OVERVIEW: The Sea Change Foundation and its international counterpart, Sea Change Foundation International, focus on climate change mitigation and clean energy policy.
IP TAKE: Sea Change Foundation and Sea Change Foundation International support major players in climate change mitigation and clean energy policy at the national and international levels, respectively. Both foundations are relatively opaque and not accessible to grantseekers despite having “pulled back the curtain” a few years ago. Sea Change, considered one of the largest environmental funders in the U.S., does not accept unsolicited grant proposals and only gives a few dozen grants each year. It also tends to provide multi-year support to large grantee organizations, often intermediaries, working in its specific focus areas. Inside Philanthropy’s climate reporter, Michael Kavate, recently noted that Sea Change’s grantmaking has changed little in the past several years, with the foundation giving about $50 million annually and with its assets remaining flat at about $250 million. Kavate further notes that this funder often focuses on “technocratic and elite-driven policy change,” making it more challenging for other kinds of groups to get involved here. Meanwhile, it’s difficult to assess the grantmaking of Sea Change’s international counterpart, Sea Change Foundation International. The latter is not a U.S. foundation and therefore is not required to submit information about its annual grantmaking to the IRS.
Sea Change is one of several Simons family philanthropies. Nat’s father Jim Simons and his mother Marilyn Simons co-founded the Simons Foundation, a major science funder. Nat’s sister Liz along, with her husband, founded the Heising-Simons Foundation, and sister Audrey Simons founded the Foundation for a Just Society.
PROFILE: Based in San Francisco and Bermuda, respectively, the Sea Change Foundation, and its international counterpart, Sea Change Foundation International, are the philanthropic vehicles of Nat Simons and his wife, Laura Baxter-Simons. Nat Simons, a billionaire, is the son of Renaissance Technology co-founder Jim Simons, who died in 2024. Prior to establishing his own investment company, the Meritage Group, Nat Simons was a vice-chair at Renaissance. Both Nat and Laura graduated with advanced degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. Laura Baxter-Simons also holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School. Laura currently serves as General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Meritage Group LP, a U.S.-based investment management firm. Both Nat and Laura are members of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition and the Giving Pledge. They have also co-founded Prelude Ventures, which is a venture capital firm that partners with entrepreneurs to address climate change, but also manages capital exclusively for Simons family philanthropic entities and is a founding member of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition.
Sea Change and Sea Change Foundation International both strive to “address the serious threats posed by global climate change” by funding mitigation initiatives and policy development. The foundations aim to work with “flexibility and urgency,” providing large grants to the most promising nonprofits, NGOs, social enterprises and collaborations, with acknowledgment that climate change funding must account for rapidly changing “shifts in strategy” and risk. The foundations’ current areas of focus include supporting efforts to reduce the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in cooling systems as per the Kigali Amendment of the Montreal Protocol; encouraging large, global corporations to adopt climate friendly practices; decarbonizing the production of electricity in the American West; and accelerating clean transportation in Europe.
Grants or Climate Change and Clean Energy
Climate Change mitigation is the main focus of Sea Change’s grantmaking, with all of the foundations’ focus areas supporting major initiatives for the development and adoption of clean energy production in the U.S. and abroad.
- The foundation works extensively to support global initiatives toward meeting the goals of the Kigali Amendment of the Montreal Protocol, which aims to advance a broad phasing out of the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in cooling and refrigeration systems.
- Partnering with many other major climate change funders, including ClimateWorks and the Packard Foundation, Sea Change has made large grants to organizations including the United States Energy Foundation, the American Foundation for an Energy Efficient Economy and the U.K.-based Carbon Tracker Initiative, Ltd.
- A portion of funding from this grantmaking area is earmarked for support of the efforts of developing countries to reduce the use of HFCs. International grants have gone to the World Resources Institute, which works with “governments, businesses, multilateral institutions and civil society groups” toward important climate mitigation and other conservation goals.
- In 2023 alone, Sea Change granted over $24 million the United States Energy Foundation, its largest recipient by far. It also gave to policy and advocacy groups like American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, Vote Solar and Regulatory Assistance Project.
- A portion of Sea Change’s philanthropic work addresses “the small group of the very largest corporations” that emit most of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change.
- The foundation’s efforts in this area consist of collaboration with several other major climate funders to establish Climate Action 100+, “an investor-led initiative to ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take necessary action on climate change.”
- In recent years, the initiative has enlisted investment organizations including Ceres, Principals for Responsible Investment and global chapters of the Investor Group on Climate Change to “improve governance on climate change, curb emissions, and strengthen climate-related financial disclosures.”
- The Sea Change Foundation’s recent grantmaking also focuses on utility transformation in the interior west of the U.S. Funding focuses on developing the region’s high potential sun and wind resources for power generation. Grantees include Western Resource Advocates and the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project.
- Finally, the Sea Change Foundation has supported initiatives to accelerate clean transportation in Europe, with an emphasis on “policies that are helping to accelerate the transition to clean vehicles in Europe.”
- One grantee in this area, the European Climate Foundation, which was instrumental in the creation of the European Green Deal, “which sets a trajectory for transportation emissions to reach zero by 2050.”
- Sea Change has also funded the U.K.’s Carbon Tracker Initiative, “an independent financial think tank that carries out in-depth analysis on the impact of the energy transition on capital markets and the potential investment in high-cost, carbon-intensive fossil fuels.”
Grants for Civic and Democracy
In recent years, the Sea Change Foundation has provided support to a few organizations that work to engage voters to support climate change legislation and candidates in local, state and national races who will work toward climate change mitigation in the U.S.
- The foundation gave over $5 million to the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, and has also supported Vote Solar, a national organization that builds coalitions and engages the public in the transition to solar energy.
Other opportunities
In a recent year, the Sea Change Foundation gave multiple major grants to two of the nation’s top fiscal sponsors, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and Tides — the records do not indicate which organizations ultimately received that funding.
Important Grant Details:
The Sea Change Foundation’s grants tend to be large, ranging from $100,000 to over $10 million. The foundation’s average grant size is about $500,000. It gave away over $45.5 million in grants in a recent year and held more than $225 million in net assets.
- It is difficult to estimate the annual giving of the foundation’s international counterpart, Sea Change International, because it is based in Bermuda and does not file taxes in the U.S.
- Sea Change’s grantmaking tends to go to large NGOs, think tanks and policy development institutes, and many of its grantees receive generous multi-year support.
- According to its website, Sea Change does not accept unsolicited proposals for funding. Profiles for foundation directors and staff are available on its website. General inquiries may be submitted at info@seachange.org telephone at (415) 830-9330.
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