Several of the United States’ biggest climate foundations posted substantial increases in grantmaking, assets or both in 2023, with some riding investment gains to hit new highs even though their ultra-rich founders contributed no new money, as revealed in a fresh crop of IRS filings.
The new 990-PF forms offer valuable if belated insight into the relatively opaque environmental funding operations of megadonors like Laurene Powell Jobs, hedge funder C. Frederick Taylor and Barbara Picower.
Aside from revealing rising endowments and spending, the filings offer a detailed accounting of just how many dollars these donors are sending out and to whom, numbers that few of these operations disclose on their websites. Despite the one-year gap, they give us a glimpse of which groups and causes these funders have seen as worthy of investment, and therefore which grant seekers might have luck with an approach.
For the most part, the numbers show these operations remain on broadly similar paths to their historical funding, albeit with some surprises. Here’s what I learned in reading through these reports.
Laurene Powell Jobs’ climate operation logs record grantmaking — and assets
The Waverley Street Foundation took a step closer in 2023 to getting dollars out the door at the rate necessary to to fulfill Powell Jobs’ promise to spend its $3-billion-plus endowment by 2035. Like the year before, the climate megafunder grew its portfolio by a third, getting a record $226 million out the door.
The foundation also diversified its grantee pool even further, not only issuing 106 grants, a roughly three-quarters increase from its total from the year before, but spreading its dollars far more widely. Half its dollars went to just seven grantees in 2022, as I reported in a profile last year, but in 2023, its top eight accounted for just a third of its spending.
Those most-favored grantees were Climate Imperative Foundation ($18 million), European Climate Foundation ($10 million), Thousand Currents ($10 million), Clean Future Forum ($8 million), Grid Alternatives ($8 million), Conservation International ($7.5 million), Earth Island Institute ($6 million) and Global Greengrants Fund ($6 million).
As those names reveal, the foundation continued to back groups ranging from mainstream intermediaries and international NGOs on one hand to environmental justice activists and funding networks on the other, with its share of the latter seeming to outpace any other foundation of its size.
Waverley’s increased spending brings its grantmaking in line with my rough estimate last year of the annual amount required to meet its founder’s pledge. That calculation, however, assumed the foundation’s assets remained static — and they definitely have not.
Despite record grantmaking in 2023 — accomplished despite several sudden staff departures — Waverley ended the year with its endowment at an all-time high of $3.1 billion. Credit the surging stock price of Apple and gains in investments at places like Bain Capital.
At this rate of return, Powell Jobs’ foundation will have even more to give away than the $3.5 billion she pledged in 2021 — and that means Waverley’s grant budget may keep on rising.
Related: Laurene Powell Jobs’ Climate Funder Ramps Up Giving — and Adds Prominent Board Members
Related Inside Philanthropy Resources:
For Subscribers Only
Sequoia grows taller, while its strategy barely shifts
Inside Philanthropy readers learned from my profile last February that the Sequoia Climate Foundation had moved $257 million in 2023, following a pattern of significant year-by-year growth in its grantmaking. Now, its IRS filing has confirmed that total. The new filing also lets us, for the first time, review the recipients of those grants.
The data shows that the Irvine, California-based foundation, set up by press-shy hedge funder C. Frederick Taylor, continues to follow the same fundamental strategy: multimillion-dollar awards primarily to climate intermediaries, largely drawn from the ClimateWorks Foundation network, and several so-called Big Greens, with most grants landing at domestic groups.
Top grantees included Sequoia’s long-time favorite, the European Climate Foundation (12 grants, $39 million), Tara Climate (2 grants, $14 million) and U.S. Energy Foundation (4 grants, $11.4 million), as well as NRDC ($11.8 million) and World Resources Institute (9 awards, $8.9 million).
Other top recipients included the Sunrise Project ($9 million, two grants) and Energy Transition Fund ($10.5 million, via Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors). The foundation issued more than 100 other grants, but awards to these seven recipients made up about 41% of its total budget, reflecting an approach dominated by regrantors and major organizations.
Sequoia has been one of the top international funders in environmental philanthropy since its inception — IP recognized its quick rise to prominence in the green space in our most recent Philanthropy Awards. Staff have previously told me two-thirds of its dollars support work abroad. But U.S.-based organizations continued to dominate its portfolio in 2023, receiving 64% of all grants.
Another Taylor philanthropy, the progressive stalwart Wellspring, announced last year it would shutter at the end of 2026. Could that mean a surge in spending for Sequoia? We’ll have to wait and see.
Related: With $267 Million in Grants Planned for 2024, Sequoia Joins the Ranks of Top Climate Funders
Payout surges amid leadership shift at progressive giant Freedom Together
Over the last two years, Barbara Picower’s foundation has undergone a very public overhaul. In spring 2023, its founder announced she would step down as president of what was still called the JPB Foundation. She was succeeded the following February by activist, author and long-time grantee Deepak Bhargava. Last December, the institution rebranded as the Freedom Together Foundation.
For all the changes, transparency remains limited. The operation’s colorful and modern new website has a lot of words — letters from Bhargava, press releases, a 51-page celebration of its past decade — but little mention of where its grant dollars have recently gone.
But its latest 990 offers dollars and cents in black and white. Grantmaking increased by more than $65 million in 2023, to hit $424 million. Some of the organization’s biggest awards went to climate causes, such as to the Movement Strategy Center for an energy efficiency program ($9.4 million), to the Fund to Build Grassroots Power ($6.2 million, via Windward Fund) and to Elevate Energy for a program on efficiency in affordable housing ($4.5 million).
Whether those numbers mark the end of an era remains to be seen. Many observers have wondered if environmental justice will remain a priority for the grantmaker. Its environmental program director departed in August, and its president plans to move toward a less thematic structure.
Early last year, the foundation told Lifestyles Magazine that it would up its spending to nearly $500 million in 2024 — which would mark another year in which payout at the $4.1 billion grantmaker far exceeded minimum requirements. It will be illuminating to learn how much of the new grant dollars went to climate-related causes. Hopefully, we do not have to wait until the foundation’s next tax filing.
Related: “Transformation” at the JPB Foundation: Eight Questions with Deepak Bhargava
