Somebody is just paying $5000 for you to work on any project of your choice

Well, you can post on medium saying that you will give away US$ 5,000 and surely you will have a lot of reasonable (and I believe quite a few unreasonable) such ideas/proposals. ;)

More seriously I would be more curious about the story of the original 36K (ten years ago) the Author received by the Compton foundation for a non better specified "project around climate change investing", how were they spent, what came out of it, etc. Should be this one:

http://www.comptonmentorfellowship.org/index.cfm?page=viewfe...

"Project Summary Nadia will combine research with advocacy to publicize and promote successful efforts by foundations to use their investments to tackle climate change. Project goals include creating a handbook that identifies the untapped power of endowment portfolios to combat climate change, supplementing resources on active shareholder practices. The handbook will be distributed to foundations, investment managers and advisors, and serve as the basis for convening experienced foundations with those new to to the field to discuss concrete strategies and address concerns."