Climateworks Foundation is the San Francisco-based 501(c)(3) re-granting hub for an elaborate international, multi-level money-funneling network, incorporated April 24, 2008 in California and funded by six major foundations to “fight climate change worldwide”.

Climateworks Foundation re-grants donations to existing climate activist groups in the United States, China, Brazil, Indonesia, India and Mexico and Central America.

Re-granting is the process that a major donor or collaborating donors use to finance numerous and varied on-the-ground projects by first establishing an umbrella organization as a control center, which gives sub-grants to a series of organizations, and in turn, their sub-grants fund on-the-ground organizations that operate the actual projects worldwide.

Climateworks Foundation acts as the re-granting umbrella control center and has the power to create and act as the direct controlling power over re-granter groups, of which it operates two: Climate and Land Use Alliance (CLUA), and the Latin America Regional Climate Initiative (LARCI). The executives of these two re-granters are employees on the payroll of Climateworks Foundation.

Climateworks Foundation says of its work, “Our mission is to help prevent dangerous climate change and promote global prosperity through the support of public policy,” a benevolent, even utopian, public face.

However, on its IRS Form 990, Climateworks says, “The Climateworks Regranting Network and other partners encompass a set of high-impact strategies that are primarily designed to change public policy and shift multi-billion dollar industries and markets toward products, services, and business models that reduce climate pollution on the gigatonne scale.” Success would place the six donor foundations in the ranks of significant global power centers.

The six foundations that created Climateworks are: William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (assets 2014 $8,607,073,096), David and Lucile Packard Foundation ($6,902,501,278), Energy Foundation ($58,693,095), Doris Duke Charitable Foundation ($1,859,405,732), Joyce Foundation ($936,451,953), and Oak Foundation USA ($73,539,978 – Oak USA is part of a multinational foundation based in Geneva, Switzerland, and operates in Belize, Bulgaria, Denmark, Ethiopia, India, the UK, the US and Zimbabwe with $245.78 million grants in 2014), collective assets $18,437,665,132 ($18.4 billion).

Realizing that the ambitious strategy required substantial restructuring of the global economy, the six foundations’ leaders commissioned a 2007 study titled, Design to Win: Philanthropy’s Role in the Fight against Global Warming, which concluded that sufficient wealth and astute global organizing could generate the social and political pressure necessary to overcome free market resistance and impose expert-designed controls over all sources claimed to cause “dangerous climate change”. The study provided a winning strategy for the six foundations and led to the creation of Climateworks Foundation the next year (2008) and the beginning of the Climateworks Regranting Network, among the most complex operations in foundation history.

Money

Climateworks financial assets were $129.1 million in 2013, including $37,893; $212.6 million in 2012 including $48,457 in publicly traded securities.

Climateworks income in Fiscal Year 2013 was $77.3 million; $89.1 million in foundation grants in the calendar year. FY 2012 $140.3 million, $219.4 million in foundation grants in the calendar year.

Climateworks paid out $143.9 million in grants in 2013; $147.7 million in 2012.

Climateworks spent $ 7,283,428 in salaries in 2013;$8,171,508 in 2012.

Climateworks spent $1,853,873 for fundraising expenses in 2013; $2,895,767 in 2012.

People related to ClimateWorks Foundation:

Links contain biographic and relationship information

Larry D. Kramer – director

Carol S. Larson – director

Pamela Matson – director

Kristian Parker – director

John D. Podesta – director

William K. Reilly – chairman emeritus

Susan F. Tierney – director

ClimateWorks Foundation past relationships:

Links contain biographic and relationship information

Barr Foundation – funder

Bertrand P. Collomb – director

David & Lucile Packard Foundation – funder

Doris Duke Charitable Foundation – funder

Energy Foundation – funder

Foundation to Promote Open Society – funder

Jamshyd N. Godrej – director

Hal Harvey – director

Charles O. Holliday Jr. – director

Joyce Foundation – funder

Richard C. Levin – vice chair

Mario J. Molina – director

Oak Foundation – funder

William & Flora Hewlett Foundation – funder

Source: Muckety

ClimateWorks Foundation Money

Climateworks has received 28 grants from 10 foundations totaling $582,396,593 (2008-2013)

Climateworks Regranting Network History