How we are funded
The Gold Standard Foundation obtains its core funding from both public and private sector contributors and sources additional revenue from sponsorship agreements and fees. It can accept money from governments, non-governmental organizations, financial institutions, commercial enterprises and individuals. Donations are accepted only on a ‘no-strings attached’ basis.
An important core sponsor is the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), which provides funding for the Gold Standard Foundation based on a decision of the German Federal Parliament. Two other core sponsors giving more than US$200,000 per year are the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) - Netherlands and the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP). Supporting sponsors give less than that amount in non-earmarked funds.
Activity sponsors enter into sponsorship agreements with the Foundation whereby they agree to fund earmarked core activities or specific non-core activities and obtain various benefits that are specified in the agreements. In addition, the Foundation charges fees for publishing highlighted listings on the Golden Pages.
All current Core Sponsors and Activity Sponsors are listed in the Golden Pages.
Share-of-Proceeds Fee Structure
The Gold Standard Foundation charges no fees for processing applications or following a project's process through the project cycle. Furthermore, there are under the new Share of Proceeds (SoP) model no registration or issuance fees.
Under the SoP model, projects are charged a percentage of their credits, rather than a given fee per credit. The new fee structure, outlined below, will take effect on August 1, 2009.
Carbon credits certified for sale on the compliance offset market (GS-CER)
- 1.5 % of credits issued.
- CERs must be delivered to the Gold Standard registry account following issuance by the CDM EB. Only after this transfer is effected will the remaining of 98.5% of CERs be labeled by the Gold Standard in its Project Database.
Carbon credits certified for sale on the voluntary market (GS-VER)
- 2% of credits issued.
- The registry will automatically divers these credits to a Gold Standard account.
Projects under the old fee-for-credit structure may upgrade to the SoP model. Further details on the SoP model are provided in the Press Release and the Q & As article, and are discussed at length in the GSv2.1 updates of the Gold Standard rules. For those still operating under the old fee-for-credit structure, a table of current fees is shown in Toolkit Annex L.