Patagonia Could Yield $100 Million a Year in Green Giving. Where Will the Money Go?

There’s been a lot written in the weeks since Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard announced he and his family had transferred their $3 billion stake in the company to a unique trust and nonprofit, birthing a new philanthropy that could give away around $100 million a year.

There was much praise for the unusually large donation, but there were also critiques, including several of the tax system that makes such no-cost transfer possible. For an excellent overview, see my colleague Philip Rojc’s piece. (On a lighter note, we also heard from the 83-year-old’s “dirtbag” friend, Tom Brokaw.)

We’ll see whether such tax-advantaged corporate gift structures will proliferate in years to come — or whether they stoke even greater public scrutiny in an era when big money distrust is rampant on both sides of the political aisle. In the meantime, one question has been perhaps under-scrutinized: Where will all that money go?

Chouinard did tell the New York Times that the new nonprofit, Holdfast Collective, will prioritize nature-based climate solutions like preserving wild lands. But we also have some data that may shed additional light on what’s ahead for Holdfast — Patagonia’s corporate giving. The company already had a pretty impressive charitable program, donating 1% of annual sales. And in the past, the company has given 100% of its profits made on Black Friday to grassroots environmental groups.

I looked through the company’s grantmaking programs and history to inform some speculation about the areas that might benefit from Holdfast and its fresh stream of funding. Keeping in mind that the nonprofit will be a different entity from Patagonia — and one with a more flexible 501(c)(4) status — the company has always largely been an expression of Chouinard’s values, so past giving offers some useful insights into what we might expect.

Here’s a handful of possibilities:

Small, local and feisty

Corporate environmental philanthropy often comes in the form of large sums to big green NGOs, but Patagonia has always been a little different. The company lists more than 1,400 grantees on its website, so it seems safe to bet that the spoils of this new arrangement will be widely distributed. Granted, Holdfast will have a lot more to give away than Patagonia’s corporate giving program, and many of its small grants are made in relation to communities where the company has stores. But considering Patagonia seems to wear its support for small and scrappy groups as a badge of honor, there’s a good chance those values transfer over.

Most Patagonia recipients are hyperlocal, like the Lulapin Chumash Foundation in Ojai, California, or Friends of Cedar Mesa in Bluff, Utah. There are also national organizations like the Center for Biological Diversity, branches of networks like 350.org and major environmental groups like The Nature Conservancy, but those are less common.

The company’s self-description of how and what it funds is worth a read. A shorthand, if incomplete version would be to say it funds the kind of groups that most corporate philanthropy avoids: grassroots, direct-action groups.

With around 10 times more to give out than the company’s corporate philanthropy has typically distributed, larger groups or funding collaboratives will almost certainly benefit, as well. But Holdfast might also choose to scale the company’s giving by simply amping up its grant sizes, which have typically ranged from $5,000 to $20,000. Even a one- or two-fold increase could have a remarkable ripple effect in a field where many front-line groups are often volunteer-run shoestring operations.

Going abroad

One arm of Patagonia’s existing grantmaking operation is international, though it only grants in countries where the company has stores, so the list is dominated by nations, particularly in Europe, where most people can afford to buy specialized gear for, say, a walk in the woods.

If it sticks to those areas, the foundation might reinforce existing disparities. Most philanthropic dollars, after all, still go to efforts in the United States and Europe, even if they are targeted abroad. By pushing into new regions, however, Patagonia could help address a longstanding gap. Plus it already has programs in Argentina and Chile.

Support for media

Patagonia’s only subject-specific grants program is focused on media. It’s hardly alone in that broader mission, with all manner of foundations funding coverage in both mainstream news outlets like the Guardian and Associated Press, as well as specialty sites like Climate Central or Inside Climate News.

Patagonia’s program puts its focus on activist organizations that use media closely linked with direct-action campaigns — and it is guided by a council of employees with media experience. Given the company’s successful record of moving consumer opinion in its favor, it will be interesting to see what efforts the program’s experts choose to get behind. After all, a dizzying array of shifts, particularly for consumers, is essential for humanity in the years ahead.

Topics other funders won’t usually touch

For institutions that answer to neither shareholders nor voters, foundations are famously risk-averse. Typically, corporate foundations are even more so. Patagonia, however, throws all those rules out the window.

The company has funded work around some of the most contentious environmental issues. Take agriculture. It has backed work opposing GMOs, pesticide use and livestock operations that pack animals into crates and cages.

Resistance has not been the company’s only philanthropic passion; it also supports advancing green alternatives. Yet backing such obstructing forces, particularly grassroots work against new fossil fuel infrastructure, could provide much-needed support for an area that mainstream funders have often avoided.

Getting political

Another way Holdfast will be different from Patagonia is that it will be a 501(c)(4) entity, which means it can legally fund a much broader array of activities. That includes unlimited funding for lobbying and some forms of electoral giving. In other words, we could see a lot of politically oriented dollars, backing both the inside and outside game.

On one hand, a big influx of money into politics is always a frightening prospect. On the other, progress on climate and the environment has been hitting hard limits based on obstruction from the GOP, so any action on this front has become increasingly political by necessity.

How far does $100 million go these days?

It feels absurd to say this, but $100 million a year makes less of a splash in environmental philanthropy than it did a few years ago. For instance, the Bezos Earth Fund set out to get $10 billion a year out the door by 2030 — so roughly 10 times more each year — and it’s not the only new green outfit (see Laurene Powell Jobs’ new Waverley Street Foundation) whose ambitions begin with a “b.”

At the same time, Chouinard’s newly formed Holdfast Collective is now poised to give about as much for environmental causes annually as the Walton Family Foundation, historically one of the biggest funders in the space. So don’t get me wrong, it’s still a lot of money in absolute terms. What’s more, it has the potential to flow to places with outsized impact.

The climate space is so underfunded that one couple’s recent $20 million donation became the world’s single-largest philanthropic gift toward industrial emissions reduction efforts. To put it another way, efforts to decarbonize some of the most widely used industrial processes and materials, such as concrete, have received less money than most Ivy League schools bring in each month. And there are a lot of areas like that.

Grassroots activism and movement building, while more widely backed than once was true, were long overlooked by philanthropists. Nor has international funding been a big priority, particularly for U.S. philanthropy. And frontline resistance to fossil fuel infrastructure has never won easy support. If Patagonia continues to fund such causes, this new philanthropic bounty could mark another step toward righting those imbalances.

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