· Public charity
The Energy Foundation
THE ENERGY FOUNDATION's mission is to achieve greenhouse gas emissions neutrality, world-class air quality, energy access, and green growth through transforming energy and optimizing economic structure.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 14 grants below total $3,225,597 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $58,494,831 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $55,269,234 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k2 grants · $49k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $1.2M
- $250k+5 grants · $2.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON CLEAN TRANSPORTATION INC | $550,000 |
| PRESIDENT & FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE | $492,477 |
| INSTITUTE FOR TRANSPORTATION AND DEVELOPMENT POLICY | $360,000 |
| REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS | $300,000 |
| REGENTS OF THE UC AT BERKELEY | $300,000 |
| THE STATE LEGISLATIVE LEADERS FOUNDATION | $233,750 |
| ROCKY MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE - BOULDER CO | $220,000 |
| BAY AREA COUNCIL FOUNDATION | $190,620 |
| INNOVATION CENTER FOR ENERGY AND TRANSPORTATION | $185,000 |
| JACKSON HOLE CENTER FOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS | $175,000 |
| INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES | $120,000 |
| THE REGENTS OF UC SAN DIEGO | $50,000 |
| THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES | $28,750 |
| VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY | $20,000 |
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 human-services grants (FY17–24, $2.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 83% 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
Grants abroad, by region — $56M on the FY2024 return
Schedule F, as filed: 2 regions. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: TO ENHANCE AIR QUALITY · TO ADVANCE CLIMATE KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING · TO SUPPORT LOW-CARBON TRANSPORTATION, TO SUPPORT GREEN ENERGY TRANSITION, TO SUPPORT THE DECARBONIZATION OF THE INDUSTRIAL SECTOR
Stated purpose: TO SUPPORT THE DECARBONIZATION OF THE INDUSTRIAL SECTOR · TO SUPPORT GREEN ENERGY TRANSITION · TO SUPPORT ENGAGEMENT ON CARBON NEUTRALITY
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. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
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 +94% since the first grant, against +41% for the ones you funded once.
294 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 286 since wound down; 4 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, 77% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $633k 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
NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC7× · 2017–2023 · $5.9M · revenue +41%- SMSUSTAINABLE MARKETS FOUNDATION3× · 2017–2019 · $5.6M · revenue +270%
REGULATORY ASSISTANCE PROJECT5× · 2017–2022 · $5.2M · revenue +8%
Funded once
- CECLEAN ENERGY BUYERS ASSOCIATIONgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $400k · revenue +172%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF MARYLANDone grant, 2022 · $350k
UNITED NATIONS FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2017 · $300k · revenue -16%
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.
The national caucus of environmental legislators empowers a nonpartisan network of legislative champions to protect, conserve, and improve the natural and human environment.
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
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.…
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
Climate catalyst sparks collective action to tackle the biggest climate challenges we face today: cutting emissions in heavy industries.
Driving american jobs and competitiveness by leveraging our cleaner economy and enabling u.s. manufacturers to lead in advanced energy technologies.
Clean energy research and advocacy. Clean Energy Group promotes effective clean energy policies, develops low carbon technology innovation strategies and promotes new financial tools to strengthen the economy and stabilize climate change.
To advocate for a clean energy economy at the scale climate science demands, create good union jobs, and create more equitable communities.
Our mission is to fight against fossil fuel executives and industries that have turned our communities into dumping grounds for toxic waste, poisoning our air, water, lan, and bodies. We organize to oppose giant oil refineries, dirty…
To develop and promote a carbon dividends framework - based on carbon fees whose revenues are rebated to citizens through dividends - as the most cost-effective, equitable, and politically viable climate solution.
E3g is a leading international not-for-profit think tank specialising in climate diplomacy harnessing expertise in the politics and economics of climate change.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Environment America Research and Policy Center Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Henry M Paulson Jr Institute. 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 28 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
464 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. 464 of the 497 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE MARKETS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds REGULATORY ASSISTANCE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds The Partnership Project Inc ↗
- Who funds Advanced Energy Institute ↗
- Who funds Conservative Energy Network ↗
- Who funds Rocky Mountain Institute ↗
- Who funds THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON CLEAN TRANSPORTATION INC ↗
- Who funds Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies ↗
- Who funds ENERGY ACTION FUND ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWEST ENERGY EFFICIENCY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds WESTERN CONSERVATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN COUNCIL FOR AN ENERGY-EFFICIENT ECONOMY ↗
- Who funds Western Resource Advocates ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND POLICY CENTER OF THE MIDWEST ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds CLEAN AIR TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC ↗
- Who funds RESOURCE MEDIA ↗
- Who funds ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC ↗
- Who funds Yale University ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN ALLIANCE FOR CLEAN ENERGY ↗
- Who funds GREAT PLAINS INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT INC ↗
- Who funds Vote Solar ↗
- Who funds INNOVATION CENTER FOR ENERGY AND SUSTAINABILITY ↗
- Who funds EARTHJUSTICE ↗
- Who funds CUB CONSUMER EDUCATION AND RESEARCH FUND ↗
- Who funds SIERRA CLUB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BERKELEY LAB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds FRESH ENERGY ↗
- Who funds COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR MARKET TRANSFORMATION ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA SUSTAINABLE ENERGY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds TIDES CENTER ↗
- Who funds CERES INC ↗
- Who funds New York University ↗
- Who funds SOUTHEAST ENERGY EFFICIENCY ALLIANCE ↗
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: United States Energy Foundation · Natural Resources Defense Council Inc · Environmental Defense Fund Incorporated · Energy Action Fund · Climateworks Foundation · Movement Strategy Center · The Partnership Project Inc · Windward Fund · Climate Imperative Foundation · The McKnight Foundation · Rockefeller Family Fund Inc · Resources Legacy Fund
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 The Energy 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.
- Green & Healthy Homes Initiative Inc — 100% of income from government
- Institute for Sustainable Communities — 100% of income from government
- New Buildings Institute — 100% of income from government
- Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships — 100% of income from government
- Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management Inc — 100% of income from government
- Applied Economics Clinic Inc — 22% of income from government
- Trustees of Tufts College — 13% of income from government
- Yale University — 12% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Forth Mobility Fund — 7% of income from government
- National Consumer Law Center Inc — 1% of income from government
- Oceantic Network Inc — 0% 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.