The EPIC Air Quality Fund’s approach to funding is designed to maximize the chances that in-country clean air efforts lead to national-level clean air policy implementation that can drive collective clean air policy action. To achieve this objective, five principles guide how we deploy resources, described below.
1. Fund where others don’t …yet
The countries where a small investment in air quality data could have the greatest national-level impact are often the same countries receiving little or no philanthropic or international donor funding for clean air. We see strategic value in funding entities in these places, not because others can’t, but because others don’t yet. A significant part of our role is giving high agency in-country actors the opportunity to demonstrate what’s possible in overlooked places and building a track record that can attract larger, longer-term funders to follow.
What this looks like in practice at the EPIC Air Quality Fund:
- To prioritize where we fund, we created an ‘Opportunity Score’, a data-driven metric weighing pollution severity, population, existing infrastructure, donor funding levels, and interested in-country actor presence. The score helps identify countries where a small, sustained effort is most likely to have national-level impact. Our 2025 Clean Air Investment Update report shares the 83 countries we are currently prioritizing, based on this Opportunity Score.
- This map shows where we have invested to date, reflecting this prioritization.
- We engage a variety of funders on awardee efforts as well as actively seek and share opportunities with awardees for highlighting their work and providing future funding.
2. Fund in-country ownership and support global collaboration
Almost by definition, in-country actors are more likely to have a longer-term commitment to air quality monitoring in a given country, a keener understanding of the political and social dynamics needed to move national policy, and engage more effectively with locally-rooted communities than outside actors. At the same time, sharing open data to publicly available data infrastructure reduces duplication of efforts, advances science and policy efforts worldwide, and helps connect disparate works to a global stage so the sum of efforts can be more than its parts.
What this looks like in practice at the EPIC Air Quality Fund:
- Successful applicants must self-identify as in-country actors. Sometimes this means someone is based in the country where the project will take place, sometimes it means someone is from the country’s diaspora. We are agnostic and do not have a strict definition, but if an applicant does not self-identify as a locally rooted actor, we do not either.
- Awardees must own data—and they decide who owns their instruments (with the one restriction that the choice can never be us).
- All data must be fully open with attribution, flowing into global data infrastructure systems so it strengthens the broader ecosystem and increases visibility of the issue worldwide.
For the two bullet points above on ownership and data-sharing, we provide guidance for applicants with precise definitions of data ownership and open data, along with the status of data ownership and sharing policies for several air quality sensor manufacturers. We also require data ownership and data-sharing in our contracts with awardees. We have found this approach – even from our small fund – to have had a significant impact on pro-consumer data ownership and sharing policies by air quality sensing companies.
3. Fund flexibly
Many of the projects the EPIC Air Quality Fund supports are the first of their kind in their country. Some of the organizations the Fund supports are smaller with limited administrative capacity, and they can be hampered by rigid funder requirements. It’s also the case that what may work in one country, like a government-grade reference monitor deployed by a research institution in one place, may not be what drives progress in another, whereas a citizen science effort with low-cost sensors could be the catalyst.
What this looks like in practice:
- We allow operating and indirect costs with no cap. If awardees can get the work done, they get the work done.
- Awardees can move funding between budget lines as project needs evolve.
- We don’t prescribe monitor types or dictate specific national-level goals. Awardees decide what is fit for purpose in their context.
4. Fund for the long term in mind
Reducing air pollution takes years of sustained effort. China, one of the fastest examples of a country significantly lowering PM2.5 levels, took seven years after declaring a “War on Pollution” and that was with hundreds of billions of dollars in national investment. Short-term grants that disappear after a year or two undermine the sustained presence that data infrastructure requires to drive policy change. For new efforts in new places to get on a potential pathway for larger, longer-term funding, they need a chance to get started.
What this looks like in practice:
- Awards are 18 months, renewable up to two times, for a total of up to 4.5 years of sustained support, pending awardee performance and available funds.
5. Fund more than equipment
Beyond physical equipment, sustained PM2.5 monitoring requires adequate staffing, instrument maintenance, reliable power and security, technical infrastructure for data quality and sharing, and communication support and stakeholder engagement activities, to make data relevant to the public and to policymakers. Funding only hardware—or even just for the data production and sharing itself – is funding for failure.
What this looks like in practice:
- Awardees can budget for the full range of activities needed to achieve national-level impact (e.g. staffing, communications, stakeholder engagement, capacity building, technical infrastructure, and travel) not just equipment.
- There is no required minimum spend on monitors or hardware; the balance is up to the awardee.
These five guiding principles are outlined further in “The Case for Closing Global Air Quality Data Gaps with Local Actors A Golden Opportunity for the Philanthropic Community”.