Eight Things to Know About a Legendary British Investor’s Climate-Focused Philanthropy

Elite schools in the U.S. and U.K. are one favored destination for grants. WIlliam Barton/shutterstock

In January 2019, the British investor Jeremy Grantham — who made his name foretelling market doom — and his wife Hannelore publicly committed 98% of their roughly $1 billion fortune to funding climate action. Three years later, it’s clear the couple were not overpromising. 

In fact, they had already put their money where their mouth was. The pair technically have two philanthropic outfits, the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment (which I’ll call “the foundation” in this article) and the Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust (“the trust”). Granted, the latter is under independent control, but it still has their name on it. Combined, the foundation ($640 million) and the trust ($281 million) already had nearly $1 billion in assets the year the pledge was made, which is the latest for which tax filings are available.

So what have the Granthams been supporting? The Boston-based foundation has a website that details its biggest areas of grantmaking: universities, research, major environmental groups and journalism. But it’s not frequently updated, and details about grants are limited. The website does not, for instance, include any numbers, let alone a grants database. 

To learn more, I took a close look at its tax documents, which provide a lot more detail about where the Granthams’ philanthropic operation sends its checks — and what types of change it prioritizes. (After initial contacts, the team did not respond to requests for an interview.) The result is a deeper look at a philanthropic operation which, between the foundation and trust, issued $36 million in grants in 2019.

The 83-year-old Jeremy Grantham now has much of his fortune in philanthropy, but it’s worth pointing out he hasn’t left the private sector behind. He’s still on the leadership team of GMO, the Boston-based investment firm that he co-founded, and which shares an office with his foundation. The famously provocative investor still writes investor letters that muse on “Spaceship Earth” and make suggestions like “Let the Wild Rumpus Begin*.” And the firm, which had $68 billion under management last year, has a Climate Change Fund that had a banner year in 2021. 

He’s also lobbying other mega-rich folks to join him. As he said late last year in a Bloomberg piece, he meets other billionaires through groups like Prime Coalition, which urges foundations to invest in climate startups, and CREO Syndicate, which provides climate investment guidance to the mega-wealthy individuals, such as Lukas Walton. Grantham went on to say that his “No. 1 job description” is to convince other wealthy people to join him. “This is so much more important than building a new building for some business school,” he said.

Here are eight things I learned from a dive into the Granthams’ philanthropy.

The foundation cuts big checks for academic centers, often with the Grantham name attached

The couple’s favorite grantees by far are universities, primarily elite schools in the United Kingdom and the United States. About a third of the foundation’s annual gifts went to such centers of higher education, according to tax filings from 2017 to 2019, when such gifts reached $10 million. No more recent data was available.

Three U.K. universities have received many of the foundation’s largest awards: the London School of Economics, Imperial College London, and the University of Sheffield, Jeremy Grantham’s alma mater. Each has received millions in grants, and they’ve all established institutes focused on climate change named for the Granthams.

The Granthams’ penchant for naming rights isn’t limited to their own name. The foundation has granted at least $1.2 million to the Indian Institute of Science to establish and run the Divecha Centre for Climate Change. It is named for another couple, Arjun and Diana Divecha, who are also supporters of the institute. Arjun Divecha is a Berkeley, California-based GMO employee who gave $300,000 annually to the Granthams’ foundation between 2017 and 2019, according to tax filings.

Other universities also get plenty of support from the Granthams. Million-dollar gifts have gone to the California Institute of Technology and MIT in recent years, and many other schools have received six-figure gifts, including Ivy League institutions like Columbia and Yale. Big grants are typical for the foundation, whose median award amount is $250,000.

They’re major supporters of some of the world’s biggest green groups

Founded back in 1997, the foundation has “long-standing relationships” with a handful of the world’s major environmental organizations, according to its website. Those include RMI (formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Institute), the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Wildlife Fund and the Nature Conservancy, where Jeremy Grantham once served on the board. Each of these groups received awards totaling $3 million or more in recent years. The Granthams support several of them primarily through the trust.

One of the Granthams’ lesser-known, long-term partners is Rare, a conservation group focused on behavioral change. It received more than $8 million in recent years from the couple’s trust, and Jeremy Grantham was also previously a board member.

They support regrantors — and appear to do their own regranting

Outside of universities, some of the biggest Grantham awards have gone to pass-through funds. Two of the field’s largest green intermediaries are top beneficiaries: the European Climate Foundation and the U.S.-based Energy Foundation, each receiving roughly $5 million over recent grant cycles. ClimateWorks Foundation has also received several six-figure awards, and the low-profile Windward Fund got a $1 million grant in 2019.

It also seems that Grantham’s outfit takes in funds to do its own regranting. Lukas Walton’s philanthropy, Builders Initiative, told Inside Philanthropy it awarded $4 million to the foundation in 2020, and High Tide Foundation gave it a six-figure gift in 2019. 

They back a variety of climate news outlets

Journalism and communications does not account for a large share of the Granthams’ grantmaking budget, but the couple do send checks to a variety of such operations. The bulk are climate-centered groups, such as Carbon Brief, Inside Climate News and the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. 

The couple also seems to have a fondness for radio, giving grants to international coverage at WGBH, the Boston affiliate of National Public Radio, and “Living on Earth,” a weekly public radio show. Most of their journalism grants are in the low six figures, but one news organization and research group, the Center for Public Integrity, has received more than $1 million in the last few years. 

This is a small operation run by an investment guy

The foundation has just 11 employees, according to LinkedIn. The president and chief investment officer of the foundation is Ramsay Ravenel, who is also listed as the trust’s executive director. The Yale MBA formerly worked at an impact investment firm, MissionPoint Partners. (Curiously, both foundation and trust list the salary for Ravenel as $0.)

In terms of who’s overseeing operations, the trust and foundation have strikingly different boards. The foundation’s board is family-dominated, consisting of the Granthams and their three children, Isabel, Oliver and Rupert, as well as Ravenel.

The trust, meanwhile, is set up to benefit four major green groups: World Wildlife Fund, RMI, Rare and the Nature Conservancy. Thus, the majority of its board comes from those organizations, including the leaders of the first three, as well as the former Massachusetts state director of the fourth. The trust, which was established nearly a decade after the foundation, underlines the close relationship between the Granthams and those groups. That said, it does issue grants to other organizations, supporting, for instance, the Center for Carbon Removal ($1 million) and the edutainment soap opera outfit Population Media Center ($500,000) in 2019.

Three U.S. states get nearly all the love

Organizations hoping for funding from the Granthams will have better chances if they hail from certain states. According to an analysis by Instrumentl, two-thirds of the foundation’s grants between 2016 and 2019 went to organizations in just three states: California, New York and Massachusetts, the couple’s long-time home state. 

This investors’ foundation cares about (surprise!) its investments

If Jeremy Grantham’s work history wasn’t enough, there are plenty of indicators that the foundation puts a lot of thought into making sure its assets do as much work for its mission as its grants. 

Note that Ravenel, for instance, is not just the foundation’s president, but also its chief investment officer. In 2019, the operation’s program-related investments totaled more than $33 million, more than its grantmaking. “Investing” even takes the top spot symbolically, above “philanthropy” on the foundation’s menu. The foundation also maintains an LLC, Neglected Climate Opportunities, to place venture capital bets.

The foundation’s website puts its approach simply: “Taking early-stage positions in important yet underfunded climate opportunities.” Focuses range from ocean acidification to direct carbon capture, with the website listing more than 40 of the team’s “favorite” investments. 

The operation’s bets over the past year show its range. They include investments in Sustaera, a direct-air-capture carbon-removal company; Context Labs, a data technology company working on decarbonization measurement and monitoring; Steward, a regenerative farm and food production funding platform; and Novalith, a clean lithium extraction venture.

Movement funding is limited

The Granthams clearly see some value in backing political change. In recent years, they’ve cut several six-figure checks to D.C. groups. Disclosed donations include $200,000 to billionaire Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate Action super PAC, $250,000 to the donations platform Democracy Engine, and more than $200,000 to the Democratic Party, all in 2020. 

Despite that, building broader political support for climate action has not been a significant focus of the couple’s philanthropy. One exception is movement organization 350.org, which received more than $1.25 million between 2018 and 2019. But for the most part, movement groups have accounted for a minor share of the couple’s climate giving.