· Private foundation
Sequoia Climate Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $50k–250k7 grants · $1.1M
- $250k+180 grants · $304M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC | $17,900,000 |
| STICHTING EUROPEAN CLIMATE FOUNDATION | $15,000,000 |
| TARA CLIMATE LTD | $12,500,000 |
| CLIMATEWORKS FOUNDATION | $7,924,000 |
| ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC | $7,550,000 |
| UNITED STATES ENERGY FOUNDATION | $7,500,000 |
| CLIMATE LEAD INC | $7,000,000 |
| MELIORE FOUNDATION (FUP) | $6,800,000 |
| MELIORE FOUNDATION (FUP) | $6,000,000 |
| THE SUNRISE PROJECT AUSTRALIA LTD | $5,700,000 |
| STICHTING EUROPEAN CLIMATE FOUNDATION | $5,615,000 |
| THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA | $4,450,000 |
| CLASP | $4,250,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL SUSTAINABLE ENERGY FOUNDATION | $4,070,000 |
| INSTITUTO CLIMA E SOCIEDADE | $3,800,000 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Your US giving — 60% of grant dollars ($516M). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 40% that went abroad ($347M) is mapped below.
Your human-services grants (FY21–24, $414k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
Which US states your grants reach
Beyond the US — 40% of all-years giving ($347M)
19 countries, by the recipient’s country on the filing.
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving. International giving is mapped by the recipient’s country from the same 990filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 14% of Sequoia Climate Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +20% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
101 repeat relationships — 87 still active in FY2024, 14 since wound down; 33 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $47M went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
UNITED STATES ENERGY FOUNDATION3× · 2021–2024 · $27M · revenue +44%
NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC3× · 2022–2024 · $26M · revenue +34%- TETHE ENERGY FOUNDATION4× · 2021–2024 · $23M · revenue +31%
Funded once
- RLRESOURCES LEGACY FUNDone grant, 2021 · $3.0M · revenue -5%
- EFENERGY FOUNDATION CHINAone grant, 2022 · $3.0M
WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INCone grant, 2022 · $2.2M · revenue -4%
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
Climate group advances climate action by mobilizing business and government leadership to drive systemic decarbonization across energy, transport, and industry, while engaging the public through large-scale convenings and global platforms.…
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
Cgc operates as a nonprofit financial institution that invests directly and through partners to transform financial markets by using public and private investing to accelerate the deployment of projects that strengthen the grid, reduce…
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
Cdp north america, inc. 's ("cdp-na") vision for the future is a thriving economy that works for people and planet in the long term. we focus investors and companies on taking urgent action to build a truly sustainable economy by measuring…
E3g is a leading international not-for-profit think tank specialising in climate diplomacy harnessing expertise in the politics and economics of climate change.
To research and develop healthy climate solutions comprising global food security, ecosystem regeneration and carbon balance in seas and soils.
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
Climate imperative foundation's mission is to employ science and economics to cut global carbon emissions to secure a better future for all.
To raise awareness about the potential to reduce environmental harm by shifting electricity use to particular times; to encourage the development and spread of common protocols for this practice.
Working with our world-class network of innovators, business and industry leaders, and policy experts, we accelerate the innovation of climate technologies at every stage - from discovery to development to deployment.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Goodpower Education Fund Inc and the most unlike its peers is Leaders of the Free World Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 26 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.8% lost their exemption, against 13% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
119 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 119 of the 200 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES ENERGY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds CLIMATEWORKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE ENERGY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Rocky Mountain Institute ↗
- Who funds WINDWARD FUND ↗
- Who funds CLASP ↗
- Who funds International Sustainable Energy Foundation ↗
- Who funds LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE MARKETS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CLIMATE LEAD INC ↗
- Who funds THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON CLEAN TRANSPORTATION INC ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds NEW VENTURE FUND ↗
- Who funds Potential Energy Coalition Inc ↗
- Who funds The Partnership Project Inc ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR APPLIED ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND POLICY ↗
- Who funds SIERRA CLUB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MULTIPLIER ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds UNITED NATIONS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CERES INC ↗
- Who funds ENERGY SYSTEMS INTEGRATION GROUP INC ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: Climateworks Foundation · The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation · The Heising-Simons Foundation · Climate Imperative Foundation · United States Energy Foundation · Wellspring Philanthropic Fund Inc · Windward Fund · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Energy Foundation · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc · New Venture Fund · Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Sequoia Climate Foundation funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- Trustees of Tufts College — 13% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Greenhill Humane Society Spca — 1% of income from government
- The Trustees of Mount Holyoke College — 1% of income from government
- Ceres Inc — 0% of income from government
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Sequoia Climate Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sequoia Climate Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.