Divest Your Dollars: A Guide to Climate-Friendly Banking

Disclaimer: This isn’t financial advice. It’s a practical guide to ensuring your money in the bank reflects your commitment to a sustainable future, free from fossil fuel funding.

Every dollar you deposit in the bank is a vote for the world you want to live in. 

Right now, the big six Wall Street banks could be using your hard-earned money to fund the fossil fuel industry that is driving the climate crisis. 

But what if we told you that your banking choices can be one of the most powerful ways for you to align your money with your climate action mission? Moving your money to banks with stronger climate commitments and more clean investments can help shift financial flows away from fossil fuels and into climate solutions at an unprecedented scale. While no bank is perfect, choosing a bank that prioritizes climate is one of the simplest ways to take control of your impact, especially in a landscape that’s failing to step up.

Understanding Our Financial Footprint

Like many of you, even the POW staff wasn’t fully aware of the climate impact of our financial choices. So, to get ourselves on the right path, we looked to the experts at Topo Finance. “Topo really helped us benchmark our own bank compared to others, which was not easy,” said Ryan Laemel, POW COO.

The first step was to take stock of all of POW’s accounts, which included checking accounts, long-term cash accounts, employee retirement plans, and business insurance. Once we had a full picture of where our money was held, we asked ourselves: What is our fiduciary responsibility as a nonprofit? And how can we ensure our financial decisions align with our mission?

Once we had a better understanding of this, we then applied an exclusion filter, meaning we sought to avoid banks that directly finance oil and gas projects or purchase stock of oil and gas companies. “What we found was both reassuring and motivating—our bank, a privately held regional institution, had less than 1% direct exposure to the oil and gas sector,” said Laemel. “While that put us in a better-than-average category, we knew we wanted to do more.”

“Exclusions alone aren’t enough,” said Laemel. “We also want to invest in climate-positive assets.”

To ensure our financial footprint is supporting climate solutions, we took these key actions:

• Engaging Our Bank: Advocacy is at the heart of POW’s mission, and we applied that same approach to our banking.
  
  “The one thing we can all keep doing is continuing to be an advocate,” said Laemel. “Just emailing our bank was easy, and they responded quickly. While they didn’t yet have a dedicated clean energy lending portfolio, we saw an opportunity to influence their future direction simply by asking the right questions.”
  
  
• Shifting Insurance Policies: Since 2023, POW has partnered with Premiums for the Planet, a company that helps organizations align their insurance premiums with their sustainability values. Through collective action, Premiums for the Planet motivates insurers to go beyond simply mitigating risk—driving them to divest from fossil fuels and invest in the regenerative economy, making insurance a force for climate solutions.
  
  “This move ensured that even our insurance premiums weren’t indirectly supporting fossil fuels,” said Laemel.
  
  
• Revamping Retirement Plans: This year, POW also partnered with Carbon Collective to advise on our employee retirement plan. Carbon Collective provides a range of investing options, including climate-focused portfolios. This option allows employees to divest from fossil fuels and invest in companies actively working on climate solutions.
  
  “This is a triple win for us. We are saving money by switching to them,” said Laemel. “Our staff are getting more options to invest, and we’re also getting mission-aligned options.”
  
  
• Shifting Investment Strategy: Like many nonprofits, POW keeps a rainy day fund—money set aside for our mission that we won’t need for the next 3–6 months. This year, we’ve worked with our investment advisor, BSW, to shift our approach by investing in sustainable municipal bonds that support organizations and government entities focused on environmental sustainability. These investments avoid fossil fuels and other harmful industries while supporting clean transportation, pollution prevention, and renewable energy.

How the Outdoor State Can Take Action

POW’s climate finance journey taught us that individual actions can have a systemic impact. Whether you’re a business, an organization, or an individual, you can take steps to ensure your money is not funding fossil fuels and, ideally, funding a cleaner future.

Here’s how:

• Reach out to Topo Finance: The team at Topo helped us embark on our journey, and they can help you, too. They provide free advisory services about how to decarbonize your finances to everyone, from Fortune 100 companies to nonprofits like POW. If you want some help on where to get started, you can reach out to them at [email protected]. 
  
  
• Assess Your Bank: Start by understanding your bank’s fossil fuel exposure. POW has launched a banking emissions calculator to help individuals and businesses evaluate the climate impact of their financial institutions.
  
  “If you’re thinking about it from an individual level, use the calculator to understand your exposure to the fossil fuel industry,” said Laemel. “If your bank is a major fossil fuel funder, consider reaching out to ask about their lending practices or switching to a greener alternative.”
  
  
• Make Small but Impactful Changes: You don’t have to overhaul your entire financial portfolio overnight. Start small by considering moving a portion of your money to a bank or credit union with strong climate policies. If switching banks isn’t feasible for you, explore climate-conscious credit card providers or green investment funds.
  
  
• Advocate for Change: One of the simplest yet most powerful actions you can take is to contact your bank and ask about its lending practices.
  
  “I don’t think that many people call their bank and ask about their lending practices, but the more calls that these banks get, the more likely they are to take it seriously,” Laemel emphasized. “Even calling your bank twice a year can have an impact.”
  
  
• Vote with Your Dollar: Many major banks have been rolling back their climate commitments. “By choosing where you bank, invest, and insure, you can support institutions that are financing clean energy rather than fossil fuels,” said Laemel. “If even a small percentage of the Outdoor State took action, it would create massive ripple effects in the financial sector.”

A Collective Path Forward

At POW, we believe in imperfect advocacy. You don’t need to have a perfect plan or understand every financial detail to make a difference. “Trying to take one small step—whether it’s asking your bank a question, moving some of your money, or choosing a climate-positive investment—can create momentum,” said Laemel. Our banking system plays a crucial role in shaping the future of our planet. By making intentional choices and leveraging our collective power, the Outdoor State can help shift financial institutions toward a more sustainable path. This journey is just beginning, and together, we can drive systemic change for a cleaner, more resilient future.

Take your first step today by uncovering the dirt on your bank by using our completely anonymous banking emissions calculator. If you don’t like what you see, it will also give you greener alternatives to consider.