Six Years of Labor's Capital: What We Built and Why It Mattered

When Climate Finance Action started, the conversation about public pension funds and climate risk was happening in a very small room.

A handful of researchers, a few forward-thinking trustees, and some labor organizers who had started asking uncomfortable questions about the risks associated with global warming. The idea that workers had not just a stake in but a right to understand how their deferred wages were stewarded — that was not yet a mainstream conversation. It was barely a conversation at all in most of the spaces where it needed to happen most.

Six years later, that room is bigger because of everyone who showed up to build something in it. Workers, trustees, organizers, researchers, state officials, and advocates who believed that public capital should serve people and the planet, and who were willing to do the slow, unglamorous, necessary work of making that belief into policy, practice, and power.

We are proud to have been part of that. And before we say anything else, we want to name what this community built together.

What We’ve Built Together

In six years, CFA has educated more than 700 union leaders, members, and state pension trustees on climate risk and strategy. We supported more than 240 trustees, state treasurers, and pension staff working toward policy improvements. We reached more than 6,500 people through our blogs, tools, and resources. And we helped move more than 50 stakeholders from education to action, showing up to board meetings, submitting public comments, passing resolutions, and giving testimony informed by CFA's work.

We worked across many states, including Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, and California, building relationships, supporting collaborative efforts within complex governance structures, and helping create the conditions for policy progress that will outlast this organization.

In Oregon, we catalyzed the passage of the Climate Resilience Investment Act, the first legislation of its kind directing a state pension fund to invest in climate resilience, and worked to advance a beneficiary advisory committee that gives workers a formal voice in how their capital is deployed. In Massachusetts, we supported the creation of a dedicated Director of Stewardship position at MassPRIM and a drove the creation of the new Sustainability and Stewardship Committee. In Maryland, we played a role in establishing the structure of the Climate Risk Advisory Panel. In Washington, Minnesota, and California, we built relationships and educated trustees and beneficiaries.

What We Learned

The most important thing we learned is something we suspected at the beginning but came to know deeply over six years: workers already have what it takes to do this work and investment professionals can stretch their imaginations to go beyond business as usual with the right collaboration. 

The skills that make a great organizer — mapping power, building coalitions, working together to mitigate risks, holding institutions accountable — are the same skills pension engagement requires. The fights for affordable housing, climate resilience, immigrant rights, and retirement security are expressions of the same underlying struggle over who has power and whose needs get met.

• We learned that nuance is not a liability; it is hope. The pension system is complicated, but it was built by people, which means it can be changed by people. And the workers and trustees who understand how it works are the ones best positioned to change it.

• We learned that language matters. The shift from seeing your pension as something received to seeing it as something owned, as labor's capital, changes everything. It changes the questions people ask. It changes who feels entitled to be in the room. It changes what feels possible.

• We learned that this work takes time. Policy change is not linear. Relationship-building requires persistence. Culture change inside large institutions is possible. Every trustee who asks the hard question, every union that passes a pension resolution, every worker who shows up to a board meeting adds to the greater movement.

• And we learned something about ourselves as an organization. CFA was at its best when we were proving something new — a new theory of change, a new model for beneficiary education, a new framework for what responsible pension governance could look like. Small, focused teams do that well. What they do less well is sustain the infrastructure required to scale something after it has been proven.

Why We Are Closing and Why This is not a Sad Story

CFA was built as an incubator. From the beginning, our theory was that a small, nimble team could do something a larger organization might struggle to do — move fast, go deep, prove a model, and then hand it off. That is exactly what happened.

The startup phase of our mission is complete. The frameworks we built are being institutionalized inside state pension funds. The curriculum we developed is being used by union networks. The beneficiary education model we pioneered is being replicated by partners across the country.

And most importantly, the next phase of this work requires institutional infrastructure that sits more naturally inside the labor movement and major advocacy coalitions than inside a standalone seven-person nonprofit. The most impactful thing we can do is make sure what we built finds its way into the organizations best positioned to take it to scale.

This is the story of an incubator that did exactly what it was designed to do and has the wisdom to know when the startup phase is over.

What Comes Next

CFA is closing, but the work continues.

The tools and resources we built will remain available at climatefinanceaction.org through July 2027. The relationships we helped cultivate between unions and trustees, between workers and their funds, between the labor movement and the climate movement will continue to grow. The states where we worked are not going backward, and the people who worked alongside us are still doing incredible work.

The fight for worker power in the financial system is bigger today than it was six years ago. More people understand what labor’s capital means. More trustees are asking what their fund is doing about climate risk. More workers know they have the right and the tools to demand answers. That is what six years of work looks like. It does not always fit neatly in a report. It lives in conversations, in policy language, and in the confidence of a union member or stewardship officer who walks into a board meeting knowing what questions to ask.

We are grateful beyond words to our funders, our partners, our staff, our advisors, and to every stewardship officer, worker, trustee, and organizer who trusted us as a thought partner and a resource. You made this work possible. You made it matter.

The work continues.

The movement continues.

And we are proud to have been part of building it.

In solidarity, 

The CFA Team