Foundation funding for climate mitigation has nearly tripled since 2019, according to the latest data from ClimateWorks, but it remains hard to know exactly which groups living donors actually back.
Many of the biggest environmental funders on the planet reveal relatively little about what they fund, at least compared to their legacy foundation peers. Some do not even have websites. That means the annual release of IRS tax filings offers a glimpse behind the curtain, even if it is a year late.
To get a sense of what’s been happening, I reviewed the newly released 2023 documents for the foundations of four major green donors, coincidentally all couples: Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham, John and Ann Doerr, and Nathaniel Simons and Laura Baxter-Simons. Three of the four have ranked among the sector’s top 25 funders. Here’s what I found.
A tech billionaire couple’s funding rises as their foundation’s assets surge
Eric and Wendy Schmidt have not made a substantial contribution to their Schmidt Family Foundation in years. But in 2023, a rising stock market pushed the foundation’s endowment to $1.8 billion. The operation — which grants through the 11th Hour Project and Schmidt Marine Technology Partners — sent 20% more out the door than it did the previous year, hitting a grantmaking record of $138 million.
The foundation, which has ranked among the nation’s top 10 largest green donors, continued to take a rights-focused approach to the climate crisis in 2023. The portfolio was led by Human Rights Watch ($8.5 million), Rudolf Steiner Foundation ($3.9 million) and American Jewish World Service ($2.7 million), all for human rights work in Africa. Other major grantees include Ellen MacArthur Foundation ($5 million), Climate Central ($3.5 million), Sustainable Markets Foundation ($3.1 million), Monterey Bay Aquarium ($3 million) and Grist.org ($2.6 million).
Aside from rising spending, the foundation issued way more grants in 2023, hitting a total of 540 grants, up from 367 two years before. It’s striking that the foundation makes a lot more individual grants than most peers of its size in the green funding space, yet its expenses were not significantly different, with the foundation’s overhead hovering around 22 cents for every dollar in funding. The Schmidt Family Foundation is one of a number of vehicles through which the billionaire couple conduct their giving — others have included the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation, the Schmidt Ocean Institute, Schmidt Futures, and Schmidt Sciences.
A legendary investor keeps making money for the climate
Jeremy Grantham, 86, is older than any other donor on this list. He and his wife, Hannelore, are among the few megadonors who do not appear on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people (though sources often put their wealth at around $1 billion). But unlike some other living billionaires, they keep pumping money into their foundation’s coffers.
In 2023, the British investor dropped nearly $85 million into his two philanthropies — the Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust and the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment. The trust also doubled its grantmaking to $60 million, with the biggest checks going to the Savanna Institute ($12 million), Rare ($9.5 million), Global Witness ($6.9 million), Spark Climate Solutions ($6 million) and Client Earth ($5 million).
His foundation — which, like the trust, is based in Boston — sent its biggest awards abroad, or at least to Europe. Top grantees included the Amsterdam-based Foundation for International Law for the Environment, the Dutch SED Fund ($4 million), Grantham Institutes at the London School of Economics ($2.9 million) and Imperial College ($2.4 million) and the Brussels-based Meliore Foundation ($2 million). Yet counted by number of grants, the United States won the bulk of support. More than two-thirds of the foundation’s 94 grants went to domestic groups, most based in California or New York.
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Funding from an heir to the Simons fortune shows little change, so far
Nathaniel Simons and Laura Baxter-Simons’ Sea Change Foundation’s most notable recent news was reported last August: Thomas Steinbach, the executive director of the San Francisco-based foundation and Tempest Advisors, has joined Steve and Connie Ballmer’s new Rainer Climate Group.
But Sea Change’s new 990 shows he actually left its employ in 2023, a year before the move was announced. Otherwise, little changed for the operation that year: Grantmaking barely budged ($45 million), no money came in and assets were all but flat ($225 million).
The death last May of Jim Simons, Nat Simons’ father, who left a fortune Forbes puts at $31 billion, opens the possibility — as with Julian Robertson’s foundation — that Sea Change could soon get a lot bigger. The hedge fund founder and his wife Marilyn gave through their own philanthropy, the Simons Foundation, but the elder Simons’ Renaissance Technologies fortune formed the basis for his children’s giving through Sea Change, as well as the Heising-Simons Foundation and the Foundation for a Just Society.
Did he make a parting gift for Sea Change and the climate? Again, we may have to wait until next year to find out.
A venture capitalist gets serious — and spends down?
In late spring of 2022, John and Ann Doerr made one of the biggest single climate or university pledges in history, promising $1.1 billion to Stanford University. New IRS filings reveal the couple’s low-profile Benificus Foundation followed through the next year with a $106 million grant to the Palo Alto, California, campus, presumably as part of their pledge.
Other top climate grants went to the Climate Imperative Foundation, where John sits on the board ($36 million); Aspen Global Change Institute ($10.2 million); the Environmental Defense Fund ($6.8 million); and Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project ($6.9 million) — the former vice president is former partner and current advisor to Kleiner Perkins, the venture capital firm Doerr co-leads.
At this rate, Benificus will not last long. The year’s grantmaking totalled $220 million — more than twice its previous high — and left the foundation with $227 million in assets. The couple have not put a penny into its coffers in the last seven years.Not that Stanford should worry. Doerr has an estimated $15 billion fortune. The couple could pump up Benficus with an endowment, route payments through the foundation with a pay-as-you-go approach, or opt for all-but-invisible channels. Each choice will be, in its own way, revealing.
