With $267 Million in Grants Planned for 2024, Sequoia Joins the Ranks of Top Climate Funders

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Sequoia Climate Foundation’s wide-ranging 2021 grants, revealed in tax filings last year, introduced the Irvine-based grantmaker as a giant in climate philanthropy. But in the past couple of years, the funder has started moving money at a rate truly befitting its towering namesake.

The four-year-old foundation estimates it will send out $267 million this year, according to a Sequoia spokesperson, more than has been granted in recent years by the environmental program of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the field’s largest legacy green funder, and below only operations with billionaire backers like Bezos, Ballmer and Bloomberg.

How fast has Sequoia grown? The foundation granted nearly $174 million in 2022, up more than 37% from the year before, according to its IRS filings. It then raised its payout to about $257 million in 2023, the spokesperson told IP, more than Hewlett’s total green grantmaking. (All years refer to Sequoia’s fiscal year, which is one month off the calendar year.) 

And the foundation’s team is still looking skyward.

“Our initial focus was on expediting funding to the field at speed and scale,” said Christie Ulman, president of Sequoia, in a statement. “Our grantmaking has grown since then and we plan to sustain the current level over time… We also hope to increase future funding where we see opportunities for immediate, significant impact.”

Sequoia’s rapidly expanding portfolio, all of which is focused on the climate emergency, not only puts them among the top climate funders in the country, it serves as the latest example of billionaires pouring new and much-needed money into climate philanthropy. In Sequoia’s case, that backing appears to come from C. Frederick Taylor, a little-known hedge fund investor who is also the donor behind Wellspring Philanthropies, one of the country’s biggest human rights funders, and who is almost certainly a billionaire based on the scale of his philanthropy.

The influx does, however, raise a concern that has long dogged climate philanthropy — that the new money is overwhelmingly favoring the field’s longtime favorites. Upon Sequoia’s launch, some in the field hoped the foundation would serve as a counterweight to major donors who directed most of their dollars to well-funded, established groups versus historically underfunded environmental justice and community organizations. With several years of the grantmaker’s awards now public, a prominent peer in climate philanthropy shared concerns with me about the limited share of Sequoia’s funding going to front-line groups or the regrantors that serve them.

Grantee selection aside, the field as a whole is still desperate for more money, even as we’ve seen increased spending from operations like Sequoia and megadonors like Jeff Bezos and the Steve and Connie Ballmer. Such funding, along with new spending from legacy foundations, such as Rockefeller Foundation’s recent pledge of $1 billion in new money, are welcome sources of new support, and help explain why ClimateWorks Foundation’s most recent report found that foundation spending rose in 2022. Yet despite those bright spots, that publication determined overall philanthropic funding for climate philanthropy was stagnant that year. 

A billionaire boom, a familiar approach — and familiar concerns

Behind nearly all of today’s fast-growing climate philanthropies is a billionaire, and Sequoia appears to be no exception. Taylor may not be listed on the Forbes or Bloomberg billionaire indexes, but Wellspring has distributed more than $2 billion since 2016 and Sequoia has moved more than $800 million since its founding in 2020. Granted, Taylor’s public role in each has been limited to past or current board roles, and there are no concrete financial links; all contributions to Sequoia come from an anonymous LLC, Twenty-One Holdings, that also regularly contributes to Wellspring. 

Assuming Taylor is Sequoia’s backer, he’s far from alone in ramping up his climate spending. Other billionaire donors reaching deep in their wallets include Steve and Connie Ballmer, whose son Sam is leading the portfolio. The family revealed late last year its plans to move $431 million in new climate grants. Another is Mike Bloomberg, who, in September, pledged $500 million for his Beyond Carbon campaign, continuing the work started when he partnered with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal initiative to shut down coal plants. 

“It’s phenomenal to see more donors entering the climate space,” said Henry Platt, a partner in Bridgespan’s San Francisco office. “There’s obviously huge need, and also many opportunities for philanthropy to make a difference in addressing climate change.”

Many of the new megadonors on the climate scene are following the same well-trodden path. Sequoia and the Ballmers, for instance, have both sent their biggest awards to intermediaries and regrantors. In other words, they cut big checks to funds and organizations that already have relationships and expertise, keeping their operations light and allowing them to spend big from day one.

“For many new funders, intermediaries and regrantors can be a way to get started without figuring out everything from scratch,” said Platt. “We also see experienced climate funders turning to intermediaries and collaboratives to achieve greater progress more quickly than they could by working alone.”

Within this ecosystem, the largest awards often go to the nation’s largest green groups and a group of intermediaries and regrantors established years ago with support from legacy foundations like Hewlett and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and with the hope these new operations could eventually play exactly this role. Yet the new dominance of such recipients has drawn criticism from environmental justice leaders, who say a larger share of support should go to front-line groups and the regrantors that back them. 

“I’ve observed that initial excitement about Sequoia Climate Foundation has dimmed as it has embraced the same top-down grantmaking processes and partners of other climate mega-funders,” said Crystal Hayling, the outgoing president of Libra Foundation, in a statement. “Despite claims to center disadvantaged and climate-impacted communities, a meager proportion of their giving has been granted to organizations run by and for those communities. I remain hopeful in the future they can remedy that disconnect.”

Sequoia’s links to Wellspring, which has long sent large checks to groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for American Progress, led many to expect that it would take a similarly human-rights-centered approach to climate philanthropy. Asked about this, Ulman emphasized that although her foundation initially used Wellspring’s back office, Sequoia is an independent organization with a mandate to focus on the climate.

“Our deeply human-centered approach strives to safeguard the lives and livelihoods of as many people as possible,” Ulman said in a statement. “We know that the impacts of climate change disproportionately affect vulnerable communities and at-risk global populations. For the sake of these communities and future generations, we need to act with urgency. Our philosophy was designed to make the greatest possible impact in the shortest amount of time possible, and our mission is to create a world powered by clean energy, where all people are protected by policies that have averted the worst effects of climate change.”

Who has been cashing Sequoia’s checks? 

As in past years, Sequoia sent its biggest awards to intermediaries in 2022, closely followed by major green groups and multipartner efforts. 

The biggest recipient of all was the European Climate Foundation. The Netherlands-based regrantor received nearly $36 million via eight grants, including for initiatives like the Global Strategic Communications Council ($10.3 million) and the Pooled Fund for International Energy ($1.8 million), according to Sequoia's most recent IRS filings.

ECF is part of a loosely connected global network of intermediaries that received many large awards from Sequoia, including the Energy Foundation ($7.7 million), ClimateWorks Foundation ($4.6 million, four grants), and Energy Foundation China ($3 million, two grants). Much of this funding was destined for regranting to other organizations for work, in the clipped language of 990s, to “advance transition to clean energy,” “support international climate cooperation” and “accelerate decarbonization of power and transportation sectors,” among other topics.

The reliance on regrantors in the foundation’s 2021 and 2022 grantmaking “reflects our organizational structure and size, and our strategy,” said Ulman, noting Sequoia had a small staff moving large sums of money in its early years. “Intermediaries play a critical role in the climate philanthropy ecosystem by providing strategic capacity, grantmaking capacity, proximity to grantee organizations, and many other benefits. Strategically deploying resources to intermediaries leverages our dollars for greater impact.”

Sequoia’s other biggest awards went to some of the most well-known environmental groups in the world, such as Natural Resources Defense Council ($7 million, across five grants), World Resources Institute ($5.5 million, five grants), and World Wildlife Fund ($5.2 million, split between U.S. and U.K. branches). Other top recipients included newer collaborative efforts, such as the Energy Transition Fund ($9.5 million, over two grants) and Global Methane Hub ($7 million), as well as Australia’s Sunrise Project ($6.5 million, three grants) and CLASP ($3.4 million, four grants). 

The foundation’s 2022 grantmaking also expanded funding on several priorities, including “climate finance, particularly ecosystem-building and pushing the boundaries on transition planning; the energy transition in Southeast Asia; and stronger evidence and learning in the field via data and research,” according to a statement from the foundation. Such awards went to some of its top recipients, such as ECF, as well as smaller groups.

Sequoia also made a handful of grants to well-known environmental justice groups, including the Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund ($2.6 million), Green New Deal Network ($1.6 million), Sunrise Movement Education Fund ($1.5 million), and the Climate Justice Alliance ($500,000). 

What about 2023?

Due to the timing of IRS filings, this slate of grants is only publicly available now, a year later. Sequoia declined to provide a list of last year’s grants, but did note that new focus areas for the foundation in 2023 included super pollutants, strategic communications, and international cooperation on climate. The foundation has also adopted a more long-term grantmaking practice.

“We’ve made a collective commitment to extending more multi-year grants that allow our grantees to undertake long-term planning,” said Ulman. “It’s philanthropic best practice, and it means that the initiatives and efforts we support have an increased opportunity to think strategically about how best to create enduring impact that averts the worst effects of climate change.”

Sequoia itself remains a pay-as-you-go operation, as in its early years, with only $67 million in assets as of the end of its 2022 fiscal year, thanks to annual contributions from Twenty-One Holdings. And the foundation’s team, which nearly doubled in size in its first couple years, reaching by 45 last February, has added just a few positions since, and now numbers 48. With one additional position currently listed, Sequoia expects “moderate staff growth” during the year ahead.

Assets aside, the funder definitely looks like it’s here to stay. In 2022, Sequoia updated its Irvine, California, headquarters for the long term, carrying out a $1.3 million office renovation to cope with its expanded staff, including adding conference rooms, sound proofing and mothers’ rooms, according to a spokesperson.