A Year and a Half After Its Founder’s Passing, Robertson’s Green Program Looks Abroad

Flooded streets in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Nelson Antoine/shutterstock

In the decades before his death, Julian Robertson established the Robertson Foundation as one of America’s top environmental funders — and one with a particular fondness for the nation’s biggest green groups.

The Environmental Defense Fund, for example, was a huge beneficiary, receiving almost $235 million since 2000, according to data shared by the foundation. That comes to about 44 cents of every dollar the hedge funder sent to environmental groups during those years.

That relationship was emblematic of the foundation’s preference for backing well-established environmental nonprofits — Robertson even praised the fund’s president, Fred Krupp, in his Giving Pledge letter. Its other top recipients have included major operations like the Energy Foundation ($39 million), Earthjustice ($28 million) and the Nature Conservancy ($24 million), as well as the National Parks Conservation Association ($32 million). Such groups continued to get big checks in recent years.

But with Robertson’s passing in 2022, a new era has begun at the New York-based grantmaker, albeit one inspired by the fundamentals of its founder’s vision.

About 18 months into the development of a new environmental strategy guided by the next generation of the family, the foundation’s first steps are starting to come into focus, particularly via a first round of grants last October. The grantmaker sent $20 million in multi-year awards to eight organizations, all for work on the transition from fossil fuels in Latin America. Half of the recipients are based in the countries where the work is happening, an important distinction, including two each in Colombia and Brazil. It’s the down payment on a board-approved commitment to spend up to $80 million more on the fossil fuel transition over five to seven years. 

Beyond that funding, the foundation’s other major environmental priority will be backing a transformation of the world’s food systems, with a focus on food loss and waste and climate-friendly proteins. For instance, it gave a pilot grant for a philanthropic roadmap report on food loss and waste, also funded by the Bezos Earth Fund, IKEA Foundation and others. More grants in this space will be made in May. Taken together, those two climate priorities will account for 80% of the foundation’s environmental funding. The remaining share will go to a “future fund” for technologies that will be needed by 2050 to reach net zero, likely aligned with the foundation’s two main priorities.

“The world in 2024 is different than the world of the late ’90s,” said Foundation President Richard Barth. “There's just a belief that we need to take a fresh look — and there's belief, honestly, that if Julian was starting off in 2024, he would be looking at the world today and want to say, ‘What is there, and what is the goal?’”

Robertson’s first steps both follow in the footsteps of recent climate funding by billionaire-founded operations — and offer an early example of how heirs may tweak funding priorities as the oft-noted “great wealth transfer” gets underway. Megadonors like MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos and Laurene Powell Jobs have sent substantial amounts abroad in recent years to address the climate crisis, and to varying degrees have funded local organizations. Guided by a board made up primarily of the founder’s sons and their spouses, Robertson is so far taking a similar approach, and that could be influential. 

If the foundation’s more locally based approach proves to be a bellwether for the next generation of heirs, it would help cement incipient trends in the philanthropic landscape. Environmental advocates have long entreated U.S. donors to fund organizations based in the countries where they work and run by locals, instead of strictly backing work by international NGOs. Anecdotal evidence suggests some of today’s donors are heeding that call, but whether it is a passing fad or an enduring shift remains to be seen.

Another question mark: the foundation’s future assets. Robertson has historically been a pay-as-you-go operation, with annual grantmaking averaging roughly $100 million and an endowment that is routinely topped up, recently hovering around $300 million. But its founder left behind a reported $5 billion fortune and was a Giving Pledge signatory. The foundation said there are no updates yet regarding plans for the estate. But if the grantmaker does get a substantial share, it will make the course it takes even more influential.

“There was not an explicit mandate”

The foundation’s ongoing strategic journey started with a discussion of the basics. Since its founding in 1996, Robertson has focused on three priorities: education, environment and medical research. The way Barth tells the story, all of that was up for debate.  

“Julian, in his wisdom, didn't say to this next generation, ‘You've got to do that,’” Barth said. “There was not an explicit mandate.”

The new board — now consisting of Robertson’s three sons and their spouses, as well as the late founder’s sister and one independent trustee, cardiologist James Freeman — was clear that they wanted to stay in those areas. The family also endorsed keeping a similar grantmaking approach, what Barth described as a focus on finding great leaders and backing them to pursue grand challenges. 

But the group did want to take a “fresh look” at where they were investing within those priorities, and how the innovations of the past 25 years could inform what they do next, Barth said. 

For the foundation’s environment portfolio, which has an average annual budget of about $33 million, that meant considering where its funding could make the most difference, said Christy Loper, the program’s director. Some of the criteria were fairly standard, such as looking for opportunities that would have short-term impact.

The board was also open to taking “a little bit more risk than we had in the past,” such as backing organizations with up-and-coming leaders, said Loper. Again, their founder was in their thoughts as they went through this process. “If Julian was looking at the world now, who are some of the organizations and people he would be betting on?” Loper said.

Those criteria, informed by conversations with more than 100 experts, led them to target areas where their dollars could help forestall new fossil fuel development. Latin America, and particularly Brazil and Colombia, rose to the top as places facing an energy tipping point, where the political moment is ripe and renewable resources are abundant. The foundation’s team also judged its dollars would have greater impact in Latin America than in populous countries like China and India, which have some restrictions on foreign funding. Based on the same criteria, the foundation may make a future round of grants in Africa.

In some ways, the grants so far mark a significant departure for the foundation. Candid’s records show Robertson made just two grants to groups outside of the United States in the past two decades, and none since 2011. Yet there is also a degree of continuity. 

The foundation told me its environmental grantmaking prior to its recent strategic reevaluation was split 60-40 between U.S. and international work, and that balance will remain roughly the same. But nearly all grants for work abroad previously went to U.S.-based organizations. Now, many of its dollars will go for the first time to grantees based in the countries where they work, a move those in the region praised. Six of the eight awards are also for general support, a longtime practice of the foundation.

A varied grant portfolio

The foundation’s first batch of grantees represent an intriguing mix of climate movement branches. 

Its biggest award ($5.5 million over three years) went to the Energy Transition Fund, a low-profile funder collaborative focused on supporting regional and global work on a just phase-out of oil and gas production. Part of that grant supports the multipartner Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, an international group of governments and other major institutions.

The second-largest grant ($4.5 million over three years) went to the Brazil-based Institute of Climate and Society or Instituto Clima e Sociedade, one of the regional funding partners set up by funders of ClimateWorks Foundation. In third place ($4 million over three years) was a well-known, Netherlands-based legal nonprofit, Foundation for International Law and the Environment, known as FILE.

The largest share, $6 million, went out in a series of smaller gifts to policy and movement groups both in the region and beyond. Two are based in the United States: the regrantor Environmental Defenders Collaborative and the legal and policy group Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense, which is known for working closely with local experts. Both received $1 million over three years. The other three are in Latin America, including the Brazil-based fossil fuel resistance group Arayara ($1 million, three years) and two groups in Colombia: the think tank Transforma ($2 million, three years) and movement-building organization Movilizatorio ($1 million, two years). 

“We prioritized trying to get funding as close to the ground as possible,” Loper said. Not set up to make lots of small grants, the foundation relied in part on regrantors, she added. “But when we could make direct grants to excellent organizations with fantastic leaders… we did that.”

Looking at the overall list, you might say that the foundation has split its funding not only between groups in Latin America and the Global North, but between representatives of the legal, regranting, philanthropic collaboration, governmental cooperation and environmental justice spheres. While that’s an oversimplification, and much of this work overlaps, it suggests a desire by Robertson’s new leadership to put dollars in the hands of many types of changemakers.

What the experts think

Funders and consultants I spoke with in Latin America were struck by the new slate’s varied mix of grantees — virtually all praising the work of the organizations they recognized — and the number of locally based organizations the foundation had chosen.

Enrique Ortiz, who has worked and funded in the region for decades, said the grantee list was quite different from the types of groups traditionally backed by major green funders. It mirrors a larger pattern he sees in environmental funding, with more funding for grassroots activism, land back movements, Indigenous rights and nature defenders, which he fears is reducing the field’s analytical capacity, whether to do scientific evaluation or measure community impacts of new funding and policies.

“That is the trend I see these days in environmental philanthropy,” said Ortiz, who serves as senior program director of the Andes-Amazon Fund, but was not speaking on behalf of the regrantor, by email. “It seems that land protection and biodiversity goes to a second/third tier of interests.”

Juliana Strobel, program manager at Fundación Avina, commended the choice of four organizations based in Latin America, saying that funding community organizations is not only effective, but also builds the power and resilience of homegrown strategies and institutions. 

“Funding local groups directly may pose significant challenges for many donors, who often depend on U.S.-based organizations,” Strobel said. “However, engaging local stakeholders is crucial for understanding the unique needs and priorities of these communities.”