

They saved 400,000 acres of land to protect the natural environment and to cut carbon emissions. And if you think about that, I only play a small role in that effort. But then, if you look at what the administration can do, with a stroke of a pen, they could write off several million acres from protected status to non protected, and you can feel free to do fossil fuel development or whatnot on that land. So it's just that so much effort has to go into electoral work. Make sure that we have a pro climate administration and Congress and also state government, so that they can use good policies to help us mitigate the climate change crisis.

The impact of that is so much bigger than how much you and I as an individual can accomplish. We're going to talk most of the rest of the episode about your work there in political campaign, giving and supporting candidates and all of that. Before we do. You also have some initiatives, particularly around driving action. You have the blue wave postcard movement and you have the democracy strategy group, both of which you've also created to help drive greater awareness from individuals, I think, around changes that potentially need to happen, even regardless of climate, it sounds like.

So in order to create the kind of change I was talking about, which is to change policy, have the right people elected, we have to make sure that people turn out to vote because the majority of Americans are pro crime, are pro reform, are pro democracy. It's just that their will has not been presented in the electoral outcome because people don't always turn out to vote. So that's why I started the blue wave postcard movement, Blu ray postcard movement. The mission is to reach out to underrepresented voters and making sure that they register and vote in all these battleground states. And what about the democracy strategy group?

That's another good question. So because of my concern about climate, and I look a little bit into that, why the good policy did not pass, a big part of the reason is that the majority voice has not been heard, which means that democracy, we don't have true democracy in this country. As you have seen in the data, we are not one of the most democratic countries in the world these days because we have all this structural disadvantage for the majority to have their voice heard. So I'm really focusing on making sure that we can restore the fundamental of democracy, and with that, we will be able to create the change we need and actually preserve the change that we made and to give them time to take effect over time. It's about trying to reduce the amount of special interests involved in policymaking, trying to reduce the amount of campaign dollars that are flowing into candidacies from non individuals.

Cody Simms

Would those be some of the principles of that initiative? I don't know. I'm making these up. You are exactly right. Campaign finance reform and exposing dark money and the reduced amount of money's influence in politics.

Ning Mosberger-Tang

And also very fundamentally, it's making sure that everybody has the right to vote and have their voice heard, which means have the universal mail in voting, have early voting, and prevent voter suppression from happening from all these former Jim Crow states, and also to ban gerrymandering at the federal level and hopefully eventually at the state level as well. So all the policies I mentioned earlier about universal mail in voting and Ben Jerrymerin, they're all part of a bill. It's called the Freedom to Vote act. So Freedom to Vote act was introduced in 2021 when we had a federal pro democracy trifecta. I worked with a group of donors, activists in the background worked very hard for a year to help pass the bill.

And that's when I started this group called Democracy Strategy Group. And the main purpose of the democracy strategy group is to pass the Freedom to vote act and to make sure that Congress will reauthorize the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement act. Basically, it's fruit of the voting rights, this civil rights voting rights reform that was accomplished in 1965 and it had not been reauthorized. But anyway, so I just want to make sure that the voting rights to be protected for all the Americans and also make sure that everybody have the right to vote and their voice will be heard by passing the freedom to vote act. So that's my work on democracy side of things.

Cody Simms

Ning, I have to say, I wasn't planning to say this out loud, but it's really inspiring to see you, as you started out the episode, saying you're an immigrant to this country and how much you have internalized the ideals of american democracy and are putting your resources and your life's work toward trying to help this country realize its fullest potential. And it just feels like such an incredible american story for you to have moved to this country, hit a home run as an early engineer at Google after working really hard to get your master's degree and all of this. And now here you are, using your resources to help advance democratic ideals in the United States. So thank you for all that you do in that regard. Thank you, Cody.

Ning Mosberger-Tang

That's part of the reason I am doing what I'm doing, actually, because I know how different society could look like without democracy, without freedom of press, without the right to vote. And I just love to protect what we have here as a democracy. And I'm just sad to see that some of that has been chipped away. It's not too late to save it. Let's shift our efforts to talk about the work you're doing directly with 1.5 climate strategies group.

Cody Simms

And in particular, what I find interesting about this group is you have a mandate of what the group is trying to accomplish, and then you also have an ask of its members around a pledge. Can you share a bit more about both of those? For sure? Yeah. So I started 1.5 climate strategies group about two years ago, and the reason I started that is because I recognize how much impact we can make as a group of people instead of individuals, and which I have learned from my work with the Democracy Strategy group and I learned from that and I carried that to my climate work and I started the 1.5 climate strategy group.

Ning Mosberger-Tang

And the name sake of 1.5 is to keep the temperature increase below 1.5 degrees C from the pre industrial level. And also has a dual meaning. We are urging foundations, wealthy individuals and donor advice funds to dedicate 1.5% of their net assets on climate change mitigation work every year until the end of this decade. So that's 1.5 degrees c and also 1.5%, and we call it 1.5% for 1.5 degree. So that 1.5 is really important for us.

That's a group of donor advisors and also foundations coming from all over the country who care about climate change and come together to figure out what we can do to help. So every two weeks we invite an organization to make a presentation about their project, which has to be catalytic and also has to be underfunded. And then we try to get these catalytic and climate solutions resourced through our Donald collaborative. And so you are focused on movement builders, you're focused on also electoral candidates. I suppose it's a whole host of different pathways toward pushing action on climate, is that correct?

Yes. We are very open minded. We welcome different ideas, different solutions, because climate change is such a big problem, we need a very comprehensive solution to address that. So we are not cherry picking different ideas. Our criteria is that the idea has to be catalytic, it's going to create much bigger impact over time.

And also that it's underfunded has not been paid enough attention to. So one example of that is climate reporting, climate communications. That actually was our first project and we want to make sure that the issue of climate change, and also the corruption in state government by the fossil fuel industry has to be caught early on and has to be exposed. So we supported organizations that are doing the reporting work and to shed a light to this is very important issue and that's for us. It's one of the catalytic solutions that is actually underfunded.

It's still underfunded today. You may not be surprised to hear that, but it's completely underfunded. Can you share anything about the different programs you have directed dollars toward in that space? So in the space we supported, capital M main capital Mae is an investigative reporting unit focusing on holding governments, especially state governments, accountable for climate change work. They are in five states now.

We help them expand it from two to five states through our first project. And the other one we have supported is grist, g I s t. You may have heard about that. It's pretty influential in terms of sharing climate solutions and whatnot with the audience, especially in online. For me, Grist is like the original climate newsletter and media publication.

Cody Simms

I think certainly one that I've been reading for a while. I know in talking to your colleague Greg, a lot of the agenda for the last six months or so at 1.5 climate strategies group is very focused on the upcoming election. Can you share a bit about what that looks like for you? And I'd like to spend a little bit of time unpacking a bit more about how donation, capital and political giving impacts elections. So we support a range of climate projects.

Ning Mosberger-Tang

We call it climate projects, but actually there could be electoral projects that have a climate consequence down the road. So, for example, we supported down ballot climate elections, which are very important elections that are happening under the radar. They are not federal elections, they are at the state or lower level, but they are very important elections because people who are elected to the city council, to the county commissions, or to the public service utilities, they have outsized impact on climate change. So we have supported the down ballot climate elections as an example. And we have also supported the 2022 House elections all across the country, making sure that it did not happen.

But we were trying to help us hold the majority in the US House at that time. I think we were one of the very few groups we thought that was even possible. And we recognized that there is an underfunded solution right there for climate. If we can actually hold a House majority in 2022, a pro climate majority, then we are living in a very different world right now. We invested millions and millions of dollars in that election cycle to hold a House majority, and we were short for a few seats.

But I'm very proud that we were able to make a difference there, even though we were not able to hold the majority. But I think we got us pretty close, partly because of our effort. And then after 2022, going into 2023, we were actually supporting policy work. It's the odd year, it's not really a big electoral year. So we support a lot of climate policy work.

And mainly focusing on IRA implementation is the Inflation Reduction act implementation, making sure that Inflation Reduction act will be implemented efficiently, effectively and equitably in the country. So we supported a lot of capacity building work in different states, including many red and rural states. And going into this year, 2024, our focus will be back in elections again because it's the biggest mover of climate policy. If we can win the election, then we can hopefully get pro climate trifecta again and then pass bigger and better bills next year in January for timing. So this year we are going to be very engaged in electoral work.

Yin Liu

Hey everyone, I'm Yin, a partner at MCJ Collective, here to take a quick minute to tell you about our MCJ membership community, which was born out of a collective thirst for peer to peer learning and doing that goes beyond just listening to the podcast we started in 2019 and have grown to thousands of members globally each week. We're inspired by people who join with different backgrounds and points of view. What we all share is a deep curiosity to learn and a bias to action around ways to accelerate solutions to climate change. Some awesome initiatives have come out of the community, a number of founding teams have met, several nonprofits have been established, and a bunch of hiring has been done. Many early stage investments have been made, as well as ongoing events and programming like monthly women in climate meetups, idea jam sessions for early stage founders, climate book club, art workshops, and more.

Whether youve been in the climate space for a while or just embarking on your journey, having a community to support you is important. If you want to learn more, head over to mcjcollective.com and click on the members tab at the top. Thanks and enjoy the rest of the show. I'm assuming when it comes to IRA implementation, that part of your strategy aligns very closely with the down ballot elections because it is often state and local governments that are responsible for implementing elements of the Inflation Reduction act benefits. Am I correct in making that assumption?

Ning Mosberger-Tang

That's very much up to the states and sometimes the events, community groups, even a lower level to draw down the federal funds and then put them to good use in projects that have climate change mitigation impact. Are there any examples of a state or local election that you can share where the choice between candidates was incredibly stark in terms of one's ability to implement positive climate policy and one who was clearly going to obstruct it? Yes, I think sometimes in some states we have a split government. At the state level, perhaps it's all republican, some anti climate people, and then at the city level we have a lot of pro climate folks, right? So one example is in Ohio.

We were not able to get much happening at the state level just because the state was controlled by anticlimate majority. But we were able to make some progress in cities like Columbus and all these cities where there is a progressive government. And so we focus on working with those city governments instead. The IRA is designed so that the cities and also communities, they don't have to get the state agency state approval to draw down the federal funds. So in those cases, they could just directly draw down the federal funds if they are well organized.

I don't know if that answered your question, but yeah, it definitely makes a difference who is in charge at what level. How are you getting the knowledge and the insight of 50 states and all these local elections and whatnot to figure out which ones have significant leverage and are winnable such that they are ones that you and the group should be focused on? We have partners. We have very good partners. For example, we partner with Climate cabinet.

Climate cabinet is a great organization and they identified local races that will have significant climate impact down the road and then also identify races that we can win and we should win. And then we work with them to send resources to what they have identified. So as a rule of thumb, we always try to work with partners because we are only few of us, right. We are trying to fix this very big problem in a very big country and we have to work with groups that are on the ground, groups that have expertise in this work. So, for example, climate cabinet is one of our partners.

Cody Simms

Caroline Spears from climate cabinet has been on the pod before. It was a long time ago. It was a few years ago. But for those who want to learn more about the work they do in identifying down ballot climate races, go back to the pod archives. Look up the episode that Jason recorded with Caroline of climate cabinet.

It's a good one. Okay, share then maybe a bit more about your strategy and how you operate. So how we operate is that we have executive director, who is Greg Rock, and then we also have some consultants that we contract with and we also have member engagement director, technological director and whatnot. But mainly I want to share with you that we have a steering committee. It's a group of individuals who are not paid and very dedicated and very knowledgeable.

Ning Mosberger-Tang

And we try to leverage their expertise and their passion and their knowledge to help us source projects. And the decisions that we make as to which projects are going to go ahead and get opportunity to present in our group is decided by that steering committee. So right now we have about a dozen, ten to twelve members of the investeering committee coming from all over the country and different backgrounds. So that's super helpful. That's part of the structural question I want to address.

And then in terms of strategy this year, we have decided that we are actually going to go all in for the protecting the US Senate majority. Because if you talk to people around the country, different groups, large groups, small groups, a lot of people are not very hopeful that we can hold a trajector, but a lot of people are not hopeful that we can win back the trifecta. Trifecta meaning president, House and Senate? Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, at the federal level.

But we think we have a path. I think we can get a White House and we can take back the US House, and then we can also protect the US Senate majority. But in order to hold the Senate majority, we have to make sure that we win all the competitive Senate races that we know about, like Ohio, Montana, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, as well win all the Senate races in those states in order to hold a majority. But then I think we also have some backup states that we may be able to pick up a seat or two. So, for example, Texas, Florida, and maybe even Nebraska.

I know some of them could be long shots, but I think it's not totally impossible. Yeah. And is the goal to hold the Senate majority in order to avoid potential painful repeals of elements of the Inflation Reduction act, or is the goal to be able to advance further climate policy and to ensure that the Inflation Reduction act and bipartisan infrastructure laws benefits are fully realized? In order to stop the repeal, we can take back the House majority, which is probably the easiest one in the trifecta. Or we can hold a White House and then ensure that inflation reduction act and other good federal funds won't be repealed.

But in order to make more progress on crime, b, have better policies. For example, if you want to fix the grid, want to do a transmission reform, then we have to make sure that we can hold the Senate majority, have a trifecta so we can pass better bills. Okay, so you said fix the grid or have transmission reform. What else is on your wish list? I think transmission is probably on the top of my wish list because I think we need to fix the whole infrastructure, just that we need to do that as if we are building a federal highway system.

I think that is the big problem because otherwise, what, 80, 90% of the new renewables will not be able to get plugged into the grid. So we have to make sure that we fix that problem. And other than that reform, also the permit reform, transmission of permit reform. Other than that, I think we just have to double down on the implementation of the inflation Reduction act and hopefully can get that federal funds out to people as quickly as possible. Can you share with us a bit about how money works in elections.

Cody Simms

There are multiple conduits for giving, as far as I understand it. You can make a direct campaign contribution to a candidate. That's what probably most people are used to doing if they're giving money in an election. You can do that through an aggregator group like give Green or Act blue or win red if you're so inclined. And that can go through an aggregation channel that gives to multiple candidates at once.

But if you don't want to give to candidates, you can give to pacs or super pacs. You can give to 501 c three s that create ground game and build infrastructure. You can give to 501 c four s that I think can directly work with candidates and coordinate with them. And then there's a bunch of other pathways as well. I don't understand this clearly as well as I'm sure you do.

Can you break this down a little bit for us? Sure. Yeah. There are many different ways to fund elections, so if you want to send money to candidates, I agree with you. So I highly recommend that you donate that through the Givegreen channel.

Ning Mosberger-Tang

If you give the money through give Green, the candidate knows that it's coming from people who are concerned about climate change and environment, and then they will be more likely to implement those policies. So if you were going to give to the Biden campaign rather than going to joebiden.com or rather than going to actBlue, you would say give to him through Givegreen, for example, or to a Senate candidate, same thing. And then they know, hey, this money comes from the climate movement. A lot of these federal candidates are on Givegreen, and then that's the best channel to give. I give most of my candidate donations through the Givegreen platform.

In terms of funding types, there's 501 C three, which you can give out of your donor advice funds, or you can just give from your bank account as a tax deductible contribution to different groups, and they can use the money to turn out voters and educate voters. They can do that in the early part of election. It's early part of election season. First few months of this year will be super impactful. And then as time moves along, I think you want to give to 501 because there are some organizations that use the 501 C four money to fund the operations, and also they can do more political spending with that kind of funding.

For example, they can differentiate the democratic candidate versus the republican candidate and educate voters about how different they are. And they can also use 501 c four funding to advocate for climate policies, for example. So that's what you can do with a c four funding, just to make sure I understand. So 501 is tax deductible, but it's a little bit more hands off in terms of how involved it can get on specific candidates or specific policies. Whereas 501 four a donation is not tax deductible, but the money can directly go to organizations that are advocating for specific candidates or for specific policies.

Cody Simms

Is that correct? 501 C three can do some advocacy work. It's a small percentage, I think 20% or so. So about 501 c four, all the money you can spend on advocacy is not a problem. And then with the c three, they cannot talk to voters about Democrats, Republicans kind of thing, right.

Ning Mosberger-Tang

You cannot tell them, say, hey, why democrats are better, why democratic policies are better for climate, cannot do such things. But with c four, you can do that. And then what's a pac or a super Pac? What does that mean, the PAC funding? You can go all in and use that money to make the biggest impact in the electoral outcome.

So you can talk about the candidates, talk about what is candidate support and why they're better. That's why the PAC money is most impactful, have direct impact for the electoral outcome. We can do a little bit of that with c three, but not much. It seems like PAC money is often who I see funding. Tv advertisements, for example, are often created by and funded by pacs.

Yeah, there's a large expenditure that you can have a super PAC or whatnot, and then you can go through the tv and then talk about this candidate, or again, the other candidate. Are they allowed to coordinate with candidates directly, the super PAC? They cannot coordinate with candidates, but the. Candidate, obviously, you hear them at the end of the message saying, I endorse this message. So the candidate is able to see the message and decide to endorse it before it airs.

I don't think the candidate can endorse that. They don't. Maybe those aren't PAC ads. That would be the candidate ads. And the candidate ads would be funded by the direct campaign contribution.

That's right. Your campaign contribution, especially when you made a campaign contribution late in the cycle, and they usually go to ads. That's why it's good to find the candidates early, because if you find them early, then they could use that to scale up the operation, hire the right people to help them win a campaign. Most of us who aren't super deep in this, like you are, probably experience elections primarily through advertisements. And yet I think a lot of the expense of an election is about building out a ground game.

Cody Simms

It's about establishing your beachheads in specific locales or specific states. Can you explain more about the importance of those dollars and how effective they might be? Yeah, I think the beachhead is raised. I haven't heard that. But yeah, you can set up campaign office in different districts and then you can use that, a campaign office to organize volunteers, have some staff member there, and to mobilize the people in the district to vote for you.

Now we're getting through primary season, so presumably whether it's house, Senate or presidential, at the federal level, the candidates are getting close to being set. Is now the time that they need those dollars? Is now the time that campaign contributions are most impactful for driving those ground game build outs. So now it's a good time to give campaign contributions to candidates? Yes.

Ning Mosberger-Tang

But in addition to giving campaign contributions to candidates, which is often limited as a cap, I think it's also good to give funds to organizations that are doing a groundwork to reach out, register and turn out voters. There was so much attention on this in Georgia in 2020 with the work Stacey Abrams did, for example. Right. She was no longer running for office, but she created this huge ground game across Georgia through her nonprofit organization. And so how do people find those?

Cody Simms

Those don't seem easy to know where to look. It's easy to know, hey, who's running for Senate in this state? I'm going to go give money to this candidate. It's much harder to know what's the ground organization that's driving impact in terms of voter registration, for example? That's a really good question.

Ning Mosberger-Tang

So Georgia, Stacey Abrams played a huge role there. And also there is Georgia alliance for Progress, basically the state donor table that organize funding, getting funding from other states in state, and they use them to support the voter registration and turnout effort. So that's a really good question. I think you're getting into the nitty gritty details there. If you have contacts of the state donor table.

We now have about more than 40 state donor tables in the United States. And Colorado has a really good one. It's called Colorado Donor Alliance. Georgia is the Georgia alliance for Progress. So more than 40 states have donor tables like that.

Usually they are my first contact. If I want to invest in estate, I talk to donut people, ask them, hey, which organizations are doing voter registration work, for example, and then which organizations are good in registering latino voters? And you can ask them very specific questions and then they can help connect you with the right organization to support. If you live in a state that has a competitive election in state or house or is a swing state presidentially, and you live in a state you found out somehow has a positive nonprofit ground game organization, what percentage of dollars would you recommend someone give to candidates relative to ground game? I think it depends on how your campaign budget, as I said, the candidate contribution is capped and then you can donate to both primary and general such two times of the care per person.

So basically that's how much you can give. So if you want to give $100,000, then yeah, you have to give most of that to organization beyond a candidate. But for example, if you have a budget of 10,000, yeah, I think that maybe three, half the candidates and then organizations. It's such an important point because I think my assumption is most people don't think about that. They think about who's the candidate I want to support and I'm going to give them money.

Cody Simms

And the problem is, of course, you may love that candidate, but as soon as the election is over, the momentum there for the most part is gone. Whereas if you give to a ground game organization, presumably they're going to continue to build ground game for future elections as well. You're exactly right. Very insightful. In addition to that, the ground game, meaning the local groups that are engaged in elections, they can also hold the candidates accountable once they're elected.

Ning Mosberger-Tang

So that's a very important part of that too, is they're just getting the elected also holding accountable. And also the same groups can spend electoral years pushing forward good policies. So supporting the ground game, supporting the local groups, is the way to build the movement over time. Candidates just get the winner election one time and then next time could be another president. So yeah, I think both are important, but I think people often forget about the ground game.

Cody Simms

We're coming up on time here. I've really learned a ton from this. I so appreciate you sharing what you're doing and again, appreciate all the work that you do in this space. For folks who want to learn more about 1.5 climate strategies group, where should they go? They can just go to 1.50 nepointfive climate.org and then they'll be able to see that as a join the group button.

Ning Mosberger-Tang

If you are interested in joining us, you can just click on the button and then we will talk to you about that. What more do you want to make sure to have shared with all of us? I also want to share that we have a blue wave postcard movement. We are right now registering voters in Pennsylvania as we speak. And we have just released 400,000 postcards for Pennsylvania to make sure that some of these underrepresented voters register to vote.

Our plan this year is to do 5 million postcards reaching out to 5 million households, and all of them will be in key battleground states and districts. So if you want to do something in your home or write some postcards with your friends, go to ruwaypostcards.org dot. I would like to share with people that a lot of the investments in candidates are actually wasted. For example, the challenge to win Kentucky Senate seat, which was basically nearly impossible, but a lot of people contributed to the candidate who ended up losing by a very large margin. So there is a website called oath Vote.

It's oath vote. I'm actually on the advisory board, but it's an organization that are trying to evaluate all the candidates and making sure that people know who are the ones who actually need funding and who has the chance to win. So it's really important that you give money to candidates who can win and also who needs support. So anyway, to check out oath vote when you have a chance and before you give to candidates. Ning democracy is a very messy process.

Cody Simms

We appreciate the work you do to help try to make sense of it for those of us who don't have as much focus or time or energy to put to work understanding how to pull the levers in the system. And thank you for all the work you do for helping to ensure positive climate policy is able to get enacted. Thank you for the work you do as well. Cody. You are helping a lot of people to find the best way to engage to make sure that we can win this climate fight.

All right, thank you. Thanks again for joining us on the my Climate Journey podcast. At MCJ Collective, we're all about powering collective innovation for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem solving capacity. If you'd like to learn more about MCJ collective, visit us at MCJ Collective. And if you have a guest suggestion, let us know that via Twitter mcJpod.

Yin Liu

For weekly climate op eds, jobs, community events, and investment announcements from our MCJ venture funds, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter on our website. Thanks and see you next episode.

Cody Simms

Thanks and see you next episode.

Climate Change and Democracy with Ning Mosberger-Tang

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1: Introduction

2: Ning's Journey

3: Strategies for Change

4: Importance of Democracy

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