How We Work
What Guides Us
Our Vision
Oceans 5 bridges global and community-informed ocean conservation strategies, driving impact-oriented collaboration, grantmaking, policy advocacy, and leadership to support these efforts throughout the world’s ocean and coasts.
Our Mission
Oceans 5 envisions a restored and resilient ocean and thriving marine life that support healthy coastal communities for generations to come.
Delivering Impact
Our approach begins with expertise and credibility—making a clear, compelling case for ocean conservation and climate action as shared priorities that all donors and advocates can understand and support.
We invest in diverse coalitions built on collaboration, trust, and mutual respect, so that conservation and climate efforts reflect a wide range of perspectives and lived experience. Together with our partners, we design, fund, and advance conservation strategies that are science-backed, community-informed, and innovative.
This approach helps ensure that ocean conservation and climate initiatives are well resourced, strategically aligned, and positioned to deliver lasting, measurable impact.
Oceans 5 works to build political will and advocate for policies that enable long-lasting success. Through work at the local, national, and global levels, we help scale proven conservation approaches and embed best practices into policy frameworks. Through these interconnected efforts, we seek to realize a restored and resilient ocean—one capable of sustaining thriving marine life and coastal livelihoods for generations to come.
History
Oceans 5 began in 2011 as a bold experiment: four founding philanthropies hired a single executive director to test whether funders could truly work together to protect the ocean at scale.
In its early years, the collaborative operated like a start-up—small, focused, and learning by doing—while building trust among partners and showing that shared strategy and pooled resources could deliver real results. As successes mounted, interest grew and new funders joined, steadily expanding both the collective funding base and the scope of work while the focus on policy remained clear.
Over time, Oceans 5 evolved from a scrappy pilot into a durable institution, growing to 25 funders and a team of 22 staff by the mid-2020s, with a far broader global reach and a diverse network of grantees across dozens of countries. What started as a simple idea has matured into a confident, fully realized collaborative—one that combines collective philanthropy, long-term partnerships, and a sustained commitment to safeguarding the ocean for future generations.
Our Approach
Our approach at Oceans 5 is intentionally behind the scenes. We focus on making progress happen rather than seeking visibility, serving as a convener and catalyst that helps align people, resources, and strategies toward shared goals. We work closely with partners to design and support campaigns that are rigorous, strategic, and grounded in a clear understanding of what is at stake for marine ecosystems and coastal communities – helping ensure that conservation efforts, especially those aimed at stopping overfishing, establishing effective marine reserves, and advancing ocean-climate solutions, are well resourced and positioned for durable impact.
Policy and regulation are central to our work. We prioritize efforts that lead to enforceable, lasting change in laws, regulations, and governance systems from the local to global level. This includes supporting politically informed, science-driven initiatives that deliver real, lasting protections for ocean ecosystems.
At the core of Oceans 5’s approach is a deep commitment to working with local and Indigenous partners. We prioritize supporting organizations that are rooted in their communities, bring lived experience and local knowledge, and are already actively engaged in conservation and governance processes. These partners are often best positioned to navigate local political landscapes, build trusted relationships, and advocate effectively for change.
We view our role as supporting and amplifying their leadership—respecting community priorities, fostering equitable partnerships, and ensuring that conservation outcomes deliver tangible, lasting benefits for both marine life and the people who depend on the ocean.
Project Selection
Oceans 5 supports results-oriented conservation and ocean-based climate policy projects throughout the world. We prioritize funding projects with the following characteristics:
- Significance for impact
- Building policy and political leadership
- Time-bound
- Collaborative
- Project feasibility
- Strategic geographies and issues
For more detail, see our project selection criteria. Please note that Oceans 5 does not fund unsolicited proposals.
Ocean Climate Diplomacy Initiative (OCDI)
Special Fund
The Ocean Climate Diplomacy Initiative (OCDI) is a collaborative fund housed at Oceans 5, providing the strategy, communications, and political intelligence that turn ocean-climate ambition into action. It works across every pillar of the Ocean Resilience and Climate Alliance (ORCA) and serves as a coordinating force across ORCA’s global policy priorities. By providing high-level political engagement, crafting shared messaging, and elevating leadership on ocean climate policy, the Initiative supports aligned coordination and synergies across ORCA’s pillars and Oceans 5’s portfolios.
The Gap
Ocean-based solutions could deliver over a third of the emissions reductions needed to meet global climate goals — yet ocean-climate action across mitigation, sequestration, and adaptation isn’t progressing as quickly as other fields. Closing this gap will require stronger coordination, political leadership, and investment to turn promising ocean solutions into measurable progress. Philanthropy can help accelerate that progress by supporting the policies, partnerships, and practical solutions needed to move ocean-climate action forward.
Our Role
Via its collaboration with ORCA and more broadly, Oceans 5 advances ocean climate solutions by supporting trusted experts, global campaigns, and leading grantees working across shipping, offshore wind, blue carbon, Arctic protection, marine carbon removal, frontline coastal communities, and offshore oil and gas. Our support helps build the policy environment needed to advance ocean-climate action — and helps grow capacity in regions where ocean-climate leadership is emerging but still under-resourced.
