These Climate Funders Hired Lobbyists Who Also Work for Fossil Fuel Companies, Report Finds

What exactly does it mean for philanthropy to divest from fossil fuels? Traditionally, the term refers to ridding endowments of any such investments, something only a few philanthropies have pledged to do. But some campaigns have pushed a broader approach, such as asking philanthropists to pressure their banks. One such campaign launched last week takes aim at the consulting and lobbying firms that some green funders hire.

According to a new report, Steve and Connie Ballmer’s fast-growing giving operation, the major fiscal sponsor New Venture Fund and the public charity Pew Charitable Trusts are among 19 philanthropies with environmental portfolios that hired lobbyists who were also working for oil, gas and coal interests.

A total of 86 philanthropies employed lobbyists who simultaneously worked for fossil fuel clients across this year and last, including many community foundations and the foundations of famous retired athletes, based on an analysis of state records published last week by investigative nonprofit F Minus.

Reasons for those relationships vary, but many reflected lobbying related to other issues, such as education, and the philanthropies reached by Inside Philanthropy said the lobbying firms in question were employed in efforts to reach across party lines.

James Browning, executive director of F Minus, said he hopes the report helps erode fossil fuel companies’ social license to operate, likening the effort to divestment campaigns. F Minus has done several similar previous reports, including one on national and local environmental groups that also employ coal, oil and gas lobbyists, and Browning sees the latest publication as another step in that effort.

“The foundations have an opportunity to lead here,” he said. “If some of them cut ties with these lobbyists, it sets, obviously, a tone and a message to their grantees that this is important. And then their grantees can think about cutting ties also.”

Browning’s organization, which maintains an extensive Lobbyist Database on its website, has encountered cases where both funders and their grantees hire the same fossil fuel lobbyists. “We're just trying to show that everybody is caught in a vicious cycle,” he said. “Somebody has to show the leadership to break out of this.”

Top green billionaire, fiscal sponsor and public charity on list

Steve and Connie Ballmer jumped into the upper echelon of climate funders with a $217 million opening round of grants in 2022, and upped that commitment in 2023, announcing last month that their Ballmer Group had sent out nearly double that amount, or $431 million, in a new slate of awards this year.

But the Ballmer Group also shares a lobbyist with several fossil fuel companies. According to the report, the Ballmer Group (F Minus uses its legal name, “Ballmer Giving LLC”) employs Insight Strategic Partners, which also works for Chevron and Puget Sound Energy. The latter is building a liquified natural gas export terminal in Tacoma opposed by the Sierra Club, 350.org, Earthjustice and the Puyallup tribe. The facility is being built on the tribe’s former ancestral lands and close to important cultural sites and fishing areas.

Insight Strategic Partners also lobbied in 2022 on behalf of NextEra Energy Resources, the company building the Mountain Valley Gas Pipeline, which was controversially given a path to approval as a result of negotiations between the Biden administration and Sen. Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, during this summer’s debt ceiling debate. The Ballmer Group declined to comment on the relationship.

Another case is the New Venture Fund, which serves as a fiscal sponsor for more than 130 groups around the globe, with total revenue nearing $800 million. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its breadth, the D.C.-based organization also indirectly employed lobbyists in six states in 2022 and 2023, more than any other philanthropy examined in the report. All of those firms were hired by fiscally sponsored projects, according to the fund.

In California, for example, an early childhood education project fiscally sponsored by the New Venture Fund was promoting a bill to protect student health during extreme heat days, which are becoming more common and severe due to climate change. The group employed the lobbying firm Arc Strategies, which was also working for Berry Corporation to lobby against a bill that would have required the California state pension fund to divest from fossil fuels. Berry Corporation has a record of opposition to climate-friendly policies.

Lee Bodner, president of the New Venture Fund, said it does not set rules on who its projects can and cannot hire. If a democracy initiative, for instance, is trying to pass legislation, it might need to hire a lobbyist that can work across the aisle.

“You can’t make progress in our democratic system if you only talk to people you agree with on 100% of the issues,” said Bodner in a statement. “We believe our project leaders know how best to accomplish their goals and we empower them to develop and execute their own strategies to do so.”

The third major example, Pew Charitable Trusts, includes conservation as one of its six priority areas. As part of that work, the $1.2 billion public charity employed a Colorado lobbying firm, Politicalworks, to help pass a bill creating safe pathways for wildlife, known as migration corridors, across roads and other human infrastructure, a need that’s grown as climate change shifts existing habitats.

Politicalworks, however, also represents the oil giant Chevron. Among its many climate sins, Chevron recently sued the Biden administration for limiting oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico, which was part of a broader effort by the administration to protect the nearly extinct Rice’s whale. Chevron also operates a refinery in El Segundo, California, which is the top emitter of the pollutants selenium and nitrogen among 80 refineries examined in a recent report.

“When the facts lead to policy recommendations, we occasionally work with consultants to disseminate our research and seek common ground with policymakers of both parties,” said a Pew spokesperson in a statement.

Community foundations and athletes also employ fossil fuel lobbyists

The above three examples are among the three biggest green funders with known contracts linking them to fossil fuel lobbyists. But there’s a number of other philanthropies that also fall into that category.

For instance, another grantmaker featured in the report is the Pittsburgh Foundation, which employs the lobbying firm Buchanan, Ingersoll and Rooney. Its clients include the Koch Companies, whose owners have funded climate denialism, and a fossil fuel group, the Marcellus Shale Coalition, that has opposed legislation to provide setback distances between shale gas wells and homes. The foundation declined to comment.

F Minus also identified more than a half-dozen community foundations with green portfolios that employed fossil fuel lobbyists, including the Community Foundation of Greater Flint and Oregon Community Foundation. There were also some whose climate programs have been featured in these pages: Cleveland Foundation, Greater New Orleans Foundation and Hawaii Community Foundation. None responded to requests for comment.

Browning, who formerly served as a lobbyist in Pennsylvania, aims to empower small nonprofits to challenge a prevailing system that may all but require them to employ certain lobbyists who are simultaneously helping polluters. He sees starting that conversation among those with power and money — i.e., foundations — as a first step.

“Especially for small nonprofits, you know, if you're going to have a chance at state funding or grants, [then] you've just got to try to be friends with everybody in the state capitol,” he said. “Having one of these alpha dog lobbyists is going to really help with that, and then on the other hand … ‘Wait a minute, the same lobbyist is responsible for all of this fracking pollution in my community.’”

The philanthropies without a specific environmental focus identified in the report were a wide-ranging group, including Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund, Des Moines-based World Food Prize Foundation, and the Pennsylvania-based Cobbs Creek Foundation.

There were also several foundations of former athletes on the list, including those of Andy Roddick, Arnold and Winnie Palmer, Cal Ripken Sr., Dan Marino and Mario Lemieux, as well as the philanthropy of one actor, Michael J. Fox. None of these groups responded to requests for comment by press time.

First the investments, now the lobbyists

“This is a divestment campaign,” Browning told me, and the description fits. F Minus wants the foundations it is featuring to ultimately stop hiring fossil fuel lobbyists, just like divestment campaigns ask philanthropies, pension funds and universities to stop investing in fossil fuels.

In states like Pennsylvania, Browning acknowledged that it would be all but impossible for organizations to find a lobbying firm that does not have fossil fuel clients. But that’s not the case in Oregon or Washington.

“They're not locked into a fossil fuel economy,” he said, referring to Washington. “There are options, and whatever the inconvenience to Ballmer Giving or other groups, that is minor compared to the problem of giving their good name, giving their money, and, in a sense, giving a kind of political cover” to fossil fuel lobbyists.

Thus F Minus, whose funding came from the Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund and the Rockefeller Family Fund, has sought to call out a group of funders that, at least in the case of those backing climate organizations, clearly seem to be working toward a similar goal of a fossil-free future. Bodner of the New Venture Fund, for instance, told me: “I’m sure we share many values with the authors of the report; we differ on tactics.”

The report follows the U.N. climate conference in Dubai, whose final language on “transitioning away” from fossil fuels was both a historic first and well short of what scientists recommend. It was, notably, the product of a meeting hosted by a petrostate, overseen by an oil executive and attended by a record number of fossil fuel lobbyists. F Minus’ research is a reminder that philanthropy, too, is connected to such interests. The question is whether funders, and their grantees, will continue to accept that.

Correction: This post has been updated to reflect that Pew Charitable Trusts is a public charity.

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