Program Officer, Climate

About the Barr Foundation

The Barr Foundation’s mission is to invest in human, natural, and creative potential, serving as thoughtful stewards and catalysts. As stewards, Barr nurtures vital community assets. As catalysts, the Foundation advances breakthrough ideas to shape our collective future. We work in partnership with nonprofits, foundations, the public sector, and civic and business leaders to elevate the arts and creative expression, advance equitable solutions for climate change, and enable all students to discover and actualize their unbounded potential.

Based in Boston, Barr focuses regionally and selectively engages nationally.

Founded in 1997, Barr has grown to become one of the largest charitable foundations in New England and has contributed over $1.7 billion to communities throughout the region. With assets over $3 billion, Barr’s 2026 grantmaking budget is $130 million. We focus our grantmaking on arts and creativity, climate, and education – complemented by grants to strengthen New England’s social sector and for targeted special initiatives.

A set of core values defined by our founding trustees express our beliefs about what constitutes effective philanthropy and guide how the Barr Foundation carries out its mission. Barr is committed to strive for impact, act with humility, invest in leaders, take the long view, center racial equity, embrace risk, and demonstrate curiosity. These values also guide our hiring process and the workplace culture that we shape together.

We aim to make Barr an inclusive workplace where all team members can bring their full and authentic selves and be supported to learn and grow. For more information about Barr, visit barrfoundation.org.

Since its inception, the Barr Foundation has prioritized the environment as a principal area of funding, and in 2010 focused its efforts on the monumental problem of climate change, through work on both mitigation and resilience. The Climate Program’s mitigation strategies focus on the two areas that produce the most greenhouse gas emissions:
1) how we generate and use energy across the Northeast (Clean Energy); and
2) how we move around in Massachusetts (Mobility). In addition, we acknowledge that even with concerted efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change, some of these impacts are inevitable. Our Climate Resilience strategy aims to increase the capacity of Massachusetts communities to prepare for and adapt to the impacts of climate change. We believe that while climate change is a global challenge, cities and states have become vital agents of change, and by focusing on these three areas, we can play an important role in helping to catalyze and advance equitable solutions.

Across this work we seek to center racial equity. We do this by prioritizing communities that have suffered the most from the fossil fuel economy and focus on elevating the leadership of equity-centered climate organizations to grow their power and shape the climate field.

The Climate team is comprised of a Program Director, three Senior Program Officers, and one Program Manager. We are hiring for a Program Associate and this Program Officer position. This position reports to the Senior Program Officer, Mobility.

The Barr Foundation is seeking a Program Officer to work with all three strategies of its Climate Program on shared work in Massachusetts to support the Climate grantee portfolio.

Planning and Strategy

• Collaborate with the Climate team members in developing climate grantmaking strategies that will have a strong impact in areas important to the Foundation.
• Contribute to assessment and modifications of strategy in response to new knowledge, changes in context, and new perspectives,…