The charity sector behind responsible gold.

Corporate foundationActive

The Tiffany & Co. Foundation

The philanthropic arm of Tiffany & Co., with Responsible Mining a core grant area since around 2000. It was a founding backer of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) with Earthworks, funded IIED’s artisanal-mining dialogues in Ghana and Tanzania, and reports more than US$6 million over roughly 15 years toward standards and certification for the artisanal sector. Grant figures are the Foundation’s own.

Grant totals self-reported by the Foundation. A widely cited US$4m Pact grant for Tanzanian ASGM child labour was a US Department of Labor award, not a Foundation grant.

Corporate foundationActive

Cartier Philanthropy

The Geneva-based charitable foundation of Cartier. It funded Solidaridad’s Partnering for Better Livelihoods in the Gold Supply Chain programme in Ghana and Peru (2013-2017), supporting formalisation and cooperation between a mid-scale miner and artisanal miners on its concessions. Mining is not a standing programme, so this is a specific past project; separately, Cartier’s corporate arm co-founded the Swiss Better Gold Association.

The gold link rests on the grantee (Solidaridad) plus Cartier; no grant figure disclosed.

Corporate foundationActive

Brilliant Earth Foundation

The philanthropic arm of jeweller Brilliant Earth. In October 2022 it granted US$300,000 to Pure Earth for a four-year Green Mining project, run with the Alliance for Responsible Mining, to build a mercury-free gold supply chain from Madre de Dios in the Peruvian Amazon; later grants support the region’s Women’s Mining Network.

Grant figure corroborated by the grantee (Pure Earth) and Brilliant Earth.

Private foundationActive

Ford Foundation

One of the largest US private foundations, funding extractives governance through its Natural Resources and Climate Justice programme (a ten-year strategy from 2019). It is a documented funder of the IGF, the Natural Resource Governance Institute, Publish What You Pay and IRMA. Gold enters its portfolio only as part of a broad extractives and transparency agenda.

Extractives-general; not a gold-specific funder.

Private foundationActive

Open Society Foundations

The originating and largest philanthropic backer of the extractives-transparency field: it incubated Revenue Watch (which became the Natural Resource Governance Institute), was a founding backer of Publish What You Pay in 2002, and continues to fund NRGI, PWYP, EITI and IRMA. Its extractives work is general to oil, gas and minerals; gold is an implicit subset rather than a dedicated programme.

Extractives-general; not a gold-specific funder.

Industry fundActive

Gemological Institute of America (GIA)

A US non-profit gemological institute that funds mercury-free artisanal gold-mining technology. It gave US$50,000 (2021) to Mercury Free Mining and the Alliance for Responsible Mining for mercury mitigation in Ananea, Peru, and about US$93,000 to deploy the Goldrop gravity system in three Colombian artisanal mining communities.

An ecumenical, mostly Catholic network that emerged from a 2013 meeting in Lima and accompanies communities affected by large-scale mining across Latin America, with participation from Africa and Asia. Coordinated by Comboni missionary Dário Bossi, it drove a mining-divestment platform launched at the Vatican in March 2026 with more than 40 institutions. Its focus is broadly extractive; specific gold cases such as La Puya in Guatemala feature, and it notes that informal artisanal gold mining lies beyond the divestment tool’s reach.

Extractives-general with gold touchpoints; the membership count varies by source.

Faith networkActive

CIDSE

A Brussels-based family of Catholic development agencies that advocates for corporate accountability in extractive industries, framing mining as the clearest expression of corporate extractivism. It has campaigned across successive UN business-and-human-rights treaty sessions (2020-2024) and helped coordinate Catholic leaders’ statements on the EU conflict-minerals regulation, which covers gold. Its work is general to mining rather than gold-specific.

The Catholic aid agency for England and Wales. From 2006 it ran the Unearth Justice campaign, pressing the gold industry to adopt 12 Golden Rules on human rights, community consent and the environment, in step with the international No Dirty Gold coalition; UK jewellers including Beaverbrooks and Goldsmiths endorsed the rules while Argos declined. This is the most directly gold-focused campaign among the faith agencies profiled, though it peaked in 2006-2010.

Direct-gold; the campaign is historical (peak 2006-2010).

Catholic agencyActive

Caritas Internationalis

The global confederation of national Caritas organisations. In October 2025 it co-published Catholic Approaches to Mining: A Framework for Reflection, Planning and Action with the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and academic partners, giving the Church structured guidance on engaging the mining sector. Its Canadian member, Development and Peace, campaigns for mandatory corporate due-diligence law. Its extractives engagement is broad rather than gold-specific.

The German Catholic bishops’ development agency, which runs a raw-materials advocacy programme documenting human-rights and environmental harm across mineral supply chains and successfully lobbied for the German and EU supply-chain due-diligence laws. It publishes country studies, notably on Peru, and references communities affected by often illegal gold mining, though its documented focus is critical minerals such as cobalt and lithium rather than a dedicated gold or mercury programme.

Extractives-general with a gold mention; independent corroboration of the gold-specific claim is thin.

Faith investorActive

Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)

A US coalition of faith- and values-based institutional investors, founded in 1971 and representing over US$4 trillion, that engages companies through shareholder resolutions. Per ICCR and the Investor Alliance for Human Rights, its most gold-relevant action was a September 2018 statement to 32 jewellery firms including Tiffany, Signet and De Beers, naming gold-sector child labour and mercury use in artisanal mining and urging OECD-aligned sourcing. The tailings-safety standards GISTM and IMTSI are led by the Church of England Pensions Board and the Swedish Council on Ethics, not ICCR.

AUM figure per ICCR (self-reported); the 2018 jewellery statement is independently corroborated.

The Vatican organ that convenes the Catholic Church’s engagement with mining, grounded in Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’, whose paragraph 51 explicitly names mercury pollution from gold mining. It hosted the 2019 Mining for the Common Good dialogue with industry, released the framework Catholic Approaches to Mining in October 2025, and in March 2026 hosted the launch of a mining-divestment platform. Its engagement is extractives-general and advocacy-oriented rather than operational field work.

Laudato Si’ §51 confirmed verbatim; the industry dialogue and 2025 framework are extractives-general.

Religious orderActive

Franciscans International

A Geneva-based Catholic Franciscan NGO with UN consultative status that advocates at the Human Rights Council on behalf of communities affected by extraction. Its documented mining work spans cobalt and copper in the DRC and two gold-specific cases: the La Colosa gold mine in Colombia and, through Brother Rodrigo Péret, illegal gold mining and mercury contamination on Yanomami lands in Brazil. Its role is advocacy rather than funding or field operations.